Tag Archives: Tides

Breaking my Audiobook duck!

Another first for me this week, as I finished “reading” my very first audiobook. It has been a fascinating experiment and insight into my psyche!

I wouldn’t ordinarily pick to consume a book via audio, but this was offered to me and I thought I’d give it a try. People who listen to audiobooks rave about them, and it’s the growing way to get your books, apparently, so maybe I was missing something.

Alex Lidell's Air and Ash
Grab it on audio now!

Maybe I still am, but audiobooks really aren’t for me. Air and Ash is a fabulous book, Kaitlyn Bellamy narrates beautifully and it’s very easy to listen to. But it took so long! I can’t remember when I started Chapter 1, but it’s probably not an exaggeration to say it’s taken 3 months to listen to it start to finish.

For comparison, when I read it on Kindle, I zipped through it in under 24 hours (it’s excellent – did I mention?).

I was fascinated by my response to it, because I can always find time to read and I get through a book usually in around 48 hours. Finding time to listen seemed to be a whole other matter. It seems that if I have a book/kindle in my hand, then I’m reading, but if “all” I’m doing is listening to something I should be doing something else as well (washing up, knitting, etc). Since I’ve usually got either the TV or radio on for those activities, it felt like a big logistic effort to get the audiobook running instead (it’s not; Audible is a doddle to use).

Several friends listen to audiobooks on their commute and rave about that to pass the time in traffic. I wondered if that might make a difference – but since my commute is 6 minutes in a car share with a colleague I couldn’t test that idea. However, if I ever return to my corporate life I’ll bear it in mind.

In summary, I’ve now “read” an audiobook, but I still don’t quite know what the fuss is about. Audiobook fans, please weigh in – how do audiobooks fit into your life?

U is for … Uh oh!

Okay, so it’s been a mixed week, to say the least. I haven’t found or read a “U” book yet. I tried several and discarded them. There’s another I could pick, but it’s by an author I’ve already read in this challenge and I’m trying to widen my reading experience.

Cover of Karpov Kinrade's Vampire Girl
How is that practical? White? As a vampire? Blood stains, you know…

So … I moved on and found a “V” book. Vampire Girl was picked based entirely on the “V” and on the cover. I’m intrigued as to why so many YA books have a girl in a floaty ballgown on the cover when they are vastly impractical for what said girl gets up to between the covers. Vampire Girl fit this mould, although there was a fun bit where she gets dressed up all fancy (against her own best instincts) only to find that she would have been better off in jeans and sneakers.

And then (my cup runneth over) I got the ARC of War and Wind flagged to me. War and Wind is next in the Tides series by Alex Lidell and her books have very swiftly become “drop everything” reads for me. I love them. So everything else was set aside while I swooped through that in the space of 36 hours.

Cover of Alex Lidell's War and Wind
Click to pre-order

In short: War and Winds is AMAZING, grab a copy now (well, grab a pre-order), and Vampire Girl was very good, although it lost a bit of impetus at the end with some strange and clumsy consistency errors which were a great shame given how sparkly the writing had been up until then.

However, while I’ve clearly been productive, I still haven’t covered off my “U” requirement. I think a trip to Waterstones and a talk with an actual, real, live bookseller might be needed…