Audiobooks

All law students are required to buy and use a laptop computer. After three years in a constant feed of information and entertainment, I found I had developed a sort of attention deficit disorder where I couldn't do just one thing at a time, especially if that one thing was kind of boring. I began making lists and writing letters during talks at church. My laundry stayed in the basket until I had a movie I could watch while I folded. Nursing my baby every two hours was particularly trying: I would find myself tapping my feet, mentally reviewing the elements of common law negligence or the difference between direct and derivative shareholder suits while I sat waiting for Baby to finish up or fall asleep.

Stay-home motherhood is definitely a hands-on, eyes-on job, and this makes it hard to do two things at once if they both require either your hands or your eyes. My beloved laptop friend of three years, alas, required both. My ears and my brain, however, were almost always available and bored. I quickly grew to understand how my mother developed her addiction to talk radio. I might have done the same, but my (also law school-compounded ADD) husband convinced me to take up audiobooks.

I'm hooked. I listen to audiobooks while I'm playing with Baby in the park, getting groceries, doing housework, driving in the car. I listen to newspapers, novels, radio programs, podcasts -- I'm even taking Spanish lessons when I'm feeling pious about continuing my education.

One of the tricky things about audiobooks is that they are, in many ways, far more engrossing than printed material. Since I already had a habit of getting distracted by novels, this can be a problem. For example, right now I am listening to "The Beautiful and Damned" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is about a bunch of wealthy, lazy, selfish people who I intensely dislike. I don't know how it ends yet (so don't tell me), but I'm really looking forward to the part where they all get damned. I would actually like to see one of them repent and reform, but since good old F. Scott never reformed, I can only hope for a satisfying damnation.

Today, I had a lot of errands to run, so I had several hours of listening to the beautiful and damned Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert sneering, whining, and drinking highballs. I felt like I've been hanging out with them all day. I think I was kind of rude to the clerk at Target, just because I wanted to push Gloria into a lake. I need to take a break and listen to something with characters I actually like. Unfortunately, all I have right now is the Wall Street Journal or NPR's "Justice Talking." Decisions, decisions. I think "Justice Talking" is more likely to keep me motivated while I wash the dishes and less likely to contain beautiful and damned characters.