Reading with Your Ears – Audible Audiobooks Review

I could never really get into reading. Growing up, I watched A LOT of television and even now suffer from a short attention span. Reading books and picturing the stories in my head was just plain boring. It’s close to a miracle that someone like me was able to instill a love of reading in my daughter, who can voraciously go through book after book and still want more.

I heard of Audible audiobooks many years ago but never had the desire to try it. After all, audiobooks had the same content as their ink counterparts but now you could hear them. After all, I’ve listened to boring CD versions of my daughter’s school books and they were real snoozers. How wrong I was.

A Whole New Experience with Audible Audiobooks

To try out the Audible service, I wanted to download a title that I could listen to with my family. As my daughter has always been against audiobooks for the main reason I was, I thought it could be a good test to her opinion on the experience as well. I settled on “The BFG” by Roald Dahl. Neither of us have read this book and Audible listeners gave the reading an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars. Seemed like a good choice to start with.

I began listening to “The BFG” while trying to get some work done. That didn’t happen. I became so enthralled in the telling of the story that I ended up having to close my laptop and sitting back so I could listen.

The narrator does a fantastic job in changing voices and switching tones. His delivery helped endear the characters to me as I felt for the inadequacies of the giant and the courage of young Sophie. On top of that, very subtle sound effects are included. These again add to the richness of the picture forming in my mind. The listed reading time of 4 hours and 25 minutes no longer made me cringe. Instead, I looked forward to finding time to listen to more.

How would my determined-to-be-difficult teenager react? As sour faces turned to restrained smiles, I knew she was experiencing something similar to what I did. My 14-year-old was enjoying it!

Audible Audiobooks Review – Quality

Before trying out Audible, I couldn’t understand the pull of these audiobooks or why the price was so much higher than the digital or hard copy versions. The reading of “The BFG” made both of those factors clear. These books bring out the emotion of characters and give you a better taste of the unique written voice each author uses. This is no easy task.

I found out from the Audible site that, when casting for narrators, talented actors are used and many of them have theater backgrounds. The ability to project personality through a microphone and to play a number of parts seamlessly takes skill. Also, with recordings being several hours long, much labor and editing are needed to create a quality audiobook.

Audible houses over 150,000 titles including new releases and best sellers. You can listen whenever and wherever you want and on any device. If you own both the digital and audio versions of a book, you can enjoy both at the same time or switch between the two when using a Kindle device or Kindle app on an Android device. See if your favorite books are available in audio format.

Audible Audiobooks Review – Pricing & Membership

Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be an expensive interest. A membership to Audible gives you one free audiobook a month and a 30% discount on additional titles. All that for a monthly price of $14.95, which is less than most of the audiobooks I browsed. One audiobook I saw cost $44! Each title you order belongs to you, regardless of whether you continue your membership or not. You an also take advantage of a 30-day free trial to see if you like it.

Have you given Audible audiobooks a try?