About 6-7 months ago, after listening to Leo Laporte and the TWiT crew mention Audible for the 10,000th time, I subscribed to Audible.
With Audible, you subscribe for a fee and every month you get a credit that you can use towards getting a book. I’ve been enjoying Audible so much that the day each month that I get my credit feels like Christmas. It’s exciting to start a new book.
Audiobooks are GREAT! I commute about an hour to work to and from work every day. I plow through so many books.
I just downloaded “The Associate” by John Grisham. My favorites thus far have been books like “When Character Was King” by Peggy Noonan, “Around the World in 80 Days” by Michael Palin, and “The Pixar Touch.”
Do you do audiobooks or Audible? If so, what do you think?
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
When I was commuting up to an hour each way to work audiobooks saved my soul, I think. Now that I work from home, I need to figure out a good way to listen/read audiobooks more.
Some recommendations:
1776 and John Adams, by David McCullough
The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon (the reader on this is my favorite)
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris (or really anything by him)
The Ender Series (multiple books) by David Scott Card
Now, have you made the decision when talking to people to say, “I’m reading that right now” or do you say, “I’m listening to that…”?
Dude, those look awesome. I’ve read the dead tree versions of the 1776 and John Adams. I need to get the audiobooks though. David McCullough rocks!!
I was an Audible member so many years ago that I got 4 books a month for $20. I quit when they downgraded me to 2 books per month. I think that was around 2001.
Don’t forget your local library website. I know you’re in Virginia, and I’m not sure exactly what they subscribe to, but the DC Public Library has a subscription to OverDrive. I’m sure they’ve got at least 2000 audiobooks online (many in mp3). If even 5% of them are worth listening to, that’s 100 free audiobooks. Through OverDrive I became a fan of Sci-Fi writer Orson Scott Card. (Sorry Nicholas, its Orson Scott Card not David Scott Card.) They’ve got 16 of his books online. They’ve also got 15 of John Grisham’s books, including The Associate, albeit in DRM’d WMA format.
Definitely want to echo what Ethan said about public library files.
Also, I’m digging the stuff I’ve downloaded from http://librivox.org. It’s all public domain read by volunteers. The quality varies, but I’m really enjoying the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books right now. It’s all free (mp3 and ogg) and has no DRM.
I gave up on Audible after a while because I worry about having hundreds of dollars of DRM-crippled files that I can’t do anything with if anything ever happens to Audible.
It’s one thing to burn iTunes music to CD and rip it back as an mp3, but ever try that with audio books? It takes more discs and more time than I’ve got.
@Ethan Ah, you’re right! I’ve listened to the entire Ender Series. Don’t know how I got that wrong. I guess I was thinking of David Scott Meerman, another author.
Archive.org has free audiobooks as well: http://www.archive.org/details/audio