Listen to a story

Sometimes listening to a good book is just the ticket. You might fancy something to keep you company on your daily exercise or want to occupy your mind while you do dishes or just a chance to sit back and enjoy a story. Luckily the internet has bunch of places to get an audio book from.

If you have access to your library borrower number you can access West Lothian's audio book collection via Borrow Box. 

World Book Day has full length children and teen audio books on it's website. I'm enjoying 'A Pinch of Magic' by Michelle Harrison. Three sisters are imprisoned by an ancient curse, each has an magical object but is that enough to break the curse?

For teen titles you can also sin up the Sync free Summer Reading programme. It's US based but the audiobooks are available anywhere, they offer two selected audiobooks every fortnight for free. It launches this year on the 30th of April.

For adult books try BBC Sounds  (also an app) has a bunch of free audio books. Including Roxane Gray's fantastic memoir 'Hunger'.

Or you can also sign up to uLibrary for free and enjoy unlimited access to audio books until the 31st July 2020 which includes popular authors like Lee Child and Anne Cleeves.


Open Culture and LibriVox have a vast collection of out of copyright books in audio form. If you fancy Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' but found it hard to get into or found Mary Shelly's writing style in 'Frankenstein' too hard then listening to the audio version can be a great way to enjoy these books.







Audible are offering a free service during the shutdown. They have stuff for all ages and in a mix of languages but my pick of the titles on offer currently are the Winnie the Pooh collections. Not only are they comforting to listen to but Pooh is a bit of a philosopher and you'll discover quite a few quotes to inspire.


I'd also recommend having a quick listen to John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme sketch - Pooh's Interdivention for a more comic and grown-up look at Pooh's worrying love of honey.