I listen to a lot of podcasts. A ton of podcasts. When I’m not listening to Howard Stern, I’m usually listening to a podcast. Walking my dog. Cleaning around the house. Falling asleep at night. Podcasts.

Even in the car, sometimes I’ll listen to SiriusXM, sometimes I’ll listen to my music or to Spotify – but a lot of the time it’s podcasts.

I also love to read. I grew up with two teachers for parents and they always had a book. Still to this day they always have a book. I grew up thinking, that’s just how it is. You’re always reading – something.

I’m glad that stuck. It was touch and go for a while. I used to commute by train every day, then a couple days a week, then once a week. Now never.

I had books, but I also had the distraction of a GameBoy, or a portable DVD player, or a tablet with shows and movies on it. It was actually one of the main ways I got caught up on TV shows. I was doing more watching and less reading, and I gradually started shifting away from that over the past couple years.

The big things that helped were, my Kindle and my constant need to track things – and there was no better day to do that than with Goodreads. I actually started using a service called Shelfari years ago to track and display comic books I was reading on my website and social. Amazon bought them out in 2008 and then purchased Goodreads in 2013. Shelfari was closed down and all my data was moved into Goodreads – so now I’m a Goodreads nerd.

I know there are other services out there that people like and are not part of a giant corporation – but I’m just a simple man who likes things easy. My eReader is a Kindle, most of my books are Amazon purchases – and this makes it effortless to share and track your books.

I also recently signed up for Kindle Unlimited, and recently have seen an author out there telling us to cancel our subscription. An author that has his books listed on there.

I don’t know how I feel about this. I get where they’re coming from, but I’m also a regular consumer looking to stretch a buck, looking for new authors and new books out there. Any chance I can get to read more and spend less, I will.

I mean, do they feel the same way if I took their book out of the library? I often wonder how that works or if authors are like – oh you didn’t buy my book?

Even right now – after all that talk about Kindles and eBooks – I am reading a good old fashioned physical book (100 pages in and I am loving it, BTW).

But, I didn’t buy this book. In fact I didn’t get it at my local library either. I found it at a Little Free Library along my hometown’s rail trail. When I am done with it, I am going to put it back there for someone else to read for free.

BUT – I already know that I need to search out what this author has written and read all of her other books. So, in a way it is free promotion!

And of course now I look to see if their books are located on Kindle Unlimited first. Nobody’s perfect.

Oh, Audiobooks, right.

I love reading. I love sitting down and falling into a book. I love picturing the story. I love casting the characters (sometimes with actual actors, sometimes just with a type of person). I love mispronouncing the names.

I love it.

I love reading. I love listening to podcasts. Why don’t I combine those and listen to Audiobooks?

There’s a part of me that feels like I am cheating on my reading goals. There, I said it. I have a plan to read all of the Dresden Files books and all of the Jack Reacher books. I track them in Goodreads and count them towards my yearly reading goal.

If I were to listen to a book, I feel like I did get the story (I have listened to Harry Potter books), but I didn’t read it, so does it count? In my brain I can’t count it, so I don’t do it.

That’s…not right. It’s not fair. I get that – but I have so many podcasts to catch up on that I think, if I am listening to something it should be a podcast. And I’ll save my books for sitting down and reading. For the actual act of reading – not just consuming the story.

The ritual of reading is what I love, which is why I am going to continue to read books the old fashioned way (even if the medium I read them on aren’t old fashioned).

That being said, part of me wants to get a few audiobooks to play in the car when I drive my mother-in-law back to Massachusetts from Florida in a couple week. Right now it’s just music and talking.

So much talking.

I’m not sure she’d appreciate Howard Stern, or my NFL or movie/nerdy podcasts. Maybe she’d enjoy a good book in the car.

If so, I promise I won’t add it to my Goodreads. I’ll save that for reading.