Each year I like to challenge myself with reading books. The past few years have felt less like a challenge and more like a goal I knew I could easily reach. My first year completing was 2013, and I set my goal to 30 books, and ended up reading 36. The following two years I set the challenge to 50 books and read a total of 52 books for the year. This year, 2016, I’d like to really challenge myself, and so I’m setting my goal to 65 books for the year – and I’d like half of those books to be audiobooks.
You may think that sounds a bit strange, purposely listening to audiobooks rather than choosing to read the books, however I think it’s a great goal for myself. These days I spend a lot of my spare time knitting and while I’m good at knitting, and reading, I’m not (yet) good at doing both at the same time. There are actually people who can do that, read and knit at once, but I am (so far) not one of them. I’d like to be able to fill that spare time with audiobooks.
Where to get these audiobooks was my next decision. There’s Audible which is one of the largest suppliers, but I’m not sure if I want to dedicate $14/m to a subscription or just pay as I go. I believe the $14/m only gets you a single book a month, and that’s certainly not going to be enough for me. Audiobooks are typically more expensive than regular books though there are free versions out there. The problem with free versions is you never know if the reader is going to be someone you can tolerate, and depending on the software you use it’s very easy to lose your place. I’ve signed up for kindle unlimited to test out the audio narration whispersync feature, I’m hoping it may be a good alternative to someone like me who doesn’t mind spending money on books or subscriptions, but who has a limited budget.
Have you set up a reading challenge for yourself this year or do you prefer to just take books as they come? Let me know in comments!
The Nomadic Reader 