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.
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.
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 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”
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.
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 actually won a walkman. Second prize in a rap contest. Well, I wrote the rap. I didn’t have to perform the rap. Oh no no you would not want that.
Anyway, I want to say I listened to the Hitchhikers Guide radio plays on mine.
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.
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.
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.
As a teenager, I would record the audio from movies onto cassettes, then listen to them on long bike rides. Damn near wore out MASH and Coming to America.
As a kid I had the Dinotopia audiodrama tapes and my family would get old radio shows like Jack Benny from the CrackerBarrel store on road trips.
I need need need need neeeeeed the magnus archives on tape holy shit i didnt know how much i needed that
The idea of an audio drama on cassette never occured to me
When I was in elementary school we would go to the scholastic book fair, and they had a lot of kids’ books that had audiobooks on cassette bundled with them. My parents got me my own player and I’d sit up in my room playing with blocks or dolls or whatever while listening to The Seven Chinese Brothers or Swimmy, that kind of thing. Some thirty years later my husband let me use his Audible account and I rediscovered the joy of listening to books while doing random stuff around the house.
My dad used to cassette audio books in the car all the time in the 90’s.
I remember having the Batman Forever and Batman Knightfall audio books on cassette back when I was a kid.
I listened to them so many times the voice and cadence of the narrator is permanently burned into my subconscious. I still quote them from time to time without really thinking about it.
