The Joy of Long Audiobooks via Book Riot and Me

When I give my "Flip the Script and Think Like a Reader" signature talk, I focus on helping each participant to connect with themselves as a reader. I want each person to start to understand why they like to read what they like to read, regardless of the plot or genre. We work on connecting what they find most appealing about their favorite stories and use that as a springboard to begin thinking about how we suggest books to all readers.

My training of others has allowed me to work on myself as well. Over the years, I have realized that when it comes to audio books, I have a few specific appeal factors that are different from how I choose print titles to read. For example:

1. I tend to prefer nonfiction on audio rather than print.
2. If a book is set somewhere not English speaking, I tend to prefer the audio because someone else is doing the pronunciation for me.

AND

    3. Anything 500 pages or over, I prefer in audio.

This final preference has allowed me to read long books that I might have skipped if they weren't in audio. Recently, I saw this post in Book Riot about the joy of long audiobooks and the author captured much of why I love them as well.

I went back to look at some of my favorite books in this long audiobook category and realized some of them are among my all time favorite audio experiences. Below I have linked to some of them with the run time of the audiobook noted. In these reviews, I write about the audio experience as well, and how for me it enhanced my enjoyment.

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee [18 hours, 16 minutes]
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt [32 hours, 30 minutes]
• The Witch Elm by Tana French [22 hours, 7 minutes]
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James [24 hours, 2 minutes]
• 11/22/63 by Stephen King [30 hours, 40 mins]
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami [46  hours, 45 mins]

And my absolute favorite long audio book reading experience ever....

• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson [31 hours, 55 minutes]--  I still remember parts of the book when I am watering my plants, to this day!

While I hope this post allows you to see why people love long audio books, even if you do not yourself, I also hope it gets you to start thinking  about your own reading preferences and person preferred appeal factors a little more deeply.