Audible, and my first book review
Previously posted on August 17 at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evandodds/Blog/cns!1phaOgcvNsBxzvBN9Zpx1vbQ!156.entry
Since I’m busing to work and back most days for 45 mins or more, it gives me a bit of time to “read”. I discovered Audible.com about 2 years ago, when I was driving back and forth from Charlotte, NC to Charleston, SC (2.5-3hrs each way) on a fairly regular basis. I got in the habit of “reading” two or more books per month in this fashion, and it’s really grown on me. I’m “reading” more now than I have for years — I even went through the entire 7 books (probably 120+ hours) of the Stephen King “Tower” series last spring! I’ve burned CDs of some books, listened from my Dell Axim, and now I use my Audiovox SMT5600 smartphone with the audibleplayer software. Very flexible!
Anyways, consider this my endorsement of Audible. They provide a great service, and if you listen to lots of audible books, they’ll save you a bundle and add to the convenience.
Like I said, I’ve listened to a ton of books in the last two years. Some have been great, some mediocre, and some not at all worth it. One, in particular, jumped out at me and I figured it was worth posting about: “Joy at Work” by somebody-or-other, I am too lazy to look it up.
This book came in two audio parts from Audible since it was fairly long. I listened through the first half and was agreeing with many of the authors premises: people work best when they enjoy their jobs, great companies incent people with added responsibility and control of their working environment, examples of employees seemingly begging to eliminate unions since their working environments were so great and there was no division between management and staff, etc. All interesting stuff.
Then came the second half. All of a sudden out of nowhere the book became a preaching, screeching irritation. Rather than saying “gee, look at all this great evidence I’ve presented now here’s how to implement it”, the author veered off into a (long) tirade about how important it was to proselytize your coworkers and how important christian/religious behavior was in the workplace.
Um. Ok. I’m sure some folks would agree, but I just didn’t understand the change in tone of the book. It just didn’t seem to fit with the earlier chapters, and I had a very hard time seeing how forcing something as divisive as religious theology into the workplace was going to lead to better coworker relations… particularly with as diverse as the average workplace is becoming today. I wonder if the author had a mental episode of some sort while writing the book and doesn’t realize what he wrote? Oh well. I give it an F. Even though the first part was interesting, by the end of the book I was just disgusted and glad it was over.
Evan Dodds - Non-work-related blog » Millionaire Next Door said,
January 7, 2006 at 7:42 am
[...] Then, all of a sudden and without warning, they pulled a “Joy at work” on me (see my earlier review). Well, maybe not quite as bad. In that book, they did a 180 and became preachy and irritating. In this book, it was not nearly as bad, just a terrible last example that ended the book on a bad note. [...]