I gave in to audio books and super-charged my “reading”
We have a small bookshop in the town where I work. The manager is a good friend and I’ll often wile away a lunch hour chatting with her. One day over a year ago, so told me of an online service called Libro.fm, which is essentially an audio book club.
I used to tell myself I would never start using audio books. Why? Probably some misguided idea that it wasn’t really reading… and honesly I’m still not convinced that it is reading. But two things pushed me toward trying to listen to books: First, I had recently discontinued my SiriusXM satellite radio subscription and needed something to listen to in my truck during my commute. And second, Libro.fm donates a part of each of my audio book purchases to this bookstore.
So I joined Libro and have been a happy subscriber for 16 months now. (I am not affiliated with Libro, and get no monetary reward for signing people up. This article is just about my experience… any audio book service, including your local library will provide the same benefits I am writing about.)
I made myself one guideline: I would only listen to nonfiction books during my drives. All my fiction reading would still occur with a physical book in my hands. I made this rule for myself because I feared I might get lazy and never actually “read” a book again.
I should state here that though I have been a life-long reader, I am also a slow reader. Consequently, there are many books, especially longer ones, that take too long for me to get through. This is especially true of nonfiction, where my dodgy brain wants to move on to other topics before I’ve finished the current book. My shelves are full of books I’ve started or almost started, but never gotten to the last page.
By listening to books, I have opened a new world onto exciting, interesting subjects that I would never have read otherwise. I’ve absorbed the fascinating stories of Descarte’s bones, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (both by the fine author Russell Shorto), of the life of a remarkable American, Ulysses Grant, the tribulations surrounding the American Revolution, and a dozen other exciting, interesting stories from astronomy to map making, philosophy to environmental writing.
There are drawbacks to listening to my books. The first is that it is very difficult to go back and “re-read” a section I may not feel I completely comprehended. The second is that it is also virtually impossible to take notes of what I’ve heard… especially because I’m always driving while listening. I do not get to look at any maps or illustrations that might add to the experience and my understanding. If I feel it is important to take notes of one of these books, I will buy the physcial book, so that adds to the cost.
Another hitch can be the person reading the book. I sometimes can’t get past the tone used by the reader. For example, one noted nature writer read her own work, but she sounded like a kindergarten teacher reading a fairy tale to her young students, breathy and with annoying pauses. I couldn’t go on with that book. Libro.fm (and I’m sure other services do, as well) provides an audio preview so I can get a sense for how well the reader might mesh with my ears.
One final issue I’ve had involves books with too many foreign names and places, or too many technical terms, then it becomes hard for me to keep track of who’s who and what’s what. With these books it would help to see the names and words and not just hear them.
The result is I don’t always finish audio books that I start, but that is the same with physical books. In fact, I finish a much higher pecentage of the audio books than I do the books on my shelves.
In short, I have broadened my exposure to a wide range of topics I probably never would have delved into without audio books, and I still have my regular reading time to enjoy the genre fiction that has made up the bulk of my reading list.
