Free Listens - Weekly Reviews of Audiobooks and Audio Stories

Finding a good book to listen to is always a challenge. Now that I have my Sansa e260 mp3 player I am able to get alot more listening done in a day. I like not being tied to what is on the radio at the moment and being able to go from home to car to work and back again while continuing the same story.

In my search for stuff worth listening to I ran across a recommendation at Librivox for Free Listens. The blog just started in January this year but he has already put up 9 reviews.

In his first post he lays out his plan for reviewing, at a pace of about one book per week, free human-read audiobooks that are available on the web.

Rating - I’ll give a rating on a ten point scale for the book itself. I’ll write up what I like and didn’t like, trying to avoid any spoilers beyond what you’d read on the cover of a paperback. Of course, my reviews are my own opinion and I may change my opinion.

He does like books that have only one reader. I must agree. It is hard sometimes to follow the character when the reader changes each chapter and you adapt to their ‘voice’. This will eliminate some of the larger works in Librivox, but there are still plenty available.

Solo recordings - I tend to review recordings made by one person, rather than the chapter-per-person organization of the Librivox group recordings. I do this for two reasons: 1) I like solo recordings better and 2) it’s easier to review. Listing the qualities of 14 different readers is difficult enough as it is without the possibility that I’ll have to own up that one of the 14 is sub-par.

I also like the idea of not giving bad reviews, especially since once you find you don’t like the book, why finish! (And maybe the problem is with the listener and not the story)

No bad reviews - If I’m reading a book and decide I don’t like it, I’ll put it aside; no hard feelings. I’ve come back to books from time to time and discovered that they’re actually good books, but I just wasn’t in the right mental state to enjoy it. The same goes with readers. I won’t continue listening if I dislike the reader, but neither will I publish my opinion that the reader is awful. There’s too much of good stuff out there to spend time dwelling on the negative.

I am looking forward to his reviews and to be able to add some of these to my listening queue.