:: Get Lit With It: The Walking Book Club

You probably know that I am a bit of a walker? I really like getting out of the house and away from the computer as much as possible, because I do spend a totally ridiculous amount of time online. (That said, I love the internet!)

Anyhoo, I was thinking about starting a Winter walking club so that we could all walk in a bit of a far-flung gang… and then I thought I would combine that with my love of audiobooks and then I came up with the idea of The Walking Book Club. Of course, all bright ideas have probably been thunk of already, so I googled ‘Walking Book Club’ and there are indeed OTHER walking book clubs. Some of them revolve around reading a book and going for a walk to talk about it. Others involve walking TO a book shop. Others still probably involve listening to audio books (like this one) but I stopped looking at Google once I’d confirmed that a term as great as Walking Book Club must already exist. (Feel free to research on, on my behalf, if you must!)

So back to THIS Walking Book Club. It involves choosing an audiobook to ‘read’ together and walking (and sometimes not walking) and listening to that book. If you are fancy you can snap some photos along your walk and Instagram them with #thewalkingbookclub to share. Perhaps you had visions of us all walking around holding books and crashing into trees, ponds, people? Don’t do that. Audiobooks are a much less injurious way to soak up a good book while you’re on the go.

The good thing about The Walking Book Club is that it encourages us to keep moving and get out in the world amongst the people and the trees and the nature and stuff. ALSO it’s not the crazy boring kind of walk because you are getting lit with it, so to speak. You get to move your bits and pieces AND feed your brain with someone else’s bright ideas/words at the same time. WIN-ING! This is multi-tasking of the very best kind!

The very first choice for #thewalkingbookclub for April/May is Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. It’s available as an audiobook on Audible here.

You can find Kate’s website here and sample a little bit of the book via the author herself.  I’ve heard great things about this book (I bought a copy – above – but had not read it yet!) Apparently the narration of this audiobook is really compelling/entertaining too. If you need further convincing, here’s some snippets of what other (quite famous) people thought of Life After Life.

Downloading the audiobook:

If you are a member of Audible it’s $14.95 (Audible membership is linked to Amazon and also allows you one audiobook a month at that $14.95 price!)

Note: I actually find Audible really clunky to use. Maybe that’s just me? You need to buy the book, download the book at Audible.com, then sync it on your phone (under audiobooks) once it’s on your computer and finally listen? I’m sure there’s an easier way but the app seems totally spoozy. Just be aware of that if you haven’t used it before. It takes a bit of klunking around and it’s spoozy, but worth it in the end.

. You can buy the audiobook directly via iTunes too, but it’s mucho more expensive! It’s easier to do though.
. You can also buy it via Amazon here and it’ll sync to your phone automatically – again it’s more pricey but less spoozy!

Talking about the book and the walking:

There is a The Walking Book Club Facebook page here where you can book chatter or upload #thewalkingbookclub images or talk about where you walked to or just hang out. I can’t wait to see where this walking/reading adventure takes us!

So what do you think? Are you in?! You can start right away or start on May 1st if you need to save up for the book! Comment below or LIKE the FB page to join in.

What do you say? Do you want to read and walk?

x Pip

PS: If you want to read the book and NOT walk, you can do that too! The more the merrier!
PPS: You can walk around the house and listen if you are unable to get out!