On the Hunt!

[paula]

How do you hunt for that next great audiobook?

If you are like me, you're pretty picky about spending your money & time on what you listen to. Some days it feels like searching for a needle in a haystack to find something you'll love.

Some of my personal methods are:

1) Discussion feedback from this group (of course) & a couple others. I particularly look for titles that are mentioned by more than one poster in a discussion (those who seem to have similar tastes to mine). This is how I found One Summer - now one of my top favorites, but had never heard of before coming across it in a recent discussion here.

2) Searching on Audible by category, then customer rating. Also looking under "just listed".

3) Searching the romance forums on Amazon.com using multiple key words (i.e. historical, steamy, alpha male, etc...).

4) Reviews from "Speaking of Audiobooks".

5) Comparing bookshelves with others that I have a high percentage of books in common with to see what else they may have read had given five stars.

6) Author & list searches on Goodreads.

[Lea's Audiobooks]

In the past I have found most of my future books within the Speaking of Audiobooks’ discussions. Now many of those recommendations occur within the Goodreads group but the Speaking of Audiobooks Archives is invaluable for recommendations.
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?cat=174

However, there are a few columns that stand out for recommendation purposes. Not only do the columns contain a good many but the discussions really pour them on. Take a look at:

Favorites 2/22/10
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=3848

Romance Audio Bests by Author 8/13/10
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=5025

Those Older Hard-to-Find Romances 7/16/10
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=4894

The Funny Ones 12/09/09
http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=3296

[paula]

Lea's Audiobooks wrote: "In the past I have found most of my future books within the Speaking of Audiobooks’ discussions. Now many of those recommendations occur within the Goodreads group but the Speaking of Audiobooks A..."


Love these columns! I've already spotted a few that look like they may be a good possibilities.

I'm looking for something with heart-gripping romance, a bit steamy and where the hero & heroine do not spend a good portion of the book trying to suppress their feelings for each other. In looking at Dream of Meand Private Arrangements just wandering if either one (or both) of these may fit that description?

[Laurie (barksbooks)]

I use goodreads as my main source for everything book related. Love you GoodReads. The new genre feature is amazing, I just adore it. I also scour my library online for new titles and use overdrive. That way if a book stinks or bores me I'm not out anything but time.

[D.G.]

I usually just try to find audiobook versions of books I'm already interested in. I get almost all my audiobooks from my two libraries so a few times I just browsed through their collection to see what they had available and have found some interesting books that way.

Something I need to start doing is listening to the preview before I download an audiobook. Twice in the last two days I've found horrible narrators for books I've been looking forward to! If only I had listened to the preview, I'd have known earlier to stick to the print version. Sigh...

[Kathy]

Paula wrote: "How do you hunt for that next great audiobook?

If you are like me, you're pretty picky about spending your money & time on what you listen to. Some days it feels like searching for a needle in ..."

After you've done all that could you please tell me what you come up with?

[Brenda]

I do the same things you do Paula with the addition of going to the audiobook publishers web sites and looking through their "Coming Soon" selections.

Tantor's Coming Soon option is really good as they let you choose by month instead of crowding the new releases all together.

The other place I like to do this is at AudioFilemagazine.com's home page. They have a "new audiobook releases" choice that changes every couple of months (although the current link has only given an error message for days!)When the link works you can narrow it down by genre to make the searching easier.

Kathy one option is to check out the other SOA members "audiobook shelves" to see what they've found and enjoyed.