This post actually first appeared as a guest post over at 125 Pages a few years ago, but I thought I’ve probably learned a few lessons since then, and it might be a good idea to update it and post it here.

In case you’re not aware, I run the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up Link-Up and the Book Blog Discussion Challenge. Both of these have been very rewarding – especially the discussion challenge, which is definitely my proudest accomplishment as a blogger. It’s been a huge success, and better yet, I’ve made so many great connections with bloggers via the challenge!

But what does it take to make a meme or challenge really work? How do you get it started? How do you get people interested in it? And then how do you keep people excited about it so it doesn’t fizzle out?

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So, I’ve seen lots of posts about how great audiobooks are, and I agree with all of them. I love listening to audiobooks while I drive or while I’m doing boring housework. They make those things much more interesting!

My husband isn’t much of a reader. He never has been. But he does enjoy listening to audiobooks from time to time. This is the one way that he consumes books. So for that reason alone, I think audiobooks are wonderful–they bring books to people who might not choose to read otherwise.

But it occurred to me just this weekend that audiobooks are truly important to my family for an altogether different reason—one that most people don’t even consider.

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I have a collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I’ve owned for as long as I can remember, possibly even since birth. It was published in 1973, a year before I was born, and it seems like the type of book my eccentric dad or one of his eccentric friends would have thought was really funny to gift to a baby due to all the cannibalism and cutting off of body parts, etc.

Anyway, I’m fairly certain I read the whole thing as a child, but apparently it didn’t scar me for life because I didn’t remember much except for the fact that they were sort of bloody and brutal. Since I’m currently plotting a fairy tale retelling (The Selfish Giant), I decided to go back and read some other original fairy tales to get more of a flavor of those stories. Thus, I picked up my copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

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