putting the j in jjosh

For some reason lately it’s been a tough commute to and from work. For a long time I was working on a mix, so every ride would be spent listening to that mix, noting level changes, or mashup revisions, but now that’s done. I’m downloading This American Life every week, so that takes care of one day’s subway ride. But I haven’t found any music that’s exciting me (Fleet Foxes not really doing it…maybe that new Flying Lotus?), and I’m tired of reading Entertainment Weekly to make the time go by.

So I joined audible.com to get a free download of an audio book (must remember to cancel! must not get caught up in monthly payments!)…but what book should I download? What genre? How to search? Bestsellers led me nowhere. Reading about Neal Stephenson in the latest Wired made me think maybe I should try out some sci-fi…and why not go with an acknowledged master…search Isaac Asimov. I read all the Foundation books years ago and loved them. Read a bunch of the Robots book and was into those too. The first book that came up in the search was Robots of Dawn, maybe the third book in his Robots series.

In high school I had to give a book report at one point as a speech in front of the class. As usual I had waited until the last minute and had not, in fact, read a book. I picked Robots of Dawn from my dad’s bookshelf and wrote up a completely fake book report based on the cover picture and the title. I don’t remember much about giving the report…I think I can remember my English teacher asking me questions about the book afterwards, and maybe I blew it while answering. Did she know? I feel like she did.

Anyway, I’ve downloaded it and am listening to it on the commute now. The cool thing about a book on tape is that you can be "reading" while doing the dishes or making dinner or having a bath without worrying about getting the book wet. The uncool thing is that if you fall asleep while "reading" it’s tough to get to back to your "page".