I love reading, thought I'd just start with that. I really do. The feel, the smell, the snuggling into a bed or on a sofa with a good book. And there's so many books that I want to read. There's the books that I've collected over the years and am busy trying to read my way through, and there's the ever growing list of books that I want to read in the future. However, the truth is I'm finding it difficult to find time to actually read at all. I'm trying to make it a habit to read about 30 minutes every night before I go to sleep, but this doesn't always happen and usually I find myself just flopping into bed at the end of the day too tired to focus on the writing. I'm also very aware that I don't really have the space to store all these books. In fact, I'm very lucky that my parents are happy to store most of the books I do own in their attic or I'd be in real trouble. I needed to find a solution.
And then, when I was driving along listening to a podcast it occurred to me that I could do the same with books. It's never really been something that I've thought about before as I do really like the whole reading myself set up, but I have definitely been enjoying getting information through podcasts a lot more than I thought I would. So I decided there was only one way to see if it would be the same for books.
I've heard lots of people talk about (and seen lots of adverts about) Audible, so I gave that a go (thank you Audible for the free months trial and one free book). I did really enjoy it and they seem to have a absolutely huge selection of books, but I really wasn't sure about the cost of it. It wasn't really something that I could justify putting into my monthly budget, at least not for now, and especially as some of the books I was intending on listening to I already owned a hard copy of. Then it occurred to me that I was being a bit of an idiot as I'm a member of my local library which offer audio books for free.
So one RB Digital app download, account registered through my library, and seven books listened to later (they were all Harry Potter - it's a long story) and I've actually been quite enjoying ing it. It turns out there's something very soothing about listening to someone read to you when you're having to do some task or when you're lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and it has meant that I've been able to fit in more reading then I would have managed before.
Don't get me wrong, it will never replace the enjoyment I get of actually reading myself. That feeling of doing absolutely nothing else but immersing yourself in a book for a time is not to be beaten. There's also the one con in using library audio books and that is the selection is much smaller that Audible, especially of the types of books I usually go for. However, so far this has been a great experience for me and it's definitely something I'll be carry on in the future. I've also noticed that they do e books on the same app so that's definitely something I'm going to look into once I've finished all the hard copy of books that I own right now.
It really is a shame that more people don't actually use their library. Registering with a library is one of the first things I do when I move to a new location (I still have all the cards for them) so I can use all the services, and now they've given me a chance to listen to books completely free, getting through them despite my long to-do lists. Best of all, it's completely waste free as well. A win all round really.
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