Our Favourite Audiobooks This Week – With BookBeat

Our favourite audiobooks this week.. That’s right! We are mixing up our favourite books post this week thanks to trying out audio books using BookBeat. A day later than normal as it’s half term. BookBeat is a digital streaming service that allows you to listen to audiobooks on your mobile. There are thousands of audiobooks on BookBeat and for £14.90 per month which you can cancel at any time it’s well worth the cost!

audiobooks - BookBeat

Eva especially was rather impressed with BookBeat, and stealing my phone to listen to them. The menu’s are easy to navigate and it took her no time at all to find her way around the Children’s section. She even worked out how to find audiobooks suited to her age group and added books to ‘My Books’ so she could find them again later. The app is so well laid out and I love that you can click info on a book to find out more about it too.

 

Eva’s favourite Audiobook this week

Syd Hoff’s Danny and the Dinosaur and the girl next door is Eva’s favourite audiobook this week! She loved that she could listen to the story. Eva got distracted at the library but we had planned to pick up a book she wanted to listen to so we can help improve her confidence reading out lout. By enhancing her knowledge of punctuation and how it is implemented in a sentence/paragraph by following the words in a book as well as listening to the audiobook. She sometimes rushes her reading and forgets to use punctuation and I think by doing this it can really benefit her. There are a long list of books saved for her to listen to, I’m sure it won’t be long until she shares another.

Izzy’s Favourite Audiobook this week

With Eva having found the option to search audiobooks by age range we were able to find some nice short audiobooks for Izzy to listen to. She absolutely loved The Tiger who came to tea by Judith Kerr. I was surprised to see Izzy pay attention and listen to the words. Although she didn’t have too much to say about the audiobook she did say she liked the Tiger, haha! I’ll be adding more book suited to her age range & see what she thinks of them.

My Favourite Audiobook this week

Oh yes, we really are mixing things up, Even I’ve joined in & picked my favourite audiobook this week! I don’t really get the time to read more than a blog post here or there these days so it’s been quite nice to be able to download an audiobook to listen to on the bus or whilst out shopping alone. I haven’t had much time to listen so I haven’t finished an audiobook yet myself but I have started listening to Patricia Cornwell’s Depraved heart. I have read most of the Kay Scarpetta series and really enjoyed them so it’s been quite nice getting a chance to hear a new one! I’ve only read up to the Book of the dead before & having got back into the storylines with this audiobook I’ll definitely be catching up on the others too!

 

What have you been reading or listening to this week? What do you think of audiobooks? Are you a fan or do you prefer to flick through pages? Have you heard of BookBeat before?

Fancy a month’s free trial? http://www.bookbeat.com/uk/blogteam

BookBeat.co.uk

 

 

 

You Never Forget A Good Book

It’s true that once you read a good book you never forget it. I’ve been a keen reader since I was quite young and people used to joke about the fact I would prefer to sit and read the Evening Echo (Our local paper at the time) at the age of 5 over a childrens book. I remember my mother had quite a few books on shelves around the house which is where I discovered a few of my favourite authors. I haven’t picked up a book in a while which I intend to do more of over the coming months so I thought I’d share with you some of my all time favourites!

You never forget a good book
The Misery front cover I read and the books currently on my shelf!

Stephen King’s Misery is a book I definitely read far too young but as I loved to scare myself silly with physchological horrors like this it’s a book I read several times growing up and is still my absolute favourite book of all time. I love the way Stephen King writes and how twisted & clever the storyline is. Whenever I fancy something a bit darker I go for a Stephen King books and I’ve read quite a few. I currently have a few on my bookshelf at the moment that I need to read, what’s your favourite?

As you can see my copy is quite worn!

This is a set of books rather than just one but I think most people will agree that C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is an amazing set for children and adults. I still have the original box-set I had as a child, unfortunately they are quite sun-faded but I cant wait to start reading them to the girls! I always got so lost in these books that I would spend most of a school holiday re-reading the whole set just because.

 

On my bookshelf

Another one that is probably on most peoples lists is J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the rings Trilogy. I read this when I was about 11 and I remember being superglued to my bed for 5 days reading the entire book & then went on to read The Hobbit. I was gutted when I finally watched the films as they had just missed out far too much as usually happens when books are turned into films. I still have the same copy of Lord of the rings but lost The Hobbit years ago.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret garden us another classic I absolutely loved reading over and over again. I loved the idea of escaping to such beautiful gardens.

The only image of the front cover I remember reading as a child!

One book I fell in love with as a child has bugged me for years as I hadn’t been able to find it ANYWHERE! Seriously, I have searched & searched the internet & libraries and only just discovered I was right all along! It is called Wild Child  and I am pleased to share I finally know the Author’s name – Monica Furlong! (Thanks to Goodreads!) I remember being completely enchanted by this book and re-reading it several times.

In a remote Scottish village, nine-year-old Wise Child is taken in by Juniper, a healer and sorceress. Then Wise Child’s mother, Maeve, a black witch, reappears. In choosing between Maeve and Juniper, Wise Child discovers the extent of her supernatural powers—and her true loyalties.

Patricia cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series was another favourite throughout my teens, I began at the start with Post-mortem and read every book up to The Book of the dead which is still sat on my bookshelf waiting to be read!
I’m definitely going to start working through my book shelf again and then go on a hunt for some new ones, so help me out! Who’s your favourite author? What book’s would you recommend reading? What books are laying unread on your bookshelf?