Rediscover the joy of reading
Reading books is one of the most enjoyable activities ever. It expands your mind and takes you places while you’re resting comfortably on your couch. There’s nothing else like the feel of paper on your fingers, the sound when you turn the pages or the smell of ink and paper. Do you remember the feeling when your parents read aloud to you while you were going to sleep?
This is all good and wonderful but fewer and fewer people can actually find the time to sit down and read. We’ve all been there – working long hours, taking the kids to and from school, prepping dinner, doing house chores and suddenly the day is over and we pass out exhausted on the pillow. Rinse and repeat. When exactly is one supposed to find time for himself and enjoy reading a good book?
In my experience the answer is audiobooks. With audiobooks you don’t have to find time to read, because you’ll be reading while doing other stuff. Commuting to the office, cleaning the house, cooking, walking the dog, working out at the gym, you name it! Listening to audiobooks is perfect when your hands and eyes are busy and it’s not practical to hold a real book. In fact I shouldn’t call them ‘real books’ because audiobooks are just as real and enjoyable if not even more! Imagine your favourite stories brought to life by a professional narrator or discovering new great books while stuck in traffic on the way home. You’ll find yourself circling around the block while the chapter is finished – it’s that good, you won’t want to get out of the car. I’m a huge Sci-Fi fan and naturally my first audiobook ever was in the genre –
METAtropolis, and immediately after that it’s continuation – METAtropolis: Cascadia. Here on the blog I’ve reviewed the third book in the series METAtropolis: Green Space. Highly recommend those.
Download audiobooks for free!
The good news is you don’t even have to pay a penny if you don’t want to. There are plenty of legal and free audio book websites where you can download all the audio books you want for absolutely free. A good one is http://podiobooks.com/ where the books are presented in serialized form and narrated by their authors. You simply download the MP3 files of the book of your choice, put them on your MP3 player or smartphone and start reading while getting things done! It’s a great website that features a lot of indie and less known authors who are happy to give their work away for free.
More audiobooks than you can ever read!
Now, if you want more diversity, like more titles and genres to choose from you’ll have to pay some money. I recommend you to try Audible Plus. They have tiered monthly subscription plans and it’s not expensive. The best part? You don’t even have to pay in advance. Sign up for a free trial and the first audio book is free! They have fantasy, romance, mysteries, and history novels. Best sellers, bios, sci-fi, and self-help, over 25,000 titles and counting.
It sounds like a commercial but I just can’t give this service enough praise. It has given me quality books to listen to during my long commutes every day and frankly it saved my sanity and kept me from just driving of the road (ok, not really but close enough). Do yourself a favour and try an audiobook. Doesn’t matter if it’s a free one or you buy it, just try it and rediscover the joy of reading again. It will literary (nice pun, eh) change your life.