Talk on some good audiobooks

Here are the slides I will use for my talk today about audiobooks:

Listening

Where?

When?

How intently?

Professional narration

Good audio prices

Convenient file format

iPods

Podcasts

ear or eye

Ear comes first biologically

Ear is more widespread in nature

"The Universal Sense" by Seth Horowitz

"Space Between Words" by Paul Saenger

Prof. Sue Slick, reading emeritus: more people can hear than can read well

Getting audio books

Libraries: public and academic here and elsewhere

McMillan Library in Rapids is impressive

Libraries are connected these days

Audiobooks are downloadable

OverDrive, Amazon, Audible.com, Great Courses - all have apps, web sites

Library and purchase

Library can be free but possibly long waits

Get enough going and the wait is irrelevant

Notifications

Best prices I have found: Audible.com with annual membership

Also narrative on Amazon along with ebook

Attention and retention

•I listen while driving

•Some people have trouble doing that and I recommend going with what you can do safely

•I find it convenient to have both the print and the audio versions

•I like knowing I can check later

Amazon touts its Whispersync

•The idea is that a user can move back and forth smoothly from listening to the same place in the writing

•Doesn't work for me, since I have the service turned off

•Could be handy but not for those who jump around, back and forth, as with notes at the end

Five good audiobooks

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Demon Under the Microscope

Lab Girl

Outsmart Yourself

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

–16 hours for volume 1

–by Stieg Larsson

–There are two further volumes of the story

•...Played with Fire

•...Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Author died right after final volume

Another author took up the story

  The Girl in the Spider's Web

Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

•Ten hours

•by Rachel Joyce, British TV writer

•I consider it a masterpiece

Demon Under the Microscope

•12 hours

•by Thomas Hager

•Non-fiction

•Gripping story of the development of anibiotics

•Before them, death took more of us at random moments after small accidents and little cuts

Lab Girl

•12 hours

•by Prof. Hope Jahren, PhD, biologist

•non-fiction

•Real live woman in real live science

•Life does not always go smoothly

•She is fluent in Norwegian

Outsmart Yourself

12.5 hours

by Prof. Peter Vishton, PhD

Up-to-date psych research

Great Course

Not to mention 'podcasts"

•I haven't mentioned podcasts, sound-only files that function like audiobooks or recordings of radio broadcasts.

•There are a great number that are free

•Googled "Most popular podcasts" = 17.4 Million hits

•NPR can lead you to many

•Generally not content-focused