There are few things that compare to the smell and feel of a new book: looking at the cover, leafing through the first few pages…An hour to yourself, sitting under a tree, in a coffee shop or in your cosiest armchair at home. A door to another world.
Print books will always be my favourite: browsing in a book shop and ending with a small stack of new books on the kitchen table. Few simple pleasures compare.
However, I will not deny ebooks have become a part of my life. No more dragging a heavy suitcase around, in case you run out of books on holiday. No more being stuck in a remote spot with no bookshop or library with—horrors—nothing to read. And, let’s admit it, instant gratification—you need some research material, or the next one in a series, and wham! You got it. For someone who grew up in Athens with one lone serious bookshop downtown, it still feels like a small miracle.
Again, though, living in Athens in a period where the city grew exponentially and before new roads were built, I spent hours in the car every day, sitting in traffic watching the light ahead turn green, then red again with nothing moving. Sometimes I actually cried. What saved me was books on tape. Later, books on CD and now on Audible. I must have listened to literally hundreds of books and, if they are unabridged and narrated by someone good, they lose nothing in comparison.
On the contrary, I listened again with pleasure to classics like my favourite, Middlemarch, which I would not have had the time to read after a day full of work, ferrying children etc. At most a few pages at night, with my eyes closing.
All of Jane Austen and the Brontes. The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell. Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, read by Colin Firth. To name but a few that spring to mind. Would I have had the time, or even the patience?
I still love listening to audiobooks when chopping the veggies, drawing and, especially, driving. If I’m driving alone for a few hours, I like nothing better. The funny thing is, listening to a book while driving keeps me alert—but, should I decide to do it while sitting in an armchair or lying on the sofa, it sends me to sleep at once! Go figure…
For my own audiobooks, I found a fantastic narrator, Terry Diab (some of you Brits probably know her from films or tv) who did a great job with Marguerite and is now busy getting on with the next in the series, Isabel.
Marguerite is not on Audible yet (it takes forever) but is live on Spotify, and also, starting October 16th, it will be available through Audiolibrix, a Prague-based audiobook platform popular across Central Europe (good news if you live or have friends or family in Czech Republic or Slovakia!).
To celebrate I am giving out a number of redemption codes for Spotify copies, so if any of you feel like a free listen, reply in the comments and I will send you one by email. You can then tell me what you think!
Sadly there is one constraint: codes can only be redeemed by listeners in a specific list of countries — Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, UK, and the US — so if you don’t live in one of the above, you will have to wait for the Audible release.
P.S. For those who apply, I will send you an explanation how to redeem the code on Spotify. You need to have an account, but the free account is fine, you do not need Prenium.
Letters from Athens 