book talk – Thoughts to Pages

Weekend Reads : 8/15/2020

It is finally my weekend!

I am so ready to dive in to some books the next two days. My boyfriend is helping a friend move and it looks to be rainy so the couch is where I will be. Here is what I have in store for the next few days.

The Most Fun We Ever Had – Claire Lombardo

I am very much looking forward to reading this and I think I am going to enjoy it. I love long, lengthy deep dives into family drama and this looks to have that. At over 500 pages and a family of 4 sibling girls, I think this going to be right up my alley. I originally had heard about this book from the Book Riot podcast and it immediately caught my attention and I knew I needed to read it. The time has come and I am here for it.

The Splendid and the Vile – Erik Larson

This is my slow but steady book. I have this marked out to finish so many chapters a week, taking me about 2 months to read this. I love all things history and love reading both fiction and non-fiction historical books. This follows Winston Churchill in his first year as Prime Minister. It is a dense book, but interesting so far. This is a book that I can only read a chapter or two a night before I feel weighed down by it. I am a little behind on my own schedule with this, and hope to finish up the 6 chapters I have left for this weeks section.

I am still not feeling like listening to an audiobook right now which is a bummer because I was so in to them only a few months ago. I think once I get caught up on The Currently Reading podcast, I’ll feel like picking up an audiobook again.

What do you have planned for this weekend? Enjoying some reading or spending it outdoors for these last weeks of summer? Let’s chat in the comments!

Let’s Talk Audiobooks

My love for audiobooks has only grown in the last few years. It is hard to believe that I only started utilizing this format a few years ago, considering it is how I do majority of my reading nowadays. That wasn’t always the case. I was very much intimidated by them. I thought there would be no way that I could retain what I was listening to. Not surprisingly, I was wrong.

The very first audiobook I listened to was The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith. (I will not be going into anymore detail with this series or author in light of the very cruel and insensitive things J.K Rowling has said in the past few weeks). Mystery/Thrillers are my favorite genre and I figured if anything was going to keep my attention, it was this genre. And I was right. At this point, it would take me almost a solid month to listen to a long audiobook, or any audiobook in general. I was listening to it at 1.0x speed and only when I was on the treadmill and maybe in the car. It was a slow moving process. But I enjoyed the experience and wanted to try out some more.

I started to venture into nonfiction and short story collections for my next stop in audiobooks. If for some reason, I zoned out, I didn’t miss a whole lot and could get back into the story without feeling lost. By this point I had also gotten into podcasts so it was becoming normal for me to listen to both of these in the car and on walks with my dog. I also learned you could adjust the speed at which you listen to an audiobook. I slowly started to creep up to 1.25x and 1.5x speed, allowing me to listen to a full book in less time. That was a game changer.

Here we are 2ish years later and majority of my reading is done via audiobooks. I always have an audiobook downloaded to my phone. I don’t watch a lot of TV so when I am cleaning, cooking, playing Animal Crossing, I am listening to an audiobook. In a good reading month, I can go through 2-3 audiobooks a week, listening on 2x speed. And to be honest, some books are just better on audio; you get so much more out of it.

If you are like me, and find audiobooks intimidating, just try them. There are so many free platforms to download them from. My main source is Hoopla. And then I use Libby and borrow from my local library system. I have had a subscription to Scribd, but to be honest, it wasn’t worth it to me to keep it. If there is an audiobook that I absolutely want to listen to and it is on Scribd, I may join for a month, but most things are available to me free elsewhere.

Clearly, I love audiobooks. And I do have my favorites.

Stay tuned to find out what they are. That post will be up Friday!

Are you an audiobook listener? Do you still consider it reading? (I do!)