Thoughts on Audiobooks

I've been listening to audiobooks recently. They take a lot longer for me than reading a book would for me,  but I do enjoy them. And since I haven't posted anything in a while (due to general busy-ness).

I've always enjoyed audiobooks. When I was growing up, the way my parents discovered to keep long car rides bearable for everyone was to let us listen to audiobooks. When I was little they were on cassette tape (memories...), and it was titles like Sherlock Holmes (my favourite was, and still is, The Speckled Band). I don't think that I can actually find the version I listened to anywhere, I don't think that it is available today, and the library has since rid itself of all of the cassettes in it's collection. (Wow, now I feel like saying "In my day we had cars with cassettes...")  

When we got a car with a CD player, we discovered the Harry Potter audiobooks. We were already reading the books, but we listened to them later. Jim Dale is brilliant. He won two Grammy Awards and has two Guinness World Records for his work on those books. I have listened to these books a rather alarming number of times. 

Recently, I've started to listen to them again. My library has MP3 audiobooks that you can borrow for a few weeks. I've recently finished listening to The Raven Boys, which I've actually already read (though I'm listening to part of it again, not only do I re-read, I also re-listen). 

Things that I find fantastic about audiobooks are:

 1. You can do other things while you listen. It's nice to be able to enjoy a book hands-free.

2. Sometimes you notice things that I didn't before when I listen to it (this also happens when I re-read books)

3. Accents. I don't usually read characters with an accent, and I find it really wonderful to hear it with the accents of all the characters. It's really great.

That about concludes my babbling about audiobooks. Let me know if you have any favourite ones in the comments.