After reading Bezos' biography a few weeks ago, this sounds like something that he would never, ever do. Amazon is the everything store. What's going on?
Interesting -- how was the quality? In my experience, the machine readers aren't 100% comprehensible; you always have to stop and look at the actual text and it becomes hard to get much use out of it if you're truly on the go. This is never the case with human read audiobooks, which is why they are so useful.
I think "rolling solo" as a guy doing cold approach pickup is one of the most badass learning experiences you can have.
It has taught me so much about how to fearlessly socialize with strangers in a completely non-needy (not to mention non-creepy) way. Also, all of the bullsh*t that you have to deal with just in terms of getting into good clubs (at least in NYC, where you have to promote girls into the door just to get in) makes normal work challenges seem trivial.
It is not for the faint of heart, but in case anyone is wondering it will pay DIVIDENDS in terms of life skills (and the short-term "benefits" can also be good :).