As an elder millennial, my audio book experience has been books on tape; cassette tapes. Big, bulky, sets of cassette tapes.
Fall of 2023, we purchased a new car, leaping forward from our previous 2011 model. One of the features I never knew I was missing was Bluetooth syncing my phone to my car.
As someone slow to new technology, it’s only been in this past year I’ve discovered the joy of audiobooks in the Libby App. So the next step became listening to audiobooks through my phone in the car.
Total game changer.
We’ve plowed through series of books in record time. We read all the books in the quartet ‘Small Spaces’ by Katherine Arden and are currently in the final book of the trilogy ‘Moon Base Alpha’ by Stuart Gibs. We read ‘Nightbooks’ by J.A.White and watched the Netflix movie based on it. And we read ‘We’re Not From Here’ by Geoff Rodkey.
All in under six months.
I’ve always read to my children, but it was always me reading. And there is a limit to the time I can take to read aloud on the couch each day. Now, we can read so much more.
I appreciate how my synched devices know where we are in our book. Getting towards the end of one, we listened on the iPad during dinner.
Another level of reading to the kids is all of these titles are for Library Reading Clubs. Several library systems have book clubs for the kids to attend a program with the completion of the book (well, most of the time, we finish in time). Sometimes they get pizza and sometimes they get to keep a copy of the book, but the most valuable part to me is the recommendation. These titles are books recommended by librarians. When it comes to book choices, I heavily rely on these recs and they haven’t let me down.
So next time you want technology to help enjoy a book with the whole family, ask your library system about a book club available on the Libby app.
