Freedom's flow and Audio books (never sure if it's two words or one) (Jan 6)

Yes, Jonathan Franzen's means Freedom ironically. Every character thinks they're free to make a certain choice, but the consequences of those choices (and all the what may have beens if a different choice had been made) dog them for years. Their lives feel shaped by the consequences of choices they made years and years ago. So they're not really free. And if they were free at one point, like when they were young, that freedom was ephemeral and really all just an illusion. At least that's my take having read about two thirds of the book. 

The book continues to rush by. I was a little snagged by one of Walter's chapters, but the smooth flow of the book returned when the story shifted back to Richard. I experienced something like this when I read Purity, another of Franzen's books. They pages just pass without the impression of much effort being exerted. Ten pages of Proust is a task that feels like it took an hour. Ten pages of Franzen is a breeze that feels like it took no time at all. I start reading and before I know it 30 minutes have gone by in a blink. The distortion of my time sense is what has me staying up later than I wanted all this week. I tell myself that I'll just read for a few more minutes and it's been 15 minutes when I look at the clock. I was almost late to a meeting at work this morning (that I mostly go to to get a free bagel) after spending a few extra minutes at home to finish that chapter told from Richard's perspective.

I'm enjoying this book enough that I used one of my Audible credits to get The Corrections. I've had a long standing aversion to actually buying that book. I generally have an aversion to any Oprah Book Club book, but I've been learning to put that bias behind me and just read what intrigues regardless of marketing ploys by media figures. I usually use my audible credits on more action oriented books or books about video games (I do not know how this pattern started, but I've listened to three audio books with video games at their core). Literary books just don't work for me in the audio format, but I don't want to wait until next year to read The Corrections. The reviews said the narrator was good. Between that and the my curiosity about the book, I decided to take the plunge. 

The Corrections may get me out of my audio book funk. I went all in on the audio books last year. I listened to 16 of them. That was pretty much all I listened to. There wasn't much that I found appealing in music and I had gotten tired of podcasts. Audio books do a nice job of getting me through workouts and time alone in the car. The books that I have in my library just didn't sound that appealing after I finished Term Limits, a Vince Flynn book that falls very squarely into my action/suspense target. I started an Asimov book that was decent to a point but veered off into some weird place that I'm still trying to get a handle on. I've been listening to music on my way in to work this week (Run the Jewels 3 and Jamie xx) rather than trying to make it through more of the story about some weird alien species that needs three beings to reproduce. I listened to it a bit while I was at the gym this afternoon, but it's not something I'm clamoring to get back to. I will probably set Asimov aside and switch to The Corrections next week. I will need to finish Freedom first. I don't like to read and listen to two books by the same author at the same time.