I never would have thought I’d say this but
I have totally fallen into the alluring and comforting arms of audiobooks.
Not that I have ever had anything against audiobooks before. I just always
thought they weren’t for me. I had tried one, years ago, and didn’t
particularly like that experience, so I thought that had sorted the matter.
But I had underestimated the love I had always had for listening to stories
read aloud to me. I remember my Middle School English teacher reading to us
from Momo by Michael Ende, and that was my favourite hour of the whole week. So
I shouldn’t be surprised audiobooks would be such a pleasure. Obviously that
very first attempt was a poor one. Either I didn’t like the narrator’s voice or
I wasn’t too interested in the book. Anyway, last year I came across,
completely by chance, a copy of The Order of the Phoenix read by Stephen Fry. I
gave it a try and I was instantly hooked. I went on listening to 4 more Harry
Potter books, but even after that I was still a little hesitant. “It’s Harry Potter”
I told myself. “Easy to listen to. And Stephen Fry as well did an amazing job,
it must be a fluke.” Still, I made a list of possible audiobooks for the
future (as I do) and left it at that. Until recently, when I remembered how I love
listening to stuff read to me and gave it another try.
Well, let me tell you, it was no fluke. I mean, there's so little effort involved. One can listen to audiobooks with eyes closed, in the dark, in the car (and not get car sick), while cycling or cooking.,,
Recently I have been introduced to the wonders of Audible and oh boy do I love it. You can listen to all the samples and decide whether you like that voice or not, you can a free one to start with, even if that one if like 60$ or something and after that 15$ a month for one seems very cheap compared to most audiobooks' prices. I have already placed 156 items on my wishlist (and then discovered that so many of these aren't available here - * sad face*) and I haven't even finished yet.
All this to tell you that my first audiobooks review is coming up shortly :)
3 comments:
I've been getting back into Audiobooks just recently, heard some good ones, I always find first person works well on audio.
For me it all depends on the voice and the tone. I tried Divergent for example but it didn't work, as, although in first person, the narrator had a monotone style that made me feel detached from the story, so I had to give it up. I'm on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell now (I find I'm more prone to listen to big tomes rather than read them :P) and the narrator is near perfection.
Finally I’ve found something that helped me. Kudos!
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