I wouldn’t say I like spending time behind the wheel and driving a car. I prefer walking to driving.
I’ve been listening to music while driving for many years (I have had a driving license since 2002). Which music? For example, Offspring’s “Smash” album (for more information, read my other post entitled “Hardcore”). The truth is that since working in the Bielany district, I’ve spent more time behind the wheel. I’m not entirely happy about it. Still, I decided to try to use this time differently than before. I hope to gain something while on my way to work. How? Speaking shortly: I started listening to the audiobook in the Polish language. I started with the novel “Doctor Faustus” by Thomas Mann (read by one of the most prominent Polish actors Gustaw Holoubek). What are my first impressions of the reading? Positive.
Nevertheless, they were more stunning because I occasionally lost the thread. Why do I lose it?
The reason is apparent. I have to focus frequently on driving rather than on listening. However, I already have a way to prevent not losing the book’s plot. I will listen to “Doctor Faustus” a second time and, if necessary, a third time. That’s how I plan to change sitting behind the wheel from a relatively passive activity to a more active one, of course, dynamic for my mind. I often write that we should try to adapt to new circumstances. Why? Because changes are inevitable, like one’s death. That’s how I decided to adapt to the fact that I would spend more time in the car.
The last time I read fiction in my mother tongue is Leo Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
It was four years ago (I wrote the current text on the 17th of August, 2022), in 2018. Earlier, I read, among others, Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain,” Charles Bukowski’s “Women,” Louie-Ferdinand Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night,” Ivan Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter,” Anton Chekhov’s novels, Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf,” Ryszard Kapuscinski’s “Imperium,” Czeslaw Milosz’s “The Captive Mind,” George Orwell’s “1984,” Emil Zola’s “Germinal,” Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” many Stanislaw Lem’s novels and practically all Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s books.
