I have an odd situationship when it comes to audiobooks. I used to swear by them. I still enjoyed actually reading the words, but when I worked out in the public, I would almost always have an audiobook playing in the background.

But now I work from home, and I don’t use my audiobooks as much as I used to. (On a side note, I also don’t listen to podcasts as often as I used to either).

But recently, I’ve heard people talking about audiobooks again, so I’ve started to think about how I could work them back into my life.

My first step was figuring out how to get myself away from Amazon’s Audible. I have no interest in going through the Audible app. Enter Libation. This allowed me to download all (or at least most) of my audiobooks from Audible DRM free.

Then I downloaded and booted up the Audiobookshelf docker container. This is awesome. It hosts your audiobooks, and allows you to play and organize them with a very nice UI. I’ve also gotten Lissen which is a client for Android that connects to your Audiobookshelf server.

Now, I’m all setup. I’ve listened a little each of the last few days, and I’ve found that I have missed audiobooks much more than I thought I had. It is a completely different experience than reading the book yourself. It’s almost like listenting to a play being put on. Somehow I had forgotten how enjoyable that was.

I don’t think this will replace my regular reading, but it will be a nice addition.

So what about you? Which do you prefer?