This week’s prompts is: Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, do you prefer listening instead of reading?
YES. That’s the short answer to the first part of this question. I am a very involved stay-at-home-mum to a kid who is amazing, brilliant, creative and interesting. But needs quite a lot of attention. I know that this magical early childhood time when I’m the most important person to my kid will pass quickly, so I’m trying to soak up every hug, every story, every idea for play, every request to join me in what I’m doing. I know soon enough that will likely be replaced with a closed door and requests to be anywhere other than home! The unintended result of this, however, is that I pretty much never have time to actually sit down and read uninterrupted. Any time I’m not spending with my kid, I’m cleaning, tidying, sorting, making phone calls, doing appointments or cooking. Occasionally I have half an hour in bed at the end of the day to read, but more often than not I fall asleep before I get more than two pages in!
That said, reading is a huge part of my identity and my biggest hobby. It’s something that feels vital to my mental health and is one of the few things that helps me balance out some of the things in my head that can be hard to live with. So now that I rarely have any time to sit and read (and man, do I miss that), I absolutely listen to audiobooks. I’ve always got one on the go, and most days I’ll listen while preparing food and cleaning up. I listen to them sped up to at least 1.6x speed (sometimes 2x), so that also helps me stay engaged and get through them more quickly. So yes, I do absolutely listen to audiobooks, but no, I do not prefer listening to reading most of the time!
What about you guys? Do you listen to audiobooks? What are your favourite ones?
The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly blog link-up that gives participants a different book-related question to ponder each week, and allows them to share their thoughts, find new blogs to follow and connect with new readers. The Hop was originally created by Jennifer at Crazy for Books and is now hosted by Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. To see a list of upcoming prompts go here.
I struggle with audiobooks, but i did listen to Astrophysics for People in a Hurry this summer, and that was pretty good. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a great voice for narration.
It’s definitely a format that takes some work and perseverance to get into. I had a really hard time with it at first. Oddly I discovered that slowly increasing the speed really helped me. I had trouble with my mind wandering off and then missing bits, but speeding it up meant the info came in faster so less chance for that to happen. Now I rarely listen at less than 1.6x speed (also means you can get through a short or mid-length book right quick!). But finding a great voice is so important, and also figuring out which books you can absorb best as audiobooks. I can’t do fiction with a large and confusing cast of characters or a lot of really similar bits. I get confused without the visual cues. Non fiction is great as long as it isn’t too complex – I found that some books worked really well to listen to and have the paper copy handy so I could pause and re-read particularly interesting, important or more involved passages. And fiction that’s very plot driven or that moves slowly through characters’ lives without too much complication work well. Young adult and thrillers are generally easier ones to get lost in. Memoirs are probably my favourite as they’re often read by the author, so then it’s like sitting down and having a coffee with someone telling you stories about their life! Some of the voices are great – like Dave Grohl reading The Storyteller or Tracey Thorn reading Bedsit Disco Queen or Matthew McConaughey reading Greenlights. I also adore ones that have a cast so you get different narrators for different characters – I have a hard time with narrators who try to make their voices higher or lower for different genders or who try to do multiple accents and can’t pull it off! At the end of the day, it’s all a bit of trial and error, I guess is what I’m trying to say. 😉