A while back I wrote about my favorite audiobook narrators. Today, I want to talk about narrators that don’t work as well for me. Let me be clear from the start that while sometimes an audiobook narrator’s performance is lacking, often a narration that turns me off has less to do with the narrator and…
I joined Audible on February 12, 2013, making today my 9th anniversary on the service. It is, by far, the service I use and benefit from more than any other. I’ve written before about this, but Audible has allowed me to read more because I can listen to audio books while performing other tasks like…
For most of my life, if I wanted to read a book, I had to have the book in my hands. There had to be enough light to see by, and I couldn’t really do anything else while I was reading. Even a TV in the background was too distracting for me. Then, in 2009,…
Kelly is reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir for her book club. Actually, she is listening to the audio book version, narrated by Ray Porter, who does a very good job. The problem is, she says, she keeps falling asleep when she listens to it, and then has to go back and figure out…
One of the great things about audio books is the added dimension the narrator brings to the book. I find this is true for both fiction and non-fiction, but it is especially true for fiction. When I started listening to audio books back in 2013, I didn’t always pay attention to the names of the…
On Saturday, I obtained my 1,000th audio book from Audible. It was Alan Lightman’s The Accidental Universe. On the one hand, for someone who once wrote here that audio books were not his thing, this is pretty remarkable. On the other hand, as a bibliophile, this is just an example of catching up. I picked…
[I] am currently reading Jim Boulton’s 1970 baseball smash, Ball Four. I’m listening to the audio book. So far, it’s great. But there is something particularly funny about it that makes it even better. Most audio books these days use professional voice actors or narrators to read the book. Occasionally, the author will read their own…
[W]hen I get going, I probably cruise along at an average reading speed. I’ve never tried to measure my reading speed in any scientific way (which, I suppose, is unusual since I measure just about everything else about myself). I read a lot and it might seem to those looking in from outside that I read quickly,…
[I] am now more than halfway through my first complete1 audio book, Stephen King’s Misery. And having now listened to more than 7 hours of the book, here are few thoughts: This is one really good book. I had no idea! I seem to recall seeing bits and pieces of the movie once, a long time ago, but the…
Every once in a while, when I reflect on how small a dent I make in my stack of reading, I think about audio books. I have friends who swear by them. For some of them, it seems, it is the only way they get their fix. There is a great deal of advantage to…