Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for podcasts] 

I've recently started listening to a lot of talk radio and literary podcasts. I thought it was important to do a post showcasing these shows because they provide a lot of great insights into the literary world and really round out my blogging ideas.

By far my favorite literary podcast is Books on the Nightstand. This weekly podcast is hosted by Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman. They both work in the publishing industry, but this podcast isn't full of fancy lingo I can't understand. It's actually very easy on my ears and the podcasts are relatively short because I honestly don't have a lot of free hours to listen to podcasts. On average the podcasts are about twenty-five minutes long. There is usually some kind of book topic, this past week it was cookbooks, and then Ann and Michael each suggest a book and talk a little bit about it. Ann and Michael have great chemistry and their podcast is informative as well as fun to listen to. I subscribe to this podcast through iTunes but you can also download the podcast on their website.

Another great podcast is the New Yorker's monthly fiction podcast. This podcast features an author reading a story by another author and then there is a discussion about the story and why they chose the story they did. This podcast has introduced me to a few writers I would not have otherwise heard of and this is another short one. It's only once a month and about thirty minutes long. Very easy to keep up with!

NPR Books isn't my favorite podcast but I listen to it pretty frequently. It's fairly short, about twenty minutes, and features, reviews, news, and interviews. It's an enjoyable podcast but it doesn't feel as friendly to me as Books on the Nightstand does.

The next podcast isn't exactly a lit show but it is a show about book bloggers. Linus's Blanket's Nicole hosts That's How I Blog, a weekly podcast about blogging books. This is a great podcast that has given me ideas on how I would like to change my blog, and Nicole asks some great questions! It's always interesting and there is also some discussion of books (obviously, what else can you expect from book bloggers) in each episode. You can download these podcasts on Blog Talk Radio.

I'm probably a little biased on this one, but the University of Iowa's radio station has two great literary radio shows. One is the newer Not Your Literati which is hosted by my two pals Pierce and Mackenzie. This show talks about what is up on the undergraduate literary scene every Sunday. There is another show on Tuesdays called The Lit Show, which I sadly don't get to hear very often. You can listen to these shows even if you don't live in Iowa City. You can find the schedule on KRUI's website and download the stream for your music player. Both of these shows are one hour long.

Do you ever listen to book-related podcasts? If so, which ones and why? (Include the URLs for people who aren’t familiar with them.) Or, of course, there’s the flip side … did you even know that such a thing existed? (I ask because I know a lot of people who have no idea what a podcast is.)

I do listen to book-related podcasts, usually when I'm walking. My absolute favorite is Books on the Nightstand with Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman. I have added a ridiculous amount of books to my TBR because of their podcast and they always make me think about bookish related things, like e-books and big books, when I had really considered them before. I recently started listening to the Do Nothing But Read podcast with Amanda and Brandon. Amanda also hosts Do Nothing But Read Day I participated in a few weeks ago. They are hilarious and talk about different sorts of books than Books on the Nightstand does. I, of course, listen to KCRW's Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt. This features a lot of literary fiction, poetry, and essays and it's more of an interview podcast instead of two people talking about books. I look both platforms, and Michael Silverblatt is great at interviews. I learned about Patti Smith's memoir, Just Kids, through Bookworm and I probably wouldn't have read that book if I hadn't found out about it through the podcast. Those are really the only three podcasts I keep up with right now, but I'd love to listen to more! I prefer listening to podcats on my iPod so usually I use iTunes to hear about different podcasts.

How about you? Do you listen to podcasts? What are some of your favorites? You can also join the conversation at Booking Through Thursday.

This idea comes from Dewey's own Weekly Geek idea list which she shared on her blog, and which I, thankfully, swiped before her blog was removed and can now glean from as I ponder new and hopefully fun Weekly Geek tasks.

Dewey worded it this way, "find and review a link to a book podcast." I'm modifying this just a bit and am asking you to share with us a podcast you love, preferably book related, but not necessarily so. Give us the link, of course, and share with us details about that podcast and why you enjoy it so much. If you have a couple or three favorites, share them all!

Then, as the week goes on, check out every one's suggestions, find time to listen to a few, then come back and let us know what you discovered, and if you've found a new favorite podcast.

If you don't listen to podcasts at all, tell us why, or what it would take to peak your interest in them. Perhaps you could do as Dewey suggests, and do a little research (google book podcasts) and find one, then post on your blog what you discover and if you liked it or not.

Be sure to sign Mr. Linky both for the post on your favorite podcast, and the post on what new favorites you discover this week.

I mentioned a few times last week that I started a podcast recently. Some of you mentioned you'd like to more about it, so I'm just going to do a full out post here. The podcast is called GreenReads and I started it with my boyfriend. We're reading one book every two weeks and then talking about it on our podcast. The books we're talking about are somehow related to the environment, but not always overtly. We just published our first real podcast and we discuss A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. You might remember that I reviewed A Walk in the Woods last week. There is some overlap between the podcast in my review, although I talk about the book in a very different way. When I review a book here I usually talk about how I liked it as a book and as a reader. On the podcast I'll talk more about how I read the book as an environmentalist.

The podcasts are about 30 minutes long and can be listened to on our website or downloaded from iTunes for free. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and it will automatically be downloaded to your computer every time there is a new one.

If podcasts aren't really your thing but you still want to know more about the environment you should check out our blog. Every once in awhile we'll do a post where we talk about something environmental we've done recently.

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I finally picked up The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

because it was the September selection for the Drunk Literature Book Club. I apparently had more luck than Rebecca though because I actually finished it. I must agree with her, crime fiction is not really my cup of tea, but I was strangely in the mood to give some a try. Maybe it's because a lot of my friends and some of my favorite podcasts have been talking so excitedly about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that I felt like I was missing out on something. The story is about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who is offered a large sum of money by the wealthy Henrik Vanger to find out what happened to Vanger's favorite niece many years before. Blomkvist takes the challenge, mostly because he thinks it will give him so power in the middle of the libel case he is a part of. Blomkvist gets some help from investigator Lisbeth Salander along the way. Lisbeth is young, incredibly intelligent, and deeply misunderstood.

One of my favorite aspects of this book that I don't think gets discussed very much is the portrayal of violence against women. There are moments in the book where Lisbeth is raped or put in the position of sexual submission, and other moments later in the book where you find out several other stories about women who were treated violently. And these things are by no means only present in the book. Things like this happen all the time in the real world, and just like no one does anything about them in the book, most people don't do much about it in the real world either. I think Stieg Larsson did a great job of portraying the after effects of sexual violence against women in this novel.

While I really enjoyed that aspect of the book I found the first half painful to get through. I was expecting a page turner, something I really needed at the beginning of the semester, and what I got was much denser than I expected. I also didn't like the repetition, sometimes you would learn something and then ten pages later you would have to learn it again. He probably did this so the reader didn't have to think about it and could just keep reading without having to search in their brains for what the plot, but I always find this device rather insulting. The second half of the book was quite thrilling, but I thought the ending was a little dull. So overall I wasn't as excited as I thought I would be, which is why...

I'm giving this book a C.

For October the Drunk Literature Book Club selection is biographies. Any biography you want-- you should join in if you can!

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I protested vehemently and announced that I was never going to become anything but myself, that I was of the clan of Peter Pan and we did not grow up (10). Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were best friends at the height of 1969, when they lived at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City and rubbed elbows with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Robert and Patti were both struggling artists before, during, and after this period, and beyond that they were struggling young adults trying to understand a culture of young people who were somewhat like them but somewhat different at the same time. They were sometimes romantically involved and sometimes not, but they were always close. They were family.

I heard about Just Kids in March when I was listening to a two part podcast on KCRW's Bookworm with Micahel Silverblatt. Even though the podcast between Silverblat and Smith totaled 58 minutes I still found myself constantly returning to it. I rarely return to podcasts after listening to them, so the fact that I was so entranced by Patti Smith told me I really had to read this book. Her voice was so strong in the podcast, and I was pleased to find I could easily hear her voice in her memoir. I was also pleased to find she was just as easy to relate to in her book as she was on the podcast, which is amazing considering she has lived an incredible life. I've read a lot of music memoirs in the past, and I used to be kind of into Patti Smith (although not as much as earlier rockstars like Joplin or Jim Morrison) but nothing quite like Just Kids. This isn't so much a memoir about her time as a rock star; in fact, she never really gets into her music career. Instead what is found here is a relationship between two lost young people who found support in one another. Patti Smith is honest and unapologetic, but you can still see the young, wandering girl in her. And the woman has got it together. She sees things and puts them into words better than a lot of writers I've read: "I craved honesty, yet found dishonesty in myself" (65) and "Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn't want to be without each other" (80) are just two such examples.

I had two little, little beefs with this book though. In my opinion Robert kind of fell out of the picture about 3/4 of the through the book. I think this is because their relationship changed at this point, but I still wanted to know a little more about him, even if it was just what Smith was thinking about him. I also felt like when Robert fell out of the picture Smith lost her unapologetic voice a little bit. I'm fine with that, but I thought it should be acknowledged a little more. And sometimes Smith goes off on a bit of a tangent once in awhile. So the book wasn't perfect for me, just not quite there. But I still really enjoyed it as a Patti Smith fan, as a nonfiction writer, and as a reader.

The book is also scattered with images of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, so it just didn't seem right to me to not include such a picture in my review.

I also think I should mention that Robert Mapplethorpe's art is highly sexual and Smith is honest about this, so there are some fairly graphic descriptions in the memoir. This memoir earned a B.

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It's been a big day for me! Today I was on KRUI's show Not Your Literati to talk about English Major's Junk Food. It was a great show and if you haven't heard about it before and are in the Iowa City area you should tune in next Sunday at 11 AM. They also put a post about our interview on their blog today, and you can download the interview if you care to listen to it. Just head over to Not Your Literati. They also have posts on their blog about past shows so be sure to check it out!

Last week was crazy busy for me so I didn't get quite as much reading done as I wanted but I was a lot better about getting posts done on time. This week I reviewed Harriet the Spy and Villette. My children's book this week was Old Bear. Rather than writing a review of the children's book this week I decided to do a vlog and read the book. This seemed to work out pretty well so I think I might do this more in the future. Friday I complained about the University of Iowa's Intro to the English Major and yesterday I had a picture of a weird initial letter.

This week I'm planning on finishing three of the four books I'm reading. I'd like to finish The Woman in White, The Jungle, and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I'm going to put Pride and Prejudice on hold until I finish those three. I've got three awards recently and I will probably post those this week, and then I'm considering doing a post on literary talk shows. I was inspired to do this by Not Your Literati. There are a few other podcasts I listen to that I'd like to highlight. It should be an exciting week!

Happy Reading!

Aths and I have reached the end of our journey with Eaarth. She posted an amazingly well written post about our obsession with progress and growth today. You should all head over to Reading on a Rainy Day to check it out. I feel so lucky to work with someone who can express passionate ideas about the environment as eloquently as Aths!

I have been absent from the Internet for most of the day, mostly because I was at work all day. While I was at work I listened to several podcasts about environmental issues, but one really stuck with me. If this episode of Organically Speaking doesn't get you thinking about food and the dangers of how we currently manage food I don't know what will. It's about the spinach scare that happened not too long ago. It's funny but full of helpful information. This was my first time listening to this podcast but I'm definitely going to be a subscriber from now on.

Speaking of podcast, the new episode of Green Reads will be up by tomorrow-- be on the lookout!

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This past spring I took a fitness walking course with my best friend from high school and we had to read a portion of A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson. I was immediately taken by the part we read because he spends a lot of time discussing how difficult it is to get around America without a car. How our country is not built for bikes or walking. This is something I'm passionate about and really noticed when I moved from Iowa City back to the Des Moines area the summer after my freshman year. That is all the book is about, in fact the majority of the book is a travelogue of Bryson (who is also from Des Moines I might add!) and his old friend Katz attempting to hike all 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Quite the feat, and you can guess right from the beginning that they won't be able to do it.

It doesn't really matter though. Bryson makes so many interesting observations about America along the way that I could have cared less about him actually hiking the trail. They stop in several small towns for breaks from the wilderness and they rediscover the wonders of a hot shower and warm meal. While there, Bryson talks about the loss of small town America and the loss of the sidewalk. He talks about hitchhiking and bonding out in the woods. He talks about real nature versus cultivated nature. And he does all of this very sarcastically, very wittily. The first three fourths of this book are really a joy; full of information but still interesting to read, the way all nonfiction should be. This example about the roads built by the Forest Service is a great example of this.

"The reason the Forest Service builds these roads, quite apart from the deep pleasure of doing noisy things in the woods with big yellow machines, is to allow private timber companies to get to previously inaccessible stands of trees. Of the Forest Service's 150 million acres of loggable land, about two-thirds is held in store for the future. The remaining one-third--49 million acres, or an area roughly twice the size of Ohio--is available for logging. It allows huge swathes of land to be clear-cut, including (to take one recent but heartbreaking example) 209 acres of thousand-year-old redwoods in Oregon's Umpqua National Forest."

I'm glad I read this book, but I found the last fourth of the book rather difficult to get through. Bryson decides to leave the trail for awhile, and when he returns he decides to drive portions of the trail, get out and hike, and then drive a little further. This is extremely boring and difficult to read about. It felt like Bryson ran out of steam towards the end both physically and mentally, and the writing just gets crappy. Long gone are there great sarcastic paragraphs chock full of information about the Forest Service, and we are introduce to a crabby, sleepy Bryson who just doesn't give a damn.

I give this book a B.

Also, I recently started a podcast called Green Reads with my boyfriend and this is the first book were going to talk about. We're in the process of submitting our podcast to iTunes but in the meantime you can check out our blog, listen to our introduction podcast, and follow us so you know when our regular podcasts are going up!

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Ever since I saw the Moleskine Passions Book Journal I was overcome with lust. I decided to purchase it as a gift to myself for my hard work during midterms (and hopefully I worked as hard as I thought I did!). I've never been a huge fan of Moleskines, mostly because they carry a pretty hefty price tag and I don't take notes very often. I normally just takes notes inside the book I'm reading when I have a thought, and I don't every have my Moleskine when I want to take a note down about something I want to write or read. But I think this Book Journal might have changed my entire view on Moleskine.

This book is so organized, which I love. The book pages are in alphabetical order and on each page there is a space for the title, author, nationality, publisher, dates read, first edition (y/n), year, original language, awards, notes, quotes, and final opinion plus rating. So essentially everything I want to remember about a book after I read it. I really think this is going to help me stay organized for reviews as well. I haven't reviewed a book I've written about in here yet, but I have finished a book and filled out a page. I can already see a huge difference in how I read. And here is the really amazing thing, I have not left home without my journal since I bought it. I cannot even explain how amazing that is. There have been days where I thought to myself, "Eh, I won't really need that today," but then I always reconsider and end up slipping it in my bag.

At the back of the book there are sections where you can name your own tabs. So far I have tabs for Bookshops, Magazines, Readings & Signings, and Podcasts. The first four of those were labels that came with the book that I chose, but the last one I made myself with a blank tab. Following the tabs are more blank pages, which you could use for a never ending list of things. I'm using them for a Wish List and a List of Books Read in 2010.

My favorite thing about this journal though is probably the fold out compartment in the back. Here I can keep receipts for books, the labels that came with the book, recommendations, random notes, bookmarks, and whatever else I want. Another great quality is the book has three bookmark ribbons to mark three different important pages at any time. This is especially helpful since I'm usually reading a few books at a time, so I can keep my in progresses marked for quick notetaking!

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Happy Valentine's Day Blogging World! I hope you all are having good days with your sweethearts, or otherwise having good days appreciating singledom. I personally celebrated Valentine's Day last night. I went out for dinner with my boyfriend and then we watched When Harry Met Sally, which he had never seen before! It's always a good one. I miss good Meg Ryan movies.

So this week I posted a review of The Girl Made of Cool and Love Letters of Great Women. I read everyone Leonardo the Terrible Monster for Children's Book Thursday and talked about my experience reading my first romance novel. Finally yesterday I posted an extremely long Awards post. You should all check out to see if I gave an award to you! I would really appreciate it if the people who have received awards would comment on the post, if you do not comment by Wednesday I will assume you haven't seen it. Then I will comment on those blogs who have not seen the post. Thanks for your help!

This week I finished The Woman in White, Love Letters of Great Women, and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I actually did not read all of the Secret History of the Pink Carnation, I pretty much skimmed to the end. You can probably guess what my feelings were about that book based on that, but I will be reviewing it later. I know last Sunday I promised I would have post about literary radio shows and podcasts. I'm still going to do that, most likely this week. Today I will finish The Jungle which is very exciting. The Jungle has been the strangest experience for me. I'm reading it for my American History class and did not think I would enjoy it all. I think that stigma has carried through the whole experience of reading it because I never seem to want to read it. In all honesty though, it's one of my favorite books so far in 2010.

And now I have some exciting bragging to do: I'm going to New York in four weeks for Spring Break! I have never been to New York before so I am super excited about this! If you have been to New York and have someplace I cannot miss please let me know! Especially if it's a must see for a book lover.

Happy reading!

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As part of my Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay readalong I'm posting reviews of comic books all week. Today's comic book is Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile

, which I purchased at the Twin Cities Book Festival. I've heard a lot of great things about this comic book on podcasts, blogs, and from friends. I honestly don't know why I waited so long to read it because the idea attracted me immediately. All of the characters from fairy tales and fables have been chased out of their homelands and now live in various parts of New York State. They fit in with humankind, but they also have their own governance and rules. Snow White is the Director of Operations. She divorced Prince Charming after she found him in bed with her sister (yeah these aren't PG) and she has got an attitude in this book. Love it.

There are five parts to Volume 1 but the story is linear. From the very beginning we know something happened to Snow White's sister, Rose Red, because Jack (like Jack in the Beanstalk), comes rushing to the cop, Bigby Wolf, to try and get him to investigate the case. Jack is Rose Red's sister, but Bigby questions their relationship. At the apartment Bigby sees nothing but blood all over the apartment, and speculates that Rose Red is dead. She doesn't tell Snow White right away though, and Snow White wants to murder him because of it. While all of this is going on all of the members of Fabletown are preparing for a huge Remembrance Day celebration to remember their homelands.

When I initially heard about a comic book based off of fairy tales I figured it would probably be cute. Fables is not cute, it's incredibly dark and sarcastic-- which I love. Bill Willingham manages to push these characters further than I've ever seen in a parody. Others have wondered if characters are really happy when the story ends, but Willingham looks at them like real people. And he looks at their immortality-- sure Beauty and the Beast get married and live happily ever after, but can you really live happily ever after for eternity? If you've never read a comic book before I think this is a great one to start with. The stories will be familiar to you and you can get used to the style of comic books easily with this one.

I give volume one of Fables a B.

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This week has been a week of changes at English Major's Junk Food. In case you haven't noticed already I have gone from http://englishmajorjunkfood.blogspot.com to http://www.englishmajorjunkfood.com. If you go to the old blogspot address you should get redirected here, but please update your bookmarks and blogrolls with the new address. It helps me out a lot! So far I haven't seen any unusual change in traffic due to the domain name change. I know a lot of people have questions about changing over and if you are one of those people please email me at englishmajorjunkfood AT yahoo DOT com.

Well the next few days are going to be insane for me so I probably won't get a whole lot of reading in. Tomorrow I have a midterm and a presentation and Tuesday I have a paper due plus I'm a discussion leader. It's probably a good thing I'll be busy this week though, because next week I have a job interview! I'm very excited about it and I hope I get it, although I think it will be awhile before I know for sure. I'm obviously stressed though, because just last night I noticed a lovely pimple forming right above my lip. Thank you very much.

This week I posted reviews of The Woman in White and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I posted a vlog where I showed you bunches of books for Children's Book Thursday and on Friday I let you know about some of my favorite lit podcasts. Go forth my friends, read, comment, enjoy! I also reached and surpassed 70 followers this week- less than thirty away from 100! I never thought I would have this many followers so I am thrilled to see that actually do have 70.

Happy reading!

This semester has been absolutely crazy. I'm working at the library, I have a writing internship with a nonprofit, I'm volunteering at the Women's Resource and Action Center, I'm taking 6 classes (16 hours), and I'm living off campus for the first time. In short, I am exhausted. All of this running around has definitely been getting in the way of my reading time. Last night I sat down and read a graphic memoir, The Imposter's Daughter by Laurie Sandell

, just to feel like I'd read something. One of my friends told me I should be Wonder Woman for Halloween because she can't imagine how I manage to get all of this stuff done, and I'm wondering how I manage to do it too. I'm planning on changing my work schedule in a week though, so hopefully that will give me a little bit more free time. At the very least I shouldn't have to wake up so early every day.

One great thing about my job though is that it gives me time to read. Sort of. I started listening to audiobooks at work in addition to my favorite podcasts and I've finished two books so far, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

by David Sedaris and Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon. I really enjoy the experience of listening to an author read his or her work and so far that is the only experience I've had with audiobooks. Over the summer I listened to a Bill Bryson book that he narrated. I've decided to mix things up a little bit though, and I got the audiobook for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This is obviously not narrated by her and it's also about twice the length of any other podcast I have listened to. Fifteen hours, I actually had to download two separate files from Audible. I never really thought I'd be an audibook person, but with the job I have now I'm grateful for them because I'm getting paid but also getting some reading done.

But I must say, listening to an audiobook is just not the same as reading a physical book. When I'm done with an audiobook I just add it to my list of books read this year, write a review, and that's it. But when I finish a physical book I actually feel a sense of accomplishment. I can put the book back on the shelf, or drop it back off at the library. I get to feel the relaxing experience of reading. Of sitting on the couch with a good book in my hands. I get to watch as the pages dwindle down until I'm only 50 pages from the end, 30, 15, 5, 1. That is so exciting. On my iPod I see I have four hours left, or two, or fifteen minutes, but I just don't get that same sense of putting the book back on the shelf. I don't have anything against audiobooks, I really need them in my life right now because otherwise I would be getting zero reading done, but I do miss being able to sit down and read, read, read.

How do you feel about audiobooks versus physical books?

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I would classify myself as a walker. I love walking long distances, five miles are so, just to see that I can walk that far. Sometimes in the blazing heat I ask myself why I do it, and I want to return home, but I press on. Walking is the perfect way for me to escape from the world and the people who are around me, and it makes me a happier person. I love listening to music when I walk, and I frequently listen to book podcasts, but I had never listened to an audiobook until this summer. I really had no interest in them either, but I knew that my new job (the one I just started this week) was very iPod friendly and I figured I might as well try to get some reading done while I'm at work! So I got my first audiobook to try out, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. I listened to it mostly while I was walking, although sometimes while I was driving, and I actually really enjoyed the whole experience. I'll review the book at a later date, for now I just want to talk about audiobooks for those who love them and for those who are unsure if they want to try them out.

I decided to go with the Bill Bryson book because he narrates it himself. This was attractive to me because I love going to readings to hear authors read their work. It was a really good fit and I'm glad I started out with an author narration. Eventually perhaps I'll move on to a different narrator. One of the main reasons I've stayed away from audiobooks until this point is that I really dislike being read to. I find it extremely hard to follow and feel like I lose a lot of information. When I came away from Bill Bryson's book I didn't feel that way at all, but perhaps that is because it's all about Des Moines, Iowa, which is where I am from so I was very interested in it. I like to think that's not the only reason though. It seems like what I really dislike is being read to badly, because then it's easy to drift off and think about something else. An engaging narrator can hold my interest and make the audiobook feel more like a friend telling me a story at lunch than like a person reading to me.

The place I actually most enjoyed listening to the audiobook was in the car, which surprised me. When I'm walking I have a tendency to think about anything that is bothering me and it's a more reflective practice than driving. In the car I really have nothing to focus on but the road so it's easier for me to lose myself in an audiobook. I think this will be the case with my job as well, because it's a lot of repetitive tasks and I think I might really enjoy listening to an audiobook for awhile to get me away from how mundane everything I'm doing is.

Do you listen to audiobooks? Why or why not? What do you like about them or dislike about them? Where do you listen to them?