Done with Origin

I have never been a great reader of fiction. When reading, I had always preferred non-fiction since a child. I could read magazines - which hopefully were non-fictitious - and articles for hours. But when it comes to storybooks, meh! And I still can’t get used to the idea of reading them until now. Give me any articles or journals, I could stare at them, no issues.

If I was hard-pressed to read fiction, I would prefer books from Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton - a mix of facts and pseudo-science. One of the first books I remember getting engrossed into was Jurassic Park by Crichton. A few months after reading them, I heard that Steven Spielberg was making a movie out of that story.

About 15 years ago, I discovered that I could listen to books. And with Limewire and other similar services, apart from downloading songs, I looked for audiobooks. Around this time, podcasts had also started to flourish. I started to move away from books altogether by then.

One of the first books I listened to on my old iPod was “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, in anticipation of the movie. It was a great listen and over the years, I listen to more books than reading them. The latest one which I just finished today was another Dan Brown’s novel, “Origin”. A great listen again with a rather expected twist in the end but when it came, had a philosophical twang to it. But if I had the choice or either listening or reading, I would definitely listen.

The next book on my cue is called “The Artemis”, a second book from the writer of “The Martian”, Andy Weir. I had long downloaded the books legally, and for the last decade I had been a subscriber of Audible. Although there are restrictions to which book I could download here in Malaysia, it was still worth it. And I used the time during driving to listen to the books, now through my iPhone. On average, I could finish a couple of books a month and if I ran out of books, there was always podcast ...