As I think I have mentioned before, I have been reading to Amy since very early in our marriage. When we were first married, we had no income and very little in the way of entertainment around the house (no TV, no computers or game systems worth speaking of) so we read a whole lot. Initially we would sit side by side and read books separately. When we started reading the Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, I kept reading little snippets aloud and eventually we figured it would be easier for me to just read them aloud in their entirety. We’re nearly through the series for the second time, overall, but we haven’t read them exactly in order. We skip ahead when a new one is published which has resulted in a few having been read thrice. There was a while when I wasn’t insured on our car so Amy drove all the time and I would passenge and read aloud.
Being read to is a great passtime, especially on long car trips. When my sisters and I were quite small, Dad read the Narnia series aloud onto tapes for us to listen to. I remember laying on the couch listening while he read them. I think he had a microphone on a stand sitting on his chest as he lay on his back and read. Ashley listened to the tapes a great many times, I think. A couple of years ago, we all got matching CD cases for Christmas. They contained a new recording of the first four books (Magician’s Nephew, Lion, Witch & Wardrobe, Horse & His Boy [my very, very favourite] and Prince Caspian). We got the final three this year.
Since they’re just spoken word, the MP3s can be squashed down to a pretty low bitrate. I found a really handy utility that converts a stack of mp3s into m4b files (iPod compatible Audiobooks). I’ve got them riding around on my nano most of the time and we are listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader right now. It is so pleasant to be read to sleep.