I still prefer to read my book, on my own. I have been listening to these for a month, I always debated listening to them at all, but have found that I needed something and that this was the best way to kill two birds with one stone. Shall I proceed with a list?
The Good:
- Get through the book list as I drive. (And why I now have so many mainstream books)
- Sometimes, the voices are great. (Be on the look-out for High Rise with Tom Hiddleston review)
- It is great for plays. Seriously, fantastic. Now, can we get The Bard in Original Dialect? Please?
- My local library has a wonderful selection that I can rent out right to my phone.
- Sometimes it is nice to listen to someone reading as you fall asleep. Or when you are out camping and keep imagining noises.
The Bad:
- Some readers should only read and not do any voices. This is the biggest thing, particularly with a lot of the female readers. YOU CAN NOT DO A MALE VOICE, SO STOP. Some readers, like the reader for The Winter Witch just reads it how SHE would say that, not with a male voice.
- Some voices are just terrible. Did y’all not actually have tryouts for readers? Did you not look?
- The pacing! I get it, I can speed it up, but I already listen at 1.2x and it sounds odd. A little skippy. I can read MUCH faster than I can listen, but this is something for my weekend 3hr one way drives. I have learned that few people are okay with talking on the phone on a Friday afternoon.
- It seems like words/paragraphs are skipped over. Could be an effect of the skippy bit mentioned above.
- Selection. I rent mine from the library, and not every book will have an audio books.
- It makes me a little less tolerant of getting through a book that holds no interest for me.
Will I continue to listen to audio books? Yes. I drive a lot, and at the minimum there is an hour a day that I can spend to work towards reading (and reviewing) that many more books.
But, it may lead to more “main stream” books that do not get favorable reviews from me.
