BlogFest 2010: Audiobooks vs. Hard Copies

Welcome to Musings of an All Purpose Monkey! Chances are if you’re here on September 10-12 you’re a book lover who got here via the BlogFest event.

BlogFest is a massive carnival of giveaways with a great collection of participating blogs. Each blog has a giveaway and the idea is to hop from blog to blog, entering all the giveaways your little heart desires. Hopefully you might even come across a few blogs you might want to bookmark and continue visiting.

I’m proud to be one of the over 250 bloggers participating in this celebration of books and book blogs. And while you’re here, I’d love to get your thoughts on something…

Audiobooks. I don’t like them, and I desperately want to. My TBR stack is so massive that I may catch up somewhere around the time I retire, and yet it seems like I have “wasted” time where I could be listening to books while I do other things (in the car, washing dishes, doing laundry, etc.). However, the few times I tried to listen to a book were less than satisfying experiences.

Maybe I’m just very particular about the way I read. I often find myself going back and rereading passages in a book, and it’s much easier to do that with a hard copy than an audiobook. I also want to go at my pace which, depending on my mood, may be faster or slower than what the reader has chosen.

And let’s talk about the reader. I know there are some fabulous audiobook readers out there, but what if I just don’t like the reader’s delivery? What if their voice is like nails on a chalk board to me? I wouldn’t want that to be such a distraction that I was turned off from what otherwise may be a book I’d enjoy reading in print. And so I’m stuck between the “rock” of my never-ending TBR stack and the “hard place” of not liking audiobooks, the one avenue that could actually help me get a leg up on things.

How do you feel about audiobooks? Love ’em, hate ’em or indifferent? Leave a comment with your thoughts and you’ll be entered to win the following prize pack:

• An ivory/black striped canvas tote bag
• Precious Blood by Jonathan Hayes (paperback)
• Machete, third and most recent book in the Jake and Jouma series by Nick Brownlee (trade paperback)
• The Godfather of Kathmandu, fourth and most recent book in the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series by John Burdett (hardcover)

Please be sure to include your email address or website link with your comment so I have a way to contact the winner. Contest is open to US/Canada and ends at midnight on September 12, 2010.

Thanks for stopping by. Please have a look around Musings of an All Purpose Monkey, and then be sure to go check out what’s going on over at The Nerd’s Wife for BlogFest!