In My Audiobook Era Book Tag

Happy Tag Thursday!

Today I’m planning on doing the In My Audiobook Era tag. I first saw this tag on Jillian the Bookish Butterfly and I have been saving it for a little while, waiting until I had time to really think about my answers.

Here are the prompts if you’d like to give this tag a go. If you do decide to, please link back to this post so that I can visit yours. I’d love to get to know you better through your answers.

The prompts:

• What was the first audiobook you ever listened to?
• Who are your favourite narrators?
• What audiobook platform do you use?
• What book did you enjoy on audio that you might not have enjoyed reading physically?
• What’s your go-to audiobook speed?
• Do you prefer single/dual/multiple narrators?
• Do you listen while multitasking or sit and listen like a movie?
• What’s your biggest audiobook peeve?
• If you could have any book made into an audiobook which one would it be and who would narrate it?
• What’s your all-time favourite audiobook experience?
• Have you ever listened to an audiobook that made you pause and say “Wait… what did I just hear?”
• What audiobook had you frequently rewinding to hear lines again?

What was the first audiobook you ever listened to?

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

Who are your favourite narrators?

I absolutely love Julia Whelan as a narrator and will listen to anything she reads. I also love Chris Brinkley and Cielo Carmargo narrating all of my Penny Reid novels. Chris always brings the MMCs to life in the swooniest way.

What audiobook platform do you use?

I use Audible because that’s how I was first introduced to audiobooks. Occasionally I’ll listen to a book on Spotify, but I try not to because they are just so slow.

What book did you enjoy on audio that you might not have enjoyed reading physically?

Starling House by Alix E Harrow

A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can’t stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.

Honestly I don’t think I even would have picked this book up had it not shown up on audiobook. I don’t generally enjoy gothic or grim but this was the first audiobook of my year and I loved it!

What’s your go-to audiobook speed?

I can’t do slow so I generally listen at 2 x speed. If they are a lot of characters and it starts to get confusing, I might switch it down to 1.7.

Do you prefer single/dual/multiple narrators?

Depends on the story and the competence of the narrators. When I’m listening to a romance, I definitely prefer to have a male narrator for the MMC.

Do you listen while multitasking or sit and listen like a movie?

I only listen to audiobooks when I’m multitasking and usually when I’m driving in the car.

What’s your biggest audiobook peeve?

When one narrator plays all the parts but doesn’t differentiate who they are speaking for. I am also peeved by dull narrators. I need narrators to have a bit of personality and to feel like they are sharing the story with me.

If you could have any book made into an audiobook which one would it be and who would narrate it?

I don’t have any specific book that I feel needs to be made into an audiobook but I will never not love a Penny Reid book narrated.

What’s your all-time favourite audiobook experience?

Oh how I loved Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I cried, I laughed, I cried while laughing and laughed while crying. I never re-read but I could definitely relive this narration.

Have you ever listened to an audiobook that made you pause and say “Wait… what did I just hear?”

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors – OMG! I couldn’t. I had to DNF this one.

What audiobook had you frequently rewinding to hear lines again?

I have never felt a need to rewind unless I wasn’t concentrating and felt like I’d missed something valuable, otherwise I just let the story roll on.

Now it’s your turn.

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