Audible - I now listen to books - S&D

SO I have a 30 minute commute to work and back but love listening to books and podcasts while in the office and on my lunch break.

Anyone else use Audible? What are you listening to right now and what has been your favorite so far.

I'm currently listening to 'IT' which is 44 goddamn hours long. Finally losing interest around hour 24.

Not sure if on Audible specifically, but Michael Kramer readings of Richard StArk's Parker novels are very good

I'm now on Audible. It's quite a peculiar thing. First of all, I have to remember to make myself listen to it.
Second, I think there's a kind of knack to listening to audiobooks compared to reading.
When I read fiction, I tend to concentrate quite hard on every sentence and paragraph, making for a considered but slow read.
If I'm listening while driving or cycling I find I'm only really taking in about 50% of the information. I'm getting the jist of the story, but it's largely taken in through osmosis. Still, this doesn't really seem to affect my understanding of the story arc.

Currently listening to The Terror

I'm doing audible Nixonland atm, like The Invisible Bridge I enjoy taking in Perlstein's chronicles of American doom in this format best.

I often listen to Audible on my commute to/from work - its an hour each way, so long enough to get through a good few chapters a day. I have Spotify on all day at work on headphones so don't feel I'm missing out of valuable music listening time (and Audible is was too distracting while trying to code - I tried and would find myself skipping back 30 seconds every 2 or 3 minutes).

So far I've mainly listened to weighty tomes I already own on paper but haven't found the time to read (Sapiens / Homo Deus / Wild Swans / Essential Chomsky / Some huge 21 hour Jazz Standards book) and comedy / autobiographies narrated by the author (Doug Stanhope Stuff / Alan Partridge etc). I gave the Iain M. Banks audiobooks a shot but I'm not enjoying them as much as just reading them, I think its just the narrator's delivery being way off how I heard the charaters when reading.

A while back I changed the speed setting to 1.5x for a particularly slowly narrated book and have found that I keep concentration far more at that pace, might be worth trying if its not going in.

Currently listening to The Terror

Ooh, good call.

I remember talking about audiobooks on another thread with people, just can't remember which thread. I'm a big fan, even if I agree that you do have to sort of learn how to do it. I keep an earbud in while walking the dogs, and sometimes while hoovering or doing other jobs around the house.

I'm currently listening to Alan Rickman reading The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and a third of the way in, it is everything I want from an audiobook. The language is beautiful, he is a highly engaged reader, and I want to listen to it all day long.
I also recently listened to Black and British: A Forgotten History, by David Olusoga, and that was fascinating and grim and superbly read also.

I signed up a couple years ago when my kids were born because newborns really eat away at reading time. Have something like 100 books on it now. I often buy a bunch of extras when there is a sale on. I've listened to everything from weighty nonfiction (also just finishing Nixonland) to breezy fiction and more literary fiction. A couple full cast readings are quite good, though I find its also nice to have a paper or ebook copy to get the gist of the format for some of those, thinking of Lincoln In The Bardo in particular.

i’ve just signed up for this. the vagaries of audible.com by country means the australian deal is $16.45 per month (that’s it, no gold/platinum structure), but every audiobook you buy is $15 as long as you remain a member. even the $100+ audiobooks are $15.

In Canada at least, I can sign up for a month, buy 1 book, click the button to cancel, and they offer to start another month instantly at half price. (But it's only for 1 month.) I've done this 3 times now.

I've been using (intermittently) www.downpour.com, Blackstone Audio's venture into online audiobook sales. The selection is poorer because it lacks Audible Studios titles, though it carries most other publishers. About half of the Audible catalog, though around 80% on bestsellers. But the cost structure is more attractive. Buy credits as needed, most audiobooks 1 credit=$13, a few $26, and nearly all are DRM-free MP3s.

Autumn Almanac, if you do the Amazon Australia free trial of Prime, I believe you can get Audible a lot cheaper. It's $5 extra on top of $0-$7 per month for Prime.

This was the case a month ago, anyway. My browser is going berserk so I can't check it atm.

cheers james, best i can find is a now-defunct offer which only lasted three months. i’m probably too late now anyway.

Gave up on The Terror. Some parts were just a big cringe-off and you could tell the narrator wasn't enjoying reading them. My Brilliant Friend is a lot more digestible - shorter chapters, more narrative-led. The poor bloke doing the Terror had to do about 30 different accents and voices and there was a love scene between a man and a woman and it was just weird.

I am enjoying Max Tegmark's Life 3.0

I have an audible credit I need to use up, anyone have any recommendations? I would like some non-fiction, like social history of 40s / 50s, jazz history maybe, but no WWII or other military history stuff, something fairly sizable and hard to find elsewhere would be good. Old / original recordings are good too.

I really wanted to listen to the audiobook of CV Wedgwood’s 30 years war but unfortunately the reader is a crypto anti-masker who sounds like the American Steven Toast. Some comedy value though:

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Thirty-Years-War-Audiobook/B008B9HCGC

OMG, OTM, went through the same thing. Ended up buying it anyway, but haven't had time to listen/pvmic

I downloaded a torrent of a mammoth lecture (with canned applause) by the late Professor Richard Baum on China from the Qing dynasty to 2008 - The Fall and Rise of China. It's part of their godawful great courses series but if you don't let that put off it's got some great material. There are a few audibles I use when I've got insomnia, but this one kept me awake because it was good!