My New Year's resolution to listen to audiobooks at bedtime is working out great. In the past I would fall asleep while watching videos on my smart phone using a streaming service such as Hulu or Netflix. Over the last two months since I started consuming audiobooks from Audible instead at night, I have been falling asleep sooner, getting more rest, and waking earlier.
Reading traditional print books is less fun now that my eyesight has deteriorated due to aging. Even with corrective lenses, it is somewhat uncomfortable to have to hold a book at a fixed distance to maintain distortion-free focus. Compared to wearing spectacles, earbuds make it much easier to fall asleep while lying on my side.
Audiobooks are also helping me alleviate some of the symptoms of my bibliomania. Folks with my condition buy more books than they have time to read and then struggle to find a place to store them. Like e-books, audiobooks wait patiently for me in my online wish list or cloud-based library and only take up space on my smart phone when I am actually ready to download.
I no longer mind commuting now that I can listen to audiobooks on the drive. Radio can get boring when the morning news cycle loops but a good audiobook keeps you engaged until the end of the story or the end of the road. Until the day I can read my e-books in enlarged font on the dashboard monitor of my self-driving car, audiobooks are the way to go.