When they first started in 1932 for those who were blind, they were called “Talking Books.” Later we knew them as “books on tape.” Then they went to compact disks, and now they’re just titles in a “cloud library” that within a matter of minutes can be downloaded to you smartphone.
If you haven’t discovered audiobooks yet, you are in for a treat! Today, audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of the publication industry, and for good reason. In our normally fast-paced society (when we’re not quarantined at home), finding the time to sit down and read can be challenging. Many people already take advantage of time spent driving or exercising to listen to audiobooks, but even at home you could plug in your earbuds and listen to a good book while doing the dishes, scrubbing the bathroom, or vacuuming. You may soon find that you look forward to these mundane chores, with the added benefit that your house might get cleaner than ever.
So who is likely to enjoy an audiobook? Even though statistics show that “more than half of audiobook listeners are young, ages 18-44,” don’t let that stop you. All of us can enjoy audiobooks once we become familiar with the technology, which isn’t difficult. Children will love to have an audiobook narrator read them their favorite book as they follow along in the print version or just look at the pictures. Adults of any age who are intellectually curious can listen for the purpose of learning or for entertainment. Both nonfiction and fiction titles are readily available, with more being produced all the time. In The Untold History of the Talking Book, author Matthew Rubery says that “audiobooks are for people who hate reading and for those of us who love reading. [They] are for people who can’t read, and for people who can’t read enough.”
So you might be wondering, What advantage does an audiobook have over a print book? Right from the start, audiobooks might seem more personal. You hear the voice of an actual person, and sometimes that person has a special connection to the work, as when a book is read by its author, as with Michelle Obama’s Becoming, Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child, and Rachel Maddow’s Blowout. And who better to know how it should be read than the person who wrote it? She knows just where to put the emphasis or what is intended as sarcasm. Even if it’s not read by the author, often an audiobook by a British author will be read by someone with a British accent, or the narrator may use different voices for different characters. Sometimes there is even more than one narrator; the greatest example of this is probably George Saunder’s audiobook Lincoln in the Bardo which has a separate narrator for each 166 characters! Some of the narrators are celebrities, like Susan Sarandon, some are Saunder’s own wife and children. It sounds like a Broadway play that has been recorded.
Another advantage of audiobooks is that they don’t require you to get in the car and go to the library—a benefit at any time but especially now when libraries are temporarily closed. In the same vein, you don’t have to return an audiobook either; when it’s due, it simply disappears from your downloads. This prevents you from ever having overdue fines; however, it can be quite a disappointment if you’re not yet finished the book. Sometimes you can renew it before it’s automatically returned, but if there is someone waiting, you’ll just have to get back in line.
And as I’ve already mentioned, you can listen to audiobooks while your eyes and hands are busy with something else. I have always liked to read at the end of the day before going to sleep, so now I just plug in my earbuds and listen from the downloaded book on my phone. This has the advantage of saving on eye strain and doesn’t require the use of a reading light that might keep my partner awake.
So if audiobooks are really this great, why isn’t everyone listening to them? Daniel Willingham, a psychologist and leading researcher on reading, says that today he is most frequently asked, “Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?” Why should we think of it as “cheating”? Well, you’re not sitting down and savoring the text. You can’t go back and re-read a sentence you may not have understood or that you just particularly liked, nor can you keep the book on a shelf for future reference. One of the advantages of audiobooks—that you can listen while you’re doing something else—is also a drawback, since multitasking by definition means you’re not giving any one thing your full attention. When you sit down to read, you are focusing on the text. With audiobooks you can’t highlight or underline or write comments in the margins. Some dislike audiobooks’ lack of organization cues—you might not know when a new chapter or section begins, and you can’t “see” how far along you are in the book. Another disadvantage I’ve noticed is that, when I listen in bed before going to sleep, I sometimes fall asleep with the audiobook going and it continues to play without me. But designers of audiobook apps are addressing some of these issues, including sleep timers to automatically stop the book and indications of how far along you are in the book, giving a percentage of completion.
But seriously, is listening to a book inferior to reading it? Certainly it is different, but a recent study compared the comprehension and retention of various groups that listened to an audiobook/ read an e-book/ or did both, and “No statistically significant differences were found [in either comprehension or retention] for any analyses pertaining to effects of the three different instructional conditions.” Of course, how well we retain information varies with each person and with the material to be retained. Non-fiction that contains many facts and statistics is more difficult to remember than is the plot of a novel. And some scientists have theorized that women retain information from audiobooks better than men, because we all know that women are better listeners.
So if I’ve intrigued you with the possibilities of audiobooks—and I hope I have—where do you find them? The best place to begin is at your local library where they are free for three weeks just by downloading to your smartphone. You can look up audiobooks in the OWWL system, (Ontario, Wayne, Wyoming, and Livingston counties), using the OverDrive or Libby app. Most of these books are unabridged, or read in their entirety. Another other good source of free audiobooks is LibriVox, which specializes in classics and foreign language books read by volunteers. Subscription sites for audiobooks include Audible, owned by Amazon, which offers 200,000 titles; Kobo, a large service offering 1.5 million titles; Audiobooks.com, which offers 100,000 books; Downpour, which has both a subscription program and a rental service; and Scribd, which provides both print books and audiobooks.
Some view the recent rise of audiobooks as being closely tied to the popularity of podcasts. Both, after all, are something we listen to. Capitalizing on that similarity, Scribd has begun their own podcast called ScribdChat which host interviews with authors on a variety of subjects and books.
So if you’re hard pressed to find the time to sit down and read, consider listening instead. A wealth of audiobooks is just waiting.