Most wanted found!

After months and months I've finally found an unabridged copy of Three to Get Deadly!  I'm sooo happy to have it.  Now all I need is Takedown Twenty and I'll have the complete set! ;-D

Two new audiobooks

Been having a blah kind of week.  Sleep has been sporadic - thanks to 2 cats and local traffic - and this morning I would have been quite happy to stay in bed and go back to sleep for a few more hours, but I since it was 8am I thought I really should get up.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Hi all!

It's been a tough few weeks with everything coming to a head early last week when I had to hand in my resignation due to medical reasons.  Only I could get and loose a job in 3 months.  But, now that leaves me stuck at home, recuperating and taking it easy until my doctors give me the okay.  I'd rather be earning a wage, but that's not in the cards for the next 12-24 months!  So, I guess that means that I'll now be able to give more time to my ever increasing TBR pile, and updating my blog.

I'll start by telling you how much I loved Archangel's Legion by Nalini Singh.  The series as a whole is great, but I do adore the stories that revolve around Raphael and Elena.  In AL, there were a few surprises I didn't see coming - read upcoming review for more - and now I can't wait for the next, as yet untitled, book due out late 2014.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for my audiobook reservations to come into the library.  I finally managed to track down copies of A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness.  They are massive at 20 discs each, but it's a lot cheaper than having to buy every audiobook that tickles my fancy.   I also managed to find out the title of the third and final book in the All Souls Trilogy - plus the release date.  The Book of Life is due out on stands 15 July, 2014 - yippeeeee!

So until I see you again, happy reading!

Just arrived

It's finally here!  I am looking forward to listening to Cast in Shadow.  Will be firing up the laptop and adding it to my iPod asap ;-D

A 'Sizzling' audiobook find

Every now and then I scour the online bookstore for much wanted audiobooks, and today I found a real steal.  Amazon has Audio CD copies of Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich for under $7 - and that's for the unabridged version!  It must be my lucky day... now if only I could find unabridged versions of One for the Money, Two for the Dough and Three to Get Deadly I'd be really happy :P

Audio Books

Yes, I admit it.  I am a proud listener of audio books.  As a nearly-qualified library technician, I find that this is a format that is still thought of as an old person's book, but if you find a book with a good narrator, then it's amazing how much you can enjoy listening to them.

Take the Janet Evanovich series Stephanie Plum.  I enjoy the books, I re-read them on a regular basis.  However, once I'd listened to the audio book, To the Nines (read by Lorelei King) I was hooked.  There is just something about the way Ms. King reads them that seems to make it funnier.  I just love her interpretation of Lula.  So, having listened to #9, I haunted my library for any other Plum books they had on CD.  I have bought some as well (1-4, 11, 15, 17) and have ordered a few from other libraries (5, 12 and 14).  Now all I have to do is track down 1-3 in unabridged form.  I really thought that when the movie was released, plus a re-release of the book, that the audiobooks would also be re-issued... but alas, only the abridged version was {grrrr}

Here's a list of the audiobooks I've got so far...

• One for the Money
• Two for the Dough
• Three to Get Deadly
• Four to Score
• High Five (library)
• Seven Up  (library)
• Hard Eight
• To the Nines
• Ten Big Ones
• Eleven on Top
• Twelve Sharp (library)
• Lean Mean Thirteen   (library)
• Fearless Fourteen (library)
• Fingerlickin' Fifteen
• Smokin' Seventeen
• A Kiss of Shadows
• A Lick of Frost   (library)
• Mistral's Kiss   (library)
• Swallowing Darkness   (library)
• Divine Misdemeanors (library)
• Guilty Pleasures
• Micah   (library)
• Blood Noir (library)
• Dark Light - Jayne Castle
• Double Cross - James Patterson
• Magic Bites - Ilona Andrews
• Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
• Naked in Death   (library)
• Ritual in Death   (library)
• Indulgence in Death   (library)
• Possession in Death
• Chaos in Death

Okay, that's quite a few, but I have them loaded on my iPod that's docked on my bedroom's alarm clock, and instead of listening to the radio at night sometimes I just press play and fall asleep listening to whichever book starts.  They are also great for having on while I'm studying as I find that the talking doesn't distract me like songs would (I start singing along and there goes the studying!).  They are also great for longer car trips as well.

Audio Fix

Okay, I'm now doing something that I never thought I'd do... yep, that's right - I'm listening to audio books!
Since I'm spending part of my days studying, and while I do my vocational placement I end up shelving for quite a while.  So when I suck it up and head out to shelve, I now have my iPod {thank you Santa!} to keep me sane.  I've loaded it up with music, but that can get a bit embarassing in public.  I've been caught more than once either humming away to a song, or quitely singing to myself.  Doh!  The solution was given to me by one of my supervisors.  Sarah told me while we were stocktaking the collection that she listens to audio books.  I thought this was a novel idea, so for the last few weeks I've been hunting for some titles that I think I'd like.

The best ones so far are the Stephanie Plum books read by Lorelai King.  I started with To the Nines, and after the first few sentences I was hooked.  Lula is hysterically funny in audio, and it's a good way to just tune out when doing a boring job.  My only problem was that there wasn't a man doing the Morelli and Ranger voices, but in all, Lorelai does a wonderful job.  I've managed to get my hands on a few of them.  I'm waiting for One for the Money, Two for the Dough and Three to get Deadly (abridged unfortunately) to arrive from Amazon.com - you know I love that place! - and Eleven on Top.  I have Hard Eight, Lean Mean Thirteen and Visions of Sugar Plums already.  I just wish they were in the MP3 CD format.  I'd borrowed a friends copy of A Lick of Frost (LKH), and it was already done.  In chapter form.  It was fabulous.  No mess, no fuss, just load it onto the iPod.  I wish all audio books had the option of being MP3 format.  It would certainly make my life a little easier.

Oh, and if you want to rip an LKH audiobook CD to put onto your iPod, forget it.  There was about 100 tracks just for the first CD of Micah.  That means your either going to have a hell of a lot of tracks on your iPod, or you've got to fiddle around in an audio editor to put them together.  Not really worth it if you have 16 CD's to combine now is it.