Well, we’re almost three months into the year, so I thought I’d share my progress so far with this year’s Audiobook Challenge.

If this challenge is new to you:  The audiobook challenge is hosted by Hot Listens and Caffeinated Reviewer–this is their 8th year hosting it! It’s a fun challenge to see how many audiobooks you can listen to in a year. The rules are pretty simple, you can find out more details on the sign up page over at Hot Listens. Please do check them out because they’re going to have two updates throughout the year with giveaways.

In the meantime, the basics are: any genre of book counts, if you’re already using a book for another challenge you can still count it for this one, etc. It’s pretty simple and straight forward.

Levels of Achievement

• Newbie (I’ll give it a try) 1-5
• Weekend Warrior (I’m getting the hang of this) 5-10
• Stenographer (can listen while multi-tasking) 10-15
• Socially Awkward (Don’t talk to me) 15-20
• Binge Listener (Why read when someone can do it for you) 20-30
• My Precious (I had my earbuds surgically implanted) 30+
• Marathoner (Look Ma No Hands) 50+
• The 100 Club (Audiobook Elite) 100+

The Books I’ve Listened to So Far

1. Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger
2. Sorcerer’s Legacy by Janny Wurts
3. The Rise of Magicks by Nora Roberts
4. Dune by Frank Herbert
5. Blindsight by Peter Watts
6. The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker
7. The Lightning-Struck Heart by TJ Klune
8. The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Geisbrecht
9. Blood Lines by Tanya Huff

Progress and Some Thoughts on the Books

So, 9 books listened to over nearly 3 months time. I had a really rough start to the year with audio as it took me a full month to read Steel Crow Saga and then I just wasn’t in much of a mood for listening to books for a while. Just when things started to pick up all my concentration went right out of the window thanks to this global pandemic. Welp. Despite everything, I’m still averaging a little under a book a week which isn’t terrible all things considered. If I continue at my current pace I may be able to eek out Marathoner again, but we’ll see how it goes!

Sorcerer’s Legacy, Dune and The Austen Playbook were re-reads, however this was my first time with the audiobooks for Dune and The Austen Playbook. I really enjoyed the production of Dune especially, it was a cast recording and there were cool sound effects too.

I enjoyed the audio for most of these so far, I cant’ say any really stand out for me as exceptional but for Dune. Some of the other performances were good and you could tell the narrators were giving their all (for example Steel Crow Saga and The Lightning-Struck Heart) but I might not whole-heartedly recommend the audio for those due to other reasons (Steel Crow Saga is more complex and The Lightning-Struck Heart….there is a lot of sex talk–if you don’t mind hearing the word ‘cock’ over and over then go for it lol). The worst for me so far has been Blindsight, the audio narrator just didn’t work for me at all with that one.

I don’t know how I’m going to do this year with my abysmal start but I’m at least I’m finally making progress with some of the audiobooks I’ve had in my TBR for a little while so yay for that. I also have some older titles in my audio queue that I’m planning to read for various reading challenges over the rest of the year so hopefully I’ll get my queue down a bit.

Are you participating in the Audiobook Challenge? I’d love to know how you’re doing! Leave a note in the comments, I’d love to chat!