OK, this vent is about audiobooks, specifically about Audible. For those who don’t consider listening to be reading, neither do I, but this is the best fit.
I’ve got to use up three credits from Audible, not immediately as I paused my membership a while back, but soon enough that I need to start thinking about it. It’s just so danged hard! It’s not as if there aren’t books I want to read, but sometimes I only want to read them. And, most importantly, I never buy what I can borrow and things I like to listen to, such as Victorian novels and mysteries, are readily available at libraries.
So once I’ve checked my wishlist for books I want to buy that I’d be happy to listen to and come up with nothing, what to do? And here’s where the rant comes in. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that filtering by category, especially of recent releases and coming soon would result in a plethora of options. Hahahahaha. Because here’s the thing: I only want trad-pubbed books read by professional narrators. No virtual voice, thankyouverymuch. And no AI-generated books. And as far as I can tell, there’s no way to exclude them. It’s like looking for something decent to read at KU. The occasional gem is lost in a sea of dreck.
And, a corollary rant: Trad-pubbed for me extends to public domain, but the same public domain books keep getting new narrators. Some Dickens novels must have eight or ten narrators by now. Stop that! Dig deeper into the vast realm of near-classics that haven’t been narrated yet!
Sigh. This time, once I extract myself, I’m done. I don’t care what kind of deal Audible offers, it’s not worth the tsuris. I can find enough to listen to at OverDrive and Hoopla.