Over the holiday break from teaching, I got sick. Not COVID, RSV, or the flu, just a very bad cold. No magic medicine, said the doctor. So, it was soup and tea and lots of tissues and the humidifier. I had headaches the first few days so I didn’t want to write or read. (Though I had papers to grade – which I largely ignored.)
I started listening to an audiobook of David Foster Wallace’s long and very well-reviewed novel Infinite Jest last April. At the end of summer, I was two-thirds of the way through it. I finally finished it in October but I never would have finished had it not been an audiobook. And that was a book I paid for from Audible.
I have the Hoopla and Libby apps on my phone. They allow you to borrow books, music, movies, and some TV series for free for 2 or 3 weeks using your local library card. Great service.
I have done audiobooks on long, solo car trips, airplane trips, and my walks/hikes – but never at home.
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner was the Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2021) and Nominee for Best Debut Novel (2021). Okay, I have written here that I don’t like best of lists but the ones that are more the people’s choice variety do get my attention.
In that novel, a female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women (as in kill) from the men who have wronged them. Sounds gruesome but it was not. I enjoyed it. And so I went on to her other novel – The London Séance Society. Another enjoyable read/listen about two women who hunt for some truth and justice by trying to conjure the dead. Abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance with an acclaimed spiritualist, spirits of murder victims who want their murderers known and punished – What’s not to like as I lay under the covers? On this one, I added some brandy to my tea.
I discovered I am not alone on this cure for the common or uncommon cold. Sarah Wheeler posted about her audiobooks in sickness experience. Read her post linked at the bottom, but an excerpt to entice lazy readers or ones who are sick.
“… I also couldn’t read. Not on my phone or computer. Not on the e-reader or in the papery flesh… Up until then, I had always avoided audiobooks. They seemed to be attempting to replicate the reading experience but never hit the mark…At first, I downloaded whatever I could find for free from the library, low-risk if it didn’t pan out. And I needed comfort reads…”
Her illness went on much longer than mine, but the audiobooks helped and connected her to others.
Drink tea, eat soup, try to stay in bed, take whatever OTC or prescriptions you can get – and listen.
Milneville 