I’ve been rather absent lately, not because of any
particular reason except nothing much has been happening that I’ve felt worth
blogging about. I go no where and I see
no one – well except for Easter. I
stayed overnight visiting my sister but that’s about it.
I’m desperately in need of vacation but since I work
in health care and here in Ontario the covid numbers are going up and up and
there is another province wide shut down so they’ve kind of said no to
vacations or LOA – all hands on deck, that kind of thing. Thank goodness we can rant to each other.
One of the things I’ve been doing to distress when not
working other than reading is watching YouTube – A/ Lot. And one of the things I’m finding fun to
watch is romance video bloggers. There
are a number I follow. I find it
interesting though as number of the books they recommend are audio books. When they explain them I kind of scratch my
head a bit as they call them books read and I kind of think of them as books
listened to, not so much read but then that’s me just hair splitting.
I’ve thought I need to get on board the audio book
train. I was relatively late on the eBook
train thinking I would never want to read books that way. However, once I hopped on board, I read about
98% ebooks now and I didn’t think that would ever happen. But I’ve no idea where to even start!! I see where I can sign up on Amazon with
Audiobook but I’d just as soon not rely on Amazon. I already feel bad about getting so many
kindle books through them. I have been
listening to more and more samples though and that brings up another issue I
might have with audio books and that is I find myself very critical of the way
they are read. Either I don’t like the
reader’s voice or they don’t pronounce something the way I would or I’m constantly
critiquing the emphasis. I can see
myself arguing with them – “that’s not the way it should read”. So even though I say I should try it, I’m
still not sure.
Then I think I should get in the habit as I’m extremely
– and I mean really, really, really squeamish when it comes to eye stuff. Even watching someone put drops in their eyes
squicks me out. There is not a chance in
hell I would ever be able to wear contacts.
The fatalist in me figures that since I’m so passionate about reading, I’ll
probably go blind. That’s a huge plus to
ebooks is being able to adjust the size of the fonts.
Anyway – that’s just me rambling on about the latest
thing in reading.
Til later
2 comments:
I've been listening to audiobooks for over 20 years now (ahem, I started with cassettes) and I rely on them heavily to "expand" my reading horizons. My favorites in that format are mystery/suspense and nonfiction - but I do listen to romance on occasion.
That said, I don't buy audiobooks. They've come down in a price a wee bit, but I just....no. I started on audiobooks via the library, and that's what I'll be doing to the day I die. Because like you said - a good narrator makes all the difference. I DNF more often in audiobook than I do with print/eBook and that's just one reason why. Plus listening to a story as opposed to reading is a different experience. It just is.
So yeah, for anyone new to audiobooks I always say - get a library card. Do a lot of test runs. Expand your horizons. I use OverDrive's Libby app (checking out audiobooks with from two libraries I have access to) almost exclusively for audiobooks these days. Wait lists can be long, but I keep a running wishlist in the app and when I need something new to listen to? I see what's available at that moment and check it out.
Narrators totally make or break audiobooks for me, which is one reason I'm resistant to listen first to books I want to read--if the narrator sucks, I am a lot less likely to try the book or the author again.
Of course that means that most of the time I'm stuck with re-reads for audiobooks, but that's not a bad thing for me, as I listen to them as I work, and a new-to-me book requires a lot more attention than an audio-re-read.
Add the cost factor Miz Wendy mentions above and...yeah, it's hard to justify owning them.
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