# Audio books



## avrp (Jan 4, 2015)

I just discovered that I enjoy audio books. I have poor eye sight and it's almost a chore to read a whole book. Interesting audio books are great for quiet times of the day. When I'm sitting and knitting, listening to the narrator seems to make the stitches go on faster lol.
Also during sleepless nights they help me relax, often times drifting off to sleep. I thought I'd have a hard time concentrating on listening, but thankfully I don't. 
Just thought I'd share this new found form of entertainment.
Peace


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## Vivjen (Jan 4, 2015)

I have loved them for years....and I can see fine!
i also love plays on the radio; and documentaries......in fact I listen to the radio much more than I watch TV


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## AprilT (Jan 4, 2015)

I have been mentioning them on here for a while now, listen to them frequently.  Great way to fall fall to sleep sometimes as well if you're having trouble getting some shut eye.    I just download them from my library to my pc transfer them to my phone, it's been a great experience.  At first I didn't care for the experience, but after my second or third try, I really got into it, been doing this for over a year or two now.


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## Josiah (Jan 4, 2015)

I've been involved with to an audible.com for years. You can't beat borrowing free from your library, but a subscription with audible.com is very reasonable and the selection is much larger than most libraries. I listen on my Kindle Fire. I really enjoy certain narrators much more than others and I'll often choose a book just because the narrator.


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## avrp (Jan 4, 2015)

Josiah09 said:


> I've been involved with to an audible.com for years. You can't beat borrowing free from your library, but a subscription with audible.com is very reasonable and the selection is much larger than most libraries. I listen on my Kindle Fire. I really enjoy certain narrators much more than others and I'll often choose a book just because the narrator.



I've been told that the narrator makes a world of difference. Just from my brief experience I can understand that! I will check out audible.com...thanks!


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## AprilT (Jan 4, 2015)

Very true about the narrator, I've shut a book or two down due to being put off by the narration in the past.  I will stick with my library selection, they have an extensive collection, so far they've served me well, but if I find I'm not really finding what I want, I'll look into other sources.


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## avrp (Jan 4, 2015)

AprilT said:


> Very true about the narrator, I've shut a book or two down due to being put off by the narration in the past.  I will stick with my library selection, they have an extensive collection, so far they've served me well, but if I find I'm not really finding what I want, I'll look into other sources.



I'm going to have to learn how to download the audio books to my iPhone. Or from my computer to my phone...or something lol.
 It would be so much more convenient. I have the iBook App but there doesn't seem to be many audio book choices.


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## Phoenix14 (Jan 4, 2015)

I used to use Audible but had a problem listening to them on anything but the PC, I even bought a Nano MP3 to listen to them but had problems with the chapters shuffling LOL.   I then tried https://librivox.org/, it's only books on the public domain and out of copyright but still some quite enjoyable.  Because it's a freebie and run by volunteers, you get a mix of narrators, some are good but there has been one or two with fairly 'flat' voices.    I used to get plugged in to do the ironing.   It does help when doing housework.


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## jujube (Jan 4, 2015)

I have to drive to see my mother several times a year and it's a boring 7-hour drive ( I think I know every cow along the highway, though last year there was a dead llama on the road.....I say you always know when you're in a classier part of the state when you start seeing dead llamas instead of dead deer along the road).   I always go to the library and try to find audio books that last 5-6 hours (not easy to find) and listen to them instead of music on the way.  It's amazing how fast the time goes when you're engrossed in a good story.   If I can, I'll get maybe six of them, because I start a couple and realize I don't want to listen to the narrator's voice for all that time.  I'd really rather they just "read" the book instead of trying to do all the voices.  Very few narrators can do the different voices adequately; usually, it's just annoying to me.


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## AprilT (Jan 4, 2015)

marty said:


> I'm going to have to learn how to download the audio books to my iPhone. Or from my computer to my phone...or something lol.
> It would be so much more convenient. I have the iBook App but there doesn't seem to be many audio book choices.



My library uses a program called audiodrive.  I download from my library onto my pc, but they have it so I guess you can also download directly to your iphone.  here's an app I found also including the basic program for windows they can direct others to various other systems for downloading, but it's so easy, I use the mp3 format for my very simple phone.  It's so incredibly easy to use once you've got it downloaded.

http://app.overdrive.com/

http://help.overdrive.com/customer/portal/articles/1481574

http://help.overdrive.com/customer/portal/articles/1481067-how-to-install-overdrive-for-windows


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## avrp (Jan 4, 2015)

April, thank you so very much!


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## AprilT (Jan 4, 2015)

You're welcome, Marty.


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## AprilT (Jan 18, 2015)

Marty, how has the book downloads been going?


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## avrp (Jan 19, 2015)

Finally getting the hang of it and I love it! Thanks for asking


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## Denise1952 (Jan 19, 2015)

marty said:


> I just discovered that I enjoy audio books. I have poor eye sight and it's almost a chore to read a whole book. Interesting audio books are great for quiet times of the day. When I'm sitting and knitting, listening to the narrator seems to make the stitches go on faster lol.
> Also during sleepless nights they help me relax, often times drifting off to sleep. I thought I'd have a hard time concentrating on listening, but thankfully I don't.
> Just thought I'd share this new found form of entertainment.
> Peace



Thank you Marty, I've also been trying audiobooks.  I still, mostly read, but sometimes it is nice just to plug in my ear-buds  I don't know if you have a Nook Tablet or similar, but if you do, the library has tons of Audio books.  In fact, the authors seem to release more books (I think they donate their books to libraries) in audio, then they do hardcopy or readable.  I like mysteries, and found who I thought might be a good author, but ALL their books were in audio which I wasn't looking for at the time.

Maybe you get all yours mailed or bought from the bookstore though, but wanted to mention this as for now, I can't buy anything.  I do have a thread on the library/Nook/Kindle here:

https://www.seniorforums.com/showthread.php/11311-Library2go


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## asp3 (Jul 7, 2020)

I hope no one minds my resurrecting an old topic rather than starting a new one.

My wife and I usually listen to audio books when we take longer trips in the car.  My wife dislikes a lot of the music I like and I don't like the talk radio shows that she likes, so audio books are a good compromise.  We generally like either mystery or humor books.  We get what we can from the public library and don't really purchase audio books themselves.

This last weekend included a trip to Tahoe and back (4 hours each way) and then another trip yesterday to Tahoe and back to arrange for our van to be towed home and to return the truck we had to rent when our van had problems.  We ended up listening to Hardcore Twenty Four (a Stephanie Plum mystery by Janet Evanovich) for most of the trip and then listened to about 2/3 of I Might Regret This by Abbi Jacobson.

The Stephanie Plum book was enjoyable but wasn't one of the best in the series.  I Might Regret This started a bit slowly but quickly piqued our interest and then became very interesting and very funny.  I had never seen the show Broad City and didn't know anything about the author of the book (who is one of the creators, writers and actors on the show.)  I really love her style overall as she goes off on tangents (sometimes very detailed tangents) but always brings it back to the main focus of the book and makes it very relevant to the overall flow of the story.  I would highly recommend it and we may even get Hulu so we can start watching Broad City to see if we like that as well.


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## MarciKS (Jul 7, 2020)

asp3 said:


> I hope no one minds my resurrecting an old topic rather than starting a new one.
> 
> My wife and I usually listen to audio books when we take longer trips in the car.  My wife dislikes a lot of the music I like and I don't like the talk radio shows that she likes, so audio books are a good compromise.  We generally like either mystery or humor books.  We get what we can from the public library and don't really purchase audio books themselves.
> 
> ...


God knows I don't mind. I've been scrounging around in older threads because I'm sick to death of talking about COVID & racism.

I've listened to a few audio books. They're great. Sometimes the readers are a little bland. Almost monotone.


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