Art Garfunkel's Library
Audiobooks, borrowed for free from my library and listened to via the excellent Libby app, have been a life-line over the past four years.<p>I went from 3-4 books a year to 3-4 books a week, sometimes more. I listen in the bathroom, while exercising, cooking, cleaning, cycling, gardening.<p>My listening speed is typically 1.75x for dense prose and hard science, all the way up to 2.5x for fiction and biographies. The secret is to score a great pair of earbuds; I recommend Jabra Elite 75t. The further the sound is from your ear, the harder it is to parse speech at high speed.<p>You don&#x27;t start at 2.5x, obviously; start at 1.25x and increase every day or two until you start to zone out. You&#x27;ll be pleasantly shocked at how quickly you&#x27;ll ramp up. 1x sounds like the performer overdosed on benzos.<p>In the past year, I&#x27;ve listened to everything Haruki Murakami has written, the entire Wheel of Time series (4.4M words vs 19D5H), and <i>several hundred others</i>.<p>For free.<p>And yes, I still read paper books, too. Sometimes.