I am a reader, I promise. My family is a bunch of readers. My Mom read to me a lot growing up. My Grandma Ruth was a super fast reader. She had one of those "Read the Bible in a Year" Bibles and would read it every year just for fun, ON TOP of her regular reading.
My Mom reads a lot too, she's always got a new book to tell me about, an author she wants to collect or go see. Every few weekends we make the local bookstore rounds and there's a big book festival in August that's basically already on the calendar. She actually reads all the books she buys there, I buy them with the best of intentions and they end up piled up somewhere.
I was a pretty voracious reader until I got a smart phone. Ugh, that's embarrassing, I literally just made the connection.
This whole time I've been kind of a book jerk and thought that listening to an Audiobook was cheating. Is that a dumb thing to think? Yes. Did I make memes about it on the internet or talk crap about people who listen to books? Of course not. Who am I to yuck someone's yum (seriously, don't be the person who is always telling people why what they like sucks).
As a voiceover artist, it makes sense to listen to Audiobooks for a myriad of reasons. Also I listen to a lot of podcasts and learn from them so why did I have this dumb disdain (band name) for Audiobooks? No idea.
One of my March goals was to listen to 3 Business related Audiobooks. Here are my quick and dirty reviews on the ones I listened to in March.
The Crazy Busy Cure by Zena Everett, narrated by the Author. Useful and concise, this productivity book doesn't waste time congratulating you for reading a book about productivity. There are actionable steps for anybody in there from solopreneur to corporate fat cat. You can tell it was written or at least finished up during Covid but that doesn't make it any less helpful.
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, narrated by Michael Kramer. This is one of those business books that you always hear about - no surprise - there is a lot of fascinating stuff in there. Some that you can put into use in life and some that applies to voiceover negotiations. It takes a while to get to the how-to's of it all but it's worth it. There's a lot about hostage negotiation so it's almost a True Crime book.
The Non-Obvious Guide to Small Business Marketing (Without a Big Budget) by Rohit Bhargava, narrated by Art Nemeth. I was looking for a short listen before the end of the month and I found it in this one. It's a little less than 3 hours and those are 3 action packed hours as far as marketing goes. Like the Crazy Busy Cure, it wastes no time congratulating you for picking up a book or trying to impress you with what a badass the author is. I would recommend it to anyone, even if you don't know your value proposition from your golden handcuffs.
So there you go, 3 Business Audiobooks I got over myself and listened to last month. They were all free on Spotify Premium. I bet you could find Never Split the Difference on tape at any library. Yesterday I started listening to Radical Radiance by Angela Jia Kim, so I'll report on that next month.
NONE OF THESE are affiliate links, they're just regular fricking links. I don't get anything if you buy anything. Happy Listening and Happy Reading!
Next time on NOT A BLOG: why my logo has a bird in it.
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