Audiobooks

[RayPowers]

I can't seem to stick with an Audio Book. I bought one for a long plane trip, and switched to music ten minutes in. I found myself not following along with the story well at all, and too distracted by things occurring in the real world.

Ray

[cuadpi]

[ QUOTE ]
I can't seem to stick with an Audio Book. I bought one for a long plane trip, and switched to music ten minutes in. I found myself not following along with the story well at all, and too distracted by things occurring in the real world.

Ray

[/ QUOTE ]

I always have the same problem on airplanes. If i can do something else (like read), then I get distracted from audiobooks. As someone said earlier, they are perfect for long drives or walks. I like to get mystery novels that don't have a lot of impact if I miss something that is said. I don't think they would be great for learning, but they are perfect for entertainment.

Libraries are great for have CDs and tapes, but many now allow you to download MP3s of their audiobooks. I think that the majority aren't compatible with Ipods (some licensing issue), but they do work with other MP3 players.

[aramfingal]

i don't like that they are abridged the majority of the time.

[Blarg]

On the Audible.com site, most of them by far aren't abridged.

I'm really liking that site. It comes with a free weekday subscription to the New York Times(which I got) or the Wall Street Journal. There are also weekly freebie downloads of an hour or less that come about a half dozen at a time at the beginning of the week, and occasional freebies spring up every few days as singles. So far I've gotten freebies on business topics, world history, and psychology, among others, as well as interviews with various authors.

I used my first monthly credit to download Imperial Life in the Emerald City, about Iraq, but haven't listened to it yet. I have listened to the Times daily broadcast religiously, a bunch of the freebies, and a H.P. Lovecraft collection. (Horror is great for this stuff.)

I like the Lovecraft, but fell asleep many times with it unintentionally. I find these audiobooks a mixed bag. Some require a fair amount of attention, so you can't just play them like you would music, and go do something else. Others that take less attention can put me to sleep way faster than a book can. A positive is that they take less concentration than a book, so I can get some material digested that I'm too tired to read. A drawback is that the narrator REALLY makes a difference as to how enjoyable an audiobook is.

All in all, I'm really liking it a lot so far. But I'm not sure yet whether it is going to be all that good for things I really need to concentrate. I'm wary of my judgments on that, however, since it's so tempting to do some other chores and treat audiobooks like background music. That pretty much messes the experience up and I wind up having to relisten to passages too many times.

All in all, thumbs up though. This is what will tempt me to get a portable media player, not music.