Listen! (Audiobooks - General)

Member Name: gad1

Product:	Audiobooks - General
Date:	25/09/04 (128 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lots

Disadvantages: none

I have to travel over an hour to work each morning and elevate the boredom by listening to audiotapes in my car. There are wide ranges of tapes available to suit all tastes. I particularly enjoy mystery stories such as those written by Agatha Christie. I find audiotapes help me to stay stress free when I’m driving without causing me to lose concentration.

There are now thousands of audiotapes available so you should have no problem finding something to your taste. I rarely buy an audiotape, as it is much cheaper to borrow from the library. On average I pay about £2 for 3 weeks hire, not bad when you consider some audiotapes such as Harry Potter can cost upwards of £30. Hiring also means you don’t end up with hundreds of tapes cluttering up your home.

I recently spent a spell in hospital and found that audiotapes listened to on a walkman not only drowned out the noise of the ward but helped me to sleep. I was given numerous tapes by kind friends so had plenty to choose from! If you want give someone in hospital a present a Walkman and some tapes would be a good choice!


Story tapes are also excellent for children. I always get a few new stories, again from our local library, when we are going on a long car journey. This really does help to keep the children happy and even seems to prevent carsickness. Some audiotapes can have as many as 12 tapes and take several hours to complete, excellent for a really long journey! Story tapes are so much better than videos as they encourage children to listen and use their imagination.

When choosing an audiotape the narrater influences me. I am very fond of Stephan Fry for example. It really does make a big difference to me who reads the story.

Story tapes are also really helpful when trying to learn a foreign language. Without listening it is difficult to get the pronunciation correctly. I have taught myself French by listening to audiotapes. I would really recommend audiotapes although they can not replace books they are really useful when reading is not an option.

Summary: