The past few years have solidified my enjoyment of audiobooks. I am now choosing books based on my favorite readers as well as my favorite authors. I listen while walking outside, driving in my car, or even doing activities like knitting or washing dishes. While I am typically a fiction reader, nonfiction audiobooks have made reading biographies and true tales more engaging for me. I am especially a fan of actor and comedian memoirs read by the author; they know how they want jokes to hit and stories to land, making the whole thing more enjoyable.

However, you may have noticed that newer cars and computers no longer come standard with cd players. This seems to be pushing a lot of people towards the e versions, perhaps before they are ready to switch. And I understand that being told you have to switch to a different format can give you an automatic dislike to the new style before you even try it. I also get that it is asking people to use more technology than before, which can be intimidating. Despite that, I have also come to recognize why the move to using e-audiobooks can be great.

1. No more skipping. We at the library do our best to keep discs clean and well maintained, but with so many people using the discs, some bumps are bound to get through. And it can be so frustrating when you are in the middle of a story, especially a climactic scene, to have the author’s voice start cutting in and out. Skipping is a thing of the past with e-audiobooks. You can now listen to your story uninterrupted, which leads to:
2. No more changing discs. Especially for drivers or craftspeople who are listening, you know the disc is about to go back to track one, but now is really not the time to be trying to change discs. This is a feature that brings safety as well as smoothness to story enjoyment.
3. You can change the speed of the reader. Does listening to books frustrate you because of how slow and deliberate readers are? Let me introduce you to the changing speed feature on e-audiobooks. You can have readers go a little bit faster at 1.25x or really ramp up the speed to 2x. While not a feature for everyone, there is definitely a large swath of people who appreciate this feature.
4. You are able to browse from home. Technically, you can browse for anything from the library from home, but you can look through Overdrive or Hoopla to find great titles. Pick out what you are interested in, check out, download, and play through your phone or tablet or stream to your preferred bluetooth enabled device. If you need help getting started you can reach out to your local library to help you out.

Physical books on cd aren’t going anywhere anytime soon from your library, but if you have ever been frustrated by one of the things above, or were curious about trying to download e-audiobooks from us, maybe today is the day.