Years ago, I used to take public transportation into the day jobbe as I worked in downtown Toronto. So that meant train, subway, walking. It also meant a lot of time to kick back and read–somewhere around 3 hours a day. It was great. I read and read, polishing off one or two books a week (depending, of course, on how many times I passed out during the early morning train rides).  Wow, did I build up a nice collection of books in this time period.

5 years ago I changed jobbes and started driving again–2.5 hours per day. But my reading stopped. I was now reading anywhere between two and five books a year. Gasp! I needed to fix this, so I started listening to audiobooks. What a godsend! I was now able to start reading, er, listening to a book every two weeks or less, plus what I’m physically reading outside of the car.

Now, this is all well and dandy–but I love books. I love the physical quality of books. I love how they feel, how they smell, how they look on my shelves, or stacked up on my desk, or sitting beside my bed.

I just love them.

So I started to realize that this audiobook gig posed a problem. I wasn’t adding to my library by listening to them in a digital format. Sure, my iTunes bookshelf looks rather impressive…but that doesn’t make me happy. Being surrounded by books? That makes me happy.

To remedy this I started repurchasing books I really enjoyed as an audiobook.

That’s right. I pay twice as much for some books that I love just to have them in their physical form. Call me crazy, but I feel like I just need to have them on my shelf.

A perfect example of this is The Lightning Thief, the first novel in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series by Rick Riordan. I loved this book so much I had to have it. So I bought it. And that started this craze of repurchasing audiobooks as their physical counterparts. In fact, all of the Percy Jackson books are wonderful audiobooks, and I will be repurchasing them all to have on my shelf–to look at and to share with my kids.

Now, I surely can’t be the only person who does this, can I?

Do you repurchase audiobooks you love, just to have them in their physical format?

Or do you just move on and not look back?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.