audio books Archives : All About Romance

Audible’s Romance Package and how it’s turned me into an audiobook fiend!

By Caz Owens|2021-01-26T04:59:55-05:00April 8th, 2019|Categories: audio books, Kristen D, Romance reading|Tags: Audible Romance Package, Audiobooks|

For my professional life, I travel about forty weeks a year. It’s… a lot. My husband and I joke that I should just perpetually forward my mail to various Hiltons around the world. And I’ll be honest, hours upon hours of hotel TV is not my jam. There is only so much Investigation Discovery I can watch before the commercials just do my nut in. Thus, I read. There are days, however, where I am too professionally fried to keep my eyes open. Thus, I have become an audiobook fiend.

While the selection on my library apps (Hoopla and CloudLibrary and Libby, for the record) are great, those interfaces are not the best. They don’t save my bookmarks, for one, and I seem to always be losing my place in the story. Audible, we all know, is the leader in audio storytelling for a reason, but the cost was often too high […]

“I couldn’t put it down…” What was YOUR last unputdownable read?

By Caz Owens|2018-06-04T05:43:13-04:00June 4th, 2018|Categories: AAR Shannon, Anne Marble, audio books, BJ Jansen, Caz AAR, Dabney AAR, EmAAR, graphic novels, Keira Soleore, Kristen D, Lisa F, Lynn Spencer, Maggie AAR, Re-reading, Reading, Romance reading|Tags: favorite books|

The unputdownable read… it’s kind of the holy grail of books, isn’t it? That book that hooks you in on the first page and doesn’t let you go until the last; the book you enjoy so much that you can’t stop turning the pages even as you wish you could read more slowly because you don’t want it to end, and the book you immediately have to shout about to all your friends – whether in person or on Social Media. We’re all lucky enough to come across THAT BOOK from time to time, and the AAR team got together to talk about the book we read most recently that we simply couldn’t put down.

Anne

I Joined a Teen-age Sex Club (Yes, that was an actual title from a story published in 1951!)

This is a compilation of essential romance […]

Deadly Peril: An Audio DIK

By Dabney Grinnan|2017-06-23T08:30:10-04:00May 3rd, 2016|Categories: audio books, DIK, Melanie AAR|Tags: Alec Halsey series, Lucinda Brant|

Narrated by Alex Wyndham

We first meet Alec Halsey in Lucinda Brant’s Deadly Engagement, where he investigates the death of a friend, and then again in Deadly Affair, with another murder and a mystery. Now, Alec is dealing with something completely different – his diplomatic past and the imprisonment and torture of his good friend Sir Cosmo Mahon and the young Emily St. Neots. Picking up basically right where the previous book left off, the reader follows Alec into Midanich, a small Germanic principality at civil war and ruled by madness, both in its populace and its Margrave.

Alec packs up immediately and, along with his love, Selina, uncle, aunt and assorted servants, heads out to the one place he wanted to never to see again. His past has definitely come back to haunt him, and now […]

The Best of 2015: Audiobooks We Loved

By Dabney Grinnan|2017-06-23T08:30:14-04:00January 9th, 2016|Categories: AAR Shannon, audio books, Best of 2015, Best of List, Caz AAR, Dabney AAR, Haley AAR, LinnieGayl AAR, Melanie AAR|Tags: Best Audiobooks, Best Audiobooks of 2015|

Haley’s Top Listens in 2015

Why Not Me? By Mindy Kaling

I’m a fan of Mindy Kaling and have been since she was on The Office. While I didn’t like Why Not Me? As much as her first book, I did enjoy her playful narration and funny anecdotes. I, like many women, really relate to how down-to-earth Kaling seems and that comes through in this book, especially in the chapter about how much work and money goes into making Hollywood stars beautiful. This is a great, quick, lighthearted listen.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Emily already wrote a wonderful, in depth review of this book, but I want to second it. I expected […]

The Audiobook of Beyond the Sunrise is a DIK!

By Dabney Grinnan|2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00June 29th, 2015|Categories: audio books, Caz AAR, DIK|Tags: Mary Balogh|

Mary Balogh’s 1992 novel Beyond the Sunrise boasts a storyline quite unlike those found in the other books of hers I’ve read in that it’s mostly plot, rather than character driven. That isn’t a criticism, however, because I enjoyed this new audiobook (narrated by Rosalyn Landor) very much. It isn’t without its problems, the principal of which lies with the heroine’s somewhat cavalier treatment of the hero and I suspect that had I been reading the book rather than listening to it, I might have found her difficult to like, but Ms. Landor is able to portray her with such empathy that even when I didn’t particularly like her actions, I was at the very least able to understand her and even feel sorry for […]

The Last Hellion is out on audio! Here’s our DIK review.

By AAR Admin|2017-06-23T08:30:20-04:00May 28th, 2015|Categories: audio books, Caz AAR|Tags: loretta chase|

The Last Hellion is the last of the four books in Ms Chase’s Scoundrels series, which are linked via a number of recurring characters; and it can perhaps be seen as a sequel to the wonderful Lord of Scoundrels. We met Vere Mallory, Duke of Ainswood, in that story when, drunk as a lord (!), he mistook the newly-married Lady Dain for a light skirt and was immediately pummeled into the dirt by Lord Beelzebub himself, and forced to apologise.

Ainswood is the appropriately titled “Last Hellion” of the title, and comes from a long line of ne’er-do-wells. He never expected or particularly wanted to be a duke, but a series of tragic accidents and illnesses sees him attending a seemingly never ending succession of funerals, the last of them for his beloved nine-year-old nephew and ward, […]

Speaking of Audiobooks: Latest Listens and Audio News

By AAR Admin|2017-06-23T08:30:20-04:00May 4th, 2015|Categories: audio books, Lea Hensley|

Note: Our “For the New Listener” feature appears in the latter half of today’s column.

Rachel Gibson – Can it finally be happening?

Before March 2015, Rachel Gibson’s books had been sporadically released in audio format – one here – one there – and rarely with a really good narrator. I had listened (or attempted to listen) to all eleven of those audio titles, each time just wishing for that perfect listen as I’m a BIG Gibson fan. She knows how to make guys sound like guys and her style of contemporary romance is what I seek out when I want a fun listen.

But those eleven listens never reached that point of audio listening bliss; although the superb writing was present each time (most rated an A for me in print format – a few were Bs), I just didn’t feel the narrator was talented enough to pull off the […]

Speaking of Audiobooks: An Audio Take on AAR’s 2014 Annual Poll

By AAR Admin|2017-06-23T08:30:20-04:00April 13th, 2015|Categories: Annual Reader Poll, audio books, Lea Hensley|

Note: Our “For the New Listener” feature appears below our Annual Poll discussion.

It’s evident to participants in AAR’s Annual Poll that the results are based on the reader’s enjoyment of the print version of each book (although it’s not ever implicitly stated). But does a winning book’s inclusion on the resulting Best 2014 Romance Novels list indicate the best in audiobooks as well? Well, sometime yes and, unfortunately, sometimes no. A narrator has such a strong influence on the audio version of any fictional book that they can lift the overall audio grade to a higher level or lower it significantly.

That’s what today’s column is all about. We’re taking a look at AAR’s 2014 Annual Poll winners (the print versions) and reviewing the probability of such a winning status in their existing audio formats. Just which winning books can you comfortably search out […]

Speaking of Audiobooks: Accessing Audiobooks Through Your Library

By AAR Admin|2017-06-23T08:30:21-04:00March 9th, 2015|Categories: audio books, Book news, Lea Hensley|Tags: Hoopla, library, OneClickdigital, OverDrive|

For years, I have wanted to write a column on borrowing library audiobooks. In my experience, “checking out an audiobook” from the library has been reserved for the occasional hard copy (cassettes or CDs). I haven’t really taken the time to figure out digital audiobook library borrowing. Oh, I tried about five years ago and found that my Apple device was incompatible. Being the technophobe that I am, I quickly gave up.

But things have changed since my failed attempt to digitally borrow an audiobook. The selection is much more impressive and the technical aspect has improved. Remember, we’re talking about your library here. Who loves to help folks enjoy books more than your library? The help is there to get you started.

In our July 2014 Speaking of Audiobooks column, I mentioned my desire to feature a column on accessing audiobooks through libraries. I requested help from our listeners since my knowledge level, […]

Speaking of Audiobooks: It’s Almost All Listening for Me These Days

By AAR Admin|2017-06-23T08:30:23-04:00February 2nd, 2015|Categories: audio books, Book news, Lea Hensley|

Since I started listening to fictional audiobooks more than twelve years ago (I’ve lost track), I have continued to read print titles while listening to others. Even when I was only reading in print, as a rule, I read three books at a time since variety has always been important in my reading/listening. That meant those three books represented three different genres/sub-genres as well to avoid mixing up the storylines.

Over the past six years, I listened to two books while I read a couple of print titles as well. Occasionally, one book (print or audio) swept me away and demanded all my attention but there was a definite structure there – two audiobooks and two print books were required at all times. Sub-genre variety was no longer much of a concern since narrators provided plenty of diversification on the audio side. And then I realized it […]