Sep 19 2008
How do you take your audiobook? Cream? Sugar? While changing your baby?
I had an interesting exchange with Peter at Creative Byline regarding audiobooks while discussing this post about the rise in audiobook sales. He attributes it partly to the ability to multitask–one can listen to an audiobook while jogging, doing errands, changing a baby, etc. Considering how busy people are these days, this a better way to “read” a book because it’s less of a time commitment.
My response was that I have the opposite problem. Because I read faster than I can listen, audiobooks seem like a much slower method of reading. Further, I can’t concentrate on an audiobook if I’m doing anything else. Even if I’m driving, it’s easy to get caught up in what’s going on around me, watching the people or the traffic, and then I have to rewind the book to where I was last paying attention.
However, Peter brought up another excellent point–there’s also the appeal of celebrity readers. Even better, in my opinion, is when authors narrate their own books. Although I am truly not the audiobook type, I do really enjoy listening to a David Sedaris audiobook. For those of you who have read Sedaris but haven’t listened–you have to try it. He has such a unique voice (probably why he is also so popular on NPR) and he makes the material even more hilarious, intriguing, and grotesque by lending just the right inflection to his narration.
Audiobooks are a very interesting medium because of the way people use them. My grandmother only listened to audiobooks because she was legally blind, for instance. Do you listen to audiobooks? When do you prefer them over books? Where do you listen?
Who knew I would be so intrigued with audiobooks all of a sudden…
I find audio books harder to read…and if I’m driving, I sometimes have to pull over during a sad part (I am a real weeper!).
Some authors aren’t that good at reading their own work, either. Audiobooks are far more dependent on who is chosen to read the words. A reader can make or break a book in that form.
The Harry Potter series is FABULOUSLY read. He’s the best I’ve heard on audiobooks.
When I have longer commutes,I like to have the option of listening to stuff as I drive… not particularly contemporary stuff though… in the past, I’ve downloaded classics that I needed to ‘read’ for school and listened to them while driving… Aristotle’s Poetics, and Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, among others.
Haven’t really been doing it this semester as the fast majority of my reading is now academic journals.