{"id":25381,"date":"2015-12-03T02:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=25381"},"modified":"2015-11-19T18:48:22","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T01:48:22","slug":"audible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/audible\/","title":{"rendered":"Audible"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Audio books are fantastic. Download them to your phone, or borrow them from your local library. I\u2019ve audited several hundred books so far, all while driving. I listen to all kinds, light and heavy, fiction and non-fiction, short and long. More and more this is where I get my serious reading done. If at all possible I listen to the unabridged version. If fact my most memorable audible experiences are listening to long deep audio books. The longer the better.<\/p>\n<p>Audible is the central depot for audio books. They don\u2019t carry every audio book, but they carry the most (100,000), and they have the best interface for selecting, pre-viewing, ordering. Since this is an Amazon company they also offer a service that will sync your Kindle version of a book and your Audible version (you need to purchase both versions), so you can switch from reading (in a home) to listening (in a car) without losing your place! I like Audible because they also allow you to \u201creturn\u201d a book for a refund if the narrator &#8212; or the book! &#8212; doesn\u2019t agree with you.<\/p>\n<p>You can buy individual books, but the best deal is monthly or yearly subs at about $15 or $10 per book. Here are a few suggestions of long books that seem to appeal to most people if you want to get started. For the long books I prefer professional narrators over the author\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Shantaram (Amazing unbelievable immersive vivid journey into the slums of India.)<\/li>\n<li>Lonesome Dove (Wished it never ended. Pure story, unforgettable characters.)<\/li>\n<li>War and Peace (I tried many times to read it, but couldn\u2019t get going. Listening was the answer.)<\/li>\n<li>Harry Potter series (Better than either the movies or reading the books. Narrator Jim Dale does 135 voices.)<\/li>\n<li>Assimov\u2019s Foundation series (Classic science fiction saga that still works.)<\/li>\n<li>Atlas Shrugged (The only way you can get through all of John Gault\u2019s monologue.)<\/li>\n<li>Life of Pi (A boy and tiger in lifeboat. Unconventional, unorthodox, unexpected delight.)<\/li>\n<li>Pillars of the Earth (Historical fiction about building cathedrals over generations.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Nonfiction<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Discoverers (How knowledge triumphed over ignorance and invented everything.)<\/li>\n<li>1491 (This will change your mind about American natives and history of the continent.)<\/li>\n<li>1493 (Same author, will change your mind about African slavery\u2019s role in the Americas.)<\/li>\n<li>Short History of Everything (Much more enlightening and enjoyable than I thought it could be.)<\/li>\n<li>God, Country and Coca Cola (About drugs, FDA, and the invention of advertising. And Coke.)<\/li>\n<li>Peter the Great (A biography of Russia through one man.)<\/li>\n<li>Into Thin Air (A surprising, page-turning, mind-bending adventure up Mt. Everest.)<\/li>\n<li>The Looming Towers (Essential deep origins of Osama Ben Laden vs. the US.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class='ctx-module-container ctx_default_placement ctx-clearfix'><\/div><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Satisfying audio books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[28],"tags":[2307],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25381"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25381"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25383,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25381\/revisions\/25383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}