Audio Books

Over on my other blog I from time to time sing the praises of audio books. Particularly the ones from Audible.co.uk.

On my drive back from the South I was listening to some episodes of TWiT. One of the sponsors/advertisers on TWiT is Audible. Each episode the TWiT crew make suggestions for books you might like to listen to from the Audible catelog.

These weekly picks are a great way of finding a way to spend your monthly credit that you get with the subscription. Sadly sometimes the recommendation is only available in the US version of the site. I think this is down to licensing issues.

As I listened to the discussion I thought about what was it that made me like listening to audio books.

I thought back to my formative years, and the great program that the BBC used to have on for children called Jackanory. This was a book broken up in to several parts and read by a presenter. In some ways audio books remind me of this program but with out the visual element.

But I thought it can’t be just that. Does it at some level take me back to those times when a parent would read to me in bed at bedtime? I think to some extent yes it does invoke those memories. I do remember my dad reading to me as a kid at bedtime, particularly Robin Hood.

There is another benefit about audio books, you can have rather a lot of them on your ipod and they don’t take up any extra space or add any extra weight to the ipod.

But whatever your reason for listening to them, you can’t escape the fact that the Audible.co.uk is a good deal.