Audiobook Slumps
You know how there are reading slumps where you just aren’t in the mood to read anything, even books you think you should enjoy? I think I’m in an audiobook slump: I know objectively that there are audiobooks I should be excited to listen to and I do want to make progress on, but I just don’t seem to ever want to listen to them! Do you get these audiobook slumps? What do you think causes them for you? How do you get out of them?
I think mine is for a couple of reasons….
My brain, it hurts!
I used to listen to audiobooks at every opportunity possible. I would listen to them while walking between the parking lot and my office, anytime I was in the car, and especially on the 2-hour drive to my boyfriend’s place every weekend. However, these days I just don’t want to! When walking back to the parking lot from my office, especially (ie what inspired this post, haha), I think my mind is just too tired from thinking all day ya know? I’ve been really trying to up my concentration and productivity at work, so I honestly just prefer silence or music while walking and driving home. I just need to give my brain a break these days it seems. I’m not really sure how I’m going to fix that, haha. This also goes for my 2-hour drive to and from the boyfriend’s place, though it seems that every Friday when I drive, I’m just too pissed to listen to an audiobook since I don’t want to hate it just because I’m grouchy. Fridays just haven’t been good days recently ;-).
Audiobooks are putting me to sleep…
The other problem, however, is that whenever I have tried to listen to an audiobook on the way back from the boyfriend’s recently (on Sundays after having slept plenty and being rather fresh usually), I start getting sleepy! This is obviously not a good thing to be when driving long distances, so I inevitably end up switching to music which for some reason is better. I think singing along helps ;-). I have no idea when I’m getting sleeping listening to audiobooks though since the latest one is Throne of Glass, not a book that is slow at all. My brain seems to have made an association between audiobooks and sleepy for some reason that I can’t figure out. I used to be able to listen to an audiobook the whole drive without a problem, in fact I needed to since music made me bored!
I just finished a meh audiobook
For some reason, Insurgent just didn’t work for me as an audiobook and that is the one I just finished. I think this is a similar problem to a string of bad books putting you into a reading slump ya know? I just have trouble with this series’ narrator and am not Tris’s number one fan ya know? However, I really wanted to finish it, so I just pushed through even with a week stretch between listening at times. I’m thinking that this has something to do with my current weird mental association, but I had been hoping Throne of Glass would fix this.
Suggestions?
So I really want to get back to listening to audiobooks regularly since it’s kind of the only way for me to fit older books into my reading schedule at the moment. I’m enjoying Throne of Glass (the hour or so that I’ve listened so far that is), but it hasn’t been able to pull me out of my sleepy/aversion slump. Have you ever had this problem with audiobooks? How did you fix it? Is it something I should even try to fix? I like that I’m listening to music more since I think it makes me happier, so perhaps I should just go with the flow since I’m still reading plenty of physical books….
Also since we’re talking about audiobooks, which fantasy and sci-fi are your favorite because of the narration and story? Do you even listen to audiobooks, or perhaps you have the same problems with them that I’m currently having and that’s why you don’t listen?
-Anya
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