I am one of those people who is extremely busy during the day I have a full time job working about 9 hours a day with maintaining 4 blog sites at night. I have my wife and two children who I carve out as much time with as I possibly can as well. I don’t have any time to read novels like I used to, I used to enjoy reading a novel a week when I was younger and had alot of alone time. Now my alone time is usually only found when I drive into the office which is about a one hour commute each way.
Audiobooks are the best thing for long drives in my opinion, I can listen to my favorite books or books that I want to catch up on and I have come to love the audio book medium better than reading the books manually.  Even Stephen King himself has once said that Audiobooks are among the best mediums for delivering the author’s work as it forces the reader to stay at the pace of the narrator and helps prevent people who skip ahead or skim faster through certain pages rather than others.
I find when I listen to a good audio book I can get lost in the story, almost like I am listening to a movie. I can almost see and feel as if I was there with the characters, some audiobooks are just fantastic and others are just droning bores. The narrator and speaker makes or breaks the audiobook in my opinion and even a mundane story can be more entertaining if read by a good speaker. Some examples of great audiobooks are Jim Dale’s reading of the Harry Potter series, which is really engaging. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series read by George Guidall is among the best there is. Though Frank Muller who read the original four books before suffering a critical accident was even better, George did a fantastic job taking over the reigns and provides the voice of Roland Deschane and company with convicing voicework.
Other more engaging audiobooks are in the Star Trek and Star Wars lines, where they blend in sound effects and music into the audio book itself. So it feels like you are listening to a movie not just an audio book. This is very much like the audio book version of Stephen King’s The Mist which was created to be an interactive Audio Experience.
When I was a kid I used to record my favorite movies onto cassette tape and listen to them at night, creating my own version of interactive audio books and this was over 20 years ago. I would record Legend, Labyrinth and others and just listen to the story, music and sound effects instead of watching. Letting my own mind create the visuals for me was an even more creative and expressive way of enjoying the works themselves.
So how many of you out there are this passionate about audio books? Who prefers reading vs audio books? I would like to hear from you.
-Justin Germino
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Tags: audio books, audiobooks, books on CD, dark tower, harry potter, listening to books, loving audio books, reading, star trek, star wars, stephen king
9 responses to Audiobooks Are One Of My Favorite Hobbies
I rather read since I try to study how my favorite writers organize words. And also I encircle words that I don’t know the meaning of and try to look it in the dictionary and use it in the sentence myself.
I don’t like audio books because sometimes the voice of the narration is simply annoying.–diction , tone and emotion used.
Justin, have you tasted any of the freely available books from new media authors that are out there? A growing number of authors are creating their own works as audio – usually serialised – in order to reach a global online audience. In many cases, the product is superior to some of the professional efforts, in my opinion at least. OF course, I have to recommend mine… available from TableRappers.com
Audio books are great! They are good to listen to when you’re driving, but I like to listen to them while I cook.
Our Mom loves Audiobooks and listens to them all the time!! She likes George Guidall’s voice, too and mysteries are her fave! Our Mom was born in Florence, AZ and lived in Coolidge, AZ until she moved to FL. She has a few friends in Casa Grande, too!! Way cool!
Your FL furiends,
I absolutely love reading. But now, like you, I have 2 kids, 3 blogs, a husband who works shifts (which means that I’m pretty much on shift too. LOL), so that makes for almost NO time at all to read.
I couldn’t say that I love reading MORE than audiobooks because I’ve never listened to one. Yeah.. like I’m living in 1786, right? But seriously, I’d really like to have a go at the Harry Potter series so I can pass it on to my 15 year old sister who keeps asking me to tell her what happens (in detail) but too lazy to read. Teenagers! What can I say..
I never thought of recording movies and listening to ‘em. No wonder you’re more prone to audiobooks. That’s cool. Btw, I used to watch Legend over and over again. LOL!
The harry potter series is a good one to listen to, it will ruin the experience if you pick a bad one as your first. I read to my kids at night now, but when they are older we might listen to audio tape stories before bed. Legend is such a poetic and classic film, was a really nice story and made for a good listen over and over in part because the Tangerine Dream soundtrack was so surreal.
I prefer to read a book, but I do love audio books when I take a long car trip alone–audio books make these fly by! I recommend Librivox–a great site for getting free audio books–you can also record books for others to download.
I’ve enjoyed reading your article, as I too ‘read’ a lot of audiobooks. I have responded to this article with one of my own on my blog at http://dieseltekk.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-on-audiobooks.html
Diesel, you did a nice post about how you listen to audiobooks, I actually now use my iPOD for audio books, previously I did Audio CD while driving. If I drive, I prefer not to have earbuds on, but when not driving I listen to audiobooks on my iPOD or home PC.
The library is the best way to rent audio books on CD and Tape, but yeah, you usually only get the best sellers. I also like Audible.com and some other mp3/audio sites. Podcasts are a way but usually can’t get mainstream stuff.
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