Audiobooks

At the end of May I was kind of feeling a little burned out. I'd read a record total of 11 books already that month and I had Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor finally from the library... but have you seen that book? It's massive.

Anyway, I wasn't sure if I was mentally ready to dive into a 600 page behemoth of a book. And after Bout of Books 10.0, I was feeling a little drained.

Enter: audiobooks.

I'd found out about SYNC,a site that offers two free audiobooks a week, earlier in the month after some blog surfing. I'd been downloading a title a week for fun, because I was intrigued. I decided to load one up and give it a try. I figured maybe I could balance my time between the audiobook and attempting my hefty read.

I ended up going exclusively audiobook once I got started, though. I'm a horrible book monogamist, I can't juggle more than one story at a time!

Regardless, the audiobook in question was a version of Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge. And it wasn't long until I was settling into the act of listening.

Reading is work, let's not pretend that it's not. Enjoyable work, sure, but still work. It requires effort. Listening to an audiobook does too, but I found that it was a different kind of effort. I could lay back on my bed, close my eyes, and listen. There was a different kind of effort required versus letting my eyes trail over sentences on a page.

I found myself quite enjoying the experience. I listened to it while cooking, a few times while driving, and even just some times in the evenings when I would've otherwise been reading. I looked forward to listening, not necessarily because of the story (but I'll get to that in a minute) but because of the novelty of the experience.

Cruel Beauty's narrator, Elizabeth Knowelden, has a very soothing voice. I enjoyed her reading of the tale very much. As for the actual story itself... I'm afraid it fell flat for me. (My review of the book won't be officially posted here until July, based on my queue, but you can see my thoughts on Goodreads here if you don't fancy waiting.)

All in all though, I enjoyed the act of listening. A few people on twitter mentioned that audiobooks are good for road trips too, so I'm looking forward to giving that a try as well.

SYNC has two more upcoming audiobooks that I am definitely going to be checking out (see my June TBR), so I think this is just the beginning of something wonderful.

What do you think? Have you listened to any audiobooks? Do you like them or do you prefer the act of reading? Any recommendations? Let's chat in the comments!