Leading up to the trip, Allen says he started sending clues to the couple. The customers selected the trip length, budget, shared their interests and some other information thenlet The Vacation Hunt do the rest. 'And it's harder to Google a plot point if you don't even realize it's from a book.'Ī recent example: Allen and Agarwal planned a surprise trip for a customer to Hawaii. 'We don't want people to just be able to Google it,' she says. 'We try to come up with plot points or obscure references to places in books that are also tied to our secret destination,' says Allen.Īgarwal says books are a regular source for the clues because they make for a better challenge.

Leading up to the getaway, they email the travelers clues and post hints on social media, and often those tips are inspired by books the co-founders listened to. Husband-and-wife team Roshni Agarwal and Jeff Allen recently co-founded a vacation-planning business called The Vacation Hunt, where they plan a mystery trip tailored to a customer's interests. 'But I still prefer audiobooks.' Get this title As she applies for marketing jobs and works as a freelance photographer, she's still listening to audiobooks.'I can read with no problems,' she says. In May, she graduated as class valedictorian, majoring in literature and studio art with a minor in English writing. 'I feel like it's more authentic, because you get narrators that are narrating with the accent of the actual characters,' she says. When tuning into books such as Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, de Somer says she felt more immersed in the time and place - Nigeria in the 1960s - as she listened to the African pronunciations and intonations. The method, she found, enriched the story, adding texture and nuance to the characters and plot. She came up with a solution: listening to her literature homework. 'So reading Jane Austen for three hours in a row probably was not allowed.' 'I wasn't even supposed to read social media,' she says. When her doctor ordered two weeks of bedrest with no reading, her world was shaken. 'My eyes wouldn't go side to side,' she says. Last fall, de Somer was in a car crash and suffered a concussion that left her unable to read. Were it not for audiobooks, Elise de Somer isn't sure she would have been able to continue as a literature major at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind. 'That helps us to bond, as well.' Get this title

'Sometimes I even sit with him while he listens because he wants me to hear a passage that he thinks is funny,' she says. With fewer arguments and less stress, Behr's job is easier. Now that he's listening to audiobooks, he seems to get fewer headaches and he settles in to bed more easily. 'I set the sleep timer on the Audible app and when it stops, he knows it's time to go to bed. So I bought him a Rick Riordan,' she says. 'One day, I just got tired of struggling to get him to put a book down before bed. So she decided to try something new: audiobooks. With Behr's son's constant and intense focus on books, she was concerned for his vision and the fact that he simply wouldn't go to sleep. Hunter has been diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other learning challenges - but reading has never been one of them. 'There will be times where, after 30 minutes of prompts, I've had to pull a book out of my son's hands because he won't go to bed,' she says. 'I'm probably the only mom on the planet that has to yell at their child to stop reading,' says Behr, who works remotely so that her schedule allows flexibility for parenting. So much so that she couldn't get him to stop reading at night. Valery Behr's teenage son, Hunter, is an ardent reader.

Reading jobs for audiobooks