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Free-form Friday

Written by Kirsten on April 23rd, 2010

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about audiobooks this week, and I’m curious about the other bookish bloggers out there. Do you listen to audiobooks? How do you choose which books to listen to and which to read? Do you have favorite narrators whose audiobooks you’ll seek out? What resources do you use in order to choose your audiobooks? Do you get them from the library, buy them, use a web rental site? Have you ditched an audiobook because of the narrator? Do you think the quality of the reading affects your opinion of the book’s content?

 

8 Comments so far ↓

  1. In general I’m not a big audio book fan. I wasn’t even able to get through the audio versions of HP! Recently though, I had an outdoor painting project that was going to take much of the day, so I downloaded the audio version of Wil Wheaton’s “Just a Geek”. Listening to an audio book seemed like a good way to keep my mind busy while I painted without needing to constantly stop to find new albums on my iPod. I chose “Just A Geek” for a couple reasons:
    1. Wil Wheaton read it himself and offers additional insights not included in the book.
    2. Wil Wheaton published it himself through Lulu, thus it was cheaper than standard audio books and I knew that my money was going directly to the person who did most of the work on it.
    3. Wil Wheaton is awesome.
    .-= biblioholic29´s last blog ..For the love of Sci-Fi =-.

    • Kirsten says:

      Well those sound like fantastic reasons :) Care to recommend your favorite Wheaton title?
      I wrote a while ago about how picky I am about audiobooks, which is why (enter evasiveness and mystery) I am thoroughly intrigued by and excited about a potential opportunity, which was the prompt for this line of thought. The bottom line is, I’d really like to get into audiobooks, but I’ve run into a couple of dud narrators and am wary.

      • Depends upon the depth of your geekiness really. Most of his books are humorous stories from his life, each focusing on a different time period (Just a Geek focuses on 2000-2003 or so, when he came to terms with his ST:TNG past). My personal favorite of his though is Memories of the Future: Vol. 1 (it’s the only one out yet and I can’t wait for Vol. 2) which is essentially a snarky ST:TNG episode guide from his point of view as both a fan and a cast member. I created a new LT tag for it: Geek Porn.
        .-= biblioholic29´s last blog ..For the love of Sci-Fi =-.

  2. Ronnica says:

    I’m a bit of a book-a-holic, so of course I listen to audio books when I can’t read (primarily on my commute). Until really recently, though, I only listened to books I’ve previously read because I thought I couldn’t handle new ones. I was wrong.

    I have only listened to classics on audio books, which tend to be well-done. Probably will stick with classics as they tend to take longer to read than to listen (while modern books are the opposite for me).

    Here are the narrators that I’ve enjoyed:

    Barbara Caruso
    Linda Stephens
    Joss Ackland
    Cherry Jones
    Richard Poe
    Carolyn McCormick
    Blair Brown
    Spike McClure
    Jeff Woodman
    Jan Miner
    Ron Rifkin
    .-= Ronnica´s last blog ..Book Review: How to Say Goodbye in Robot =-.

  3. Melody says:

    I am also not a fan of audiobooks. The narrators voices tend to get stuck in my head then everytime I read the book that is the voice I hear instead of what i believe the characters may sound like.
    .-= Melody´s last blog ..Welcome =-.

    • Kirsten says:

      That’s really interesting, Melody; I’d not thought of that, since I’m still very new to listening to audiobooks. Do you find the same to be true of film adaptations?

Reply to Melody