I did in the 90’s, but only when the library didn’t have paper copies.
My grandma liked to listen to John Grisham novels on tape in her car; she drove a lot for work.
Big time memories here. Yes books on tape were a big thing for people stuck to cars. My dad had a bunch of them.
Not audibooks but as a kid I had tons of radio plays on cassette. Are those only popular in Germany?
The most popular ones were about groups of 3-6 kids doing detective work or going on other adventures. The biggest one was ??? (The Three Questionmarks). I think there are still new episodes coming out today with the protagonists being adults by now. I even went to a live performance once. It was awesome.
But often TV shows got also turned into radio plays. More often than not they would take the audio from the show 1:1 and put it on cassettes. I had Ducktales, TMNT and a weird Playmobil one. For some of these I would actually see the original TV episode much later but would finally realise what the weird sound effects were supposed to represent.
I never new The Three Investigators were continued later. I remember reading those in Danish as a child.
The three investigators were continued in Germany only. It’s still a huge thing thanks to the radio plays. The first ones were released in 1979 based on the original English novels. After the series was discontinued in the States, German writers took over and published new books. With the radio plays we’re now at episode 250 with the original voice actors from back in the day who are now in their 50s / 60s.
And they’re doing live events in large concert halls for their many fans.
Radio plays are not exclusive to Germany, but their popularity in Germany is 2nd to none. In Great Britain, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis) started out as a radio play on BBC before it was published as a book.
My truck only has AM/FM and cassette. I still have some of my Weird Al tapes in there for when I’m driving it a lot.
You know they make adapters that can connect with an aux cord or Bluetooth right?
They’re pretty neat and last time I needed one like 3-4 years ago Walmart had them for like $5.
Not ragging your choices, just looking for my 1/10000
Yeah, I had one and it burned out years ago. I rarely drive that truck, so it’s pretty low priority.
I actually still use one of these. A new stereo is too expensive when the tape works fine. I can’t imagine that I’d notice the difference since the car’s noise dampening isn’t very good.
They have cigarette lighter chargers with Bluetooth.
What do you do with Bluetooth on a cigarette lighter charger?
Listen to podcasts from a phone? Music?
Oh, it has a speaker built into it?
In the 90s, I used to record my favorite movies (from VHS) onto cassettes so I could listen to them at my summer job on the assembly line. What were those movies, you ask…
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Back To School, UHF, Trading PlacesSUPPLIES!
hahaha!!!
I had a bunch of disney audio books on red cassettes in the early 90’s
My dad used to cassette audio books in the car all the time in the 90’s.
The library had books on tape in those big molded plastic cases. Like 20 tapes per book sometimes. We’d take a couple of those anytime we’d go on an overnight trip out of town.
I had a few comedy albums. Some of them like Monty Python had a mix of music and skits. I wasn’t super into audiobooks. Probably the longest thing I ever listened to was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in its (original?) BBC Radio rendition.
The hitchhikers’ radio series on cassette started my love of audiobooks. I listened to it dozens of times as a teen. Went to sleep listening to it.
We had a little robot that would tell you stories and you got to pick the adventure by pressing buttons
I had a Teddy Ruxpin that was like that. I still have the regular Teddy Ruxpin, and some of the story tapes; but not the original tape player.
My mom had also gotten my siblings and I some kind of edutainment set of cassettes that had, like, skits and such like an episode of Sesame Street all about learning various things. I forgot what the heck they were called though. They were super popular in the 80’s/early 90’s and predated Hooked on Phonics.
Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends read by the author. Peter and the Wolf with orchestral accompaniment.
My mom had a tape that guided you through isometric exercises to do in the car. There was a large tape book always around my house of like 12 cassettes that somehow taught you how to speed read, but I don’t think anyone ever used it.
When I was really young I’d check out audiobooks from the library, but I preferred reading books over listening to them. My grandparents loved audiobooks though. They had a cottage in Michigan they’d go to every summer, and they’d listen to them during the trip up there and back.
I listened to a ton of music on my walkman in the 80s, but the one thing I listened to that has stuck with me since then was the binaural recording of The Mist. I listened to it late at night during a very intense monsoon. Just amazing.
I also listened to that very same recording of The Mist, on my walkman. I remember reading in the liner notes they used a “Kunstkopf” (“false head”) system to make it sound like some things were behind you. Holy sweet fuck that was great to listen to. Then a bunch of years later I’m playing Half Life for the first time and when things went to shit all I could think was “oh, Arrowhead Project”
I used to record my favorite jokes and songs from Animaniacs.
Don’t know that I every played them on a Walkman though.
Borrowed audio books on cassette from the library for long drives. You’d have the book thing open on the passenger seat for easily switching to the next tape. Never could afford to buy them outright.
I listened to my dad’s Clear and Present Danger cassettes in the early 90s, partly on my knockoff Walkman, IIRC.
If it counts, I bought a cast recording of an old production of Hamlet on cassette as well, when I was in college.
The experience is generally fine. The linear nature of books works fairly well with cassettes.
