If you
spend more time in the car driving to and from work than you have time to read,
you are a good candidate for audiobooks. As the name suggests, audiobooks are
voice recordings of the text of a book that you listen to rather than
read. Audiobooks can be exact word-for-word versions of books or abridged
versions. You can listen to audiobooks on a portable music player, cell phone,
computer, tablet, home speaker system, or in cars that support streaming audio.
Spoken word recordings first became possible with the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Phonographic books were one of the original applications envisioned by Edison to speak to blind people without effort on their part. Spoken audio has been available in schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word albums were made prior to the age of videocassettes, DVDs, compact discs, and downloadable audio often of poetry and plays rather than books. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays. Here are myths and facts on the wonderful medium of audiobooks:
1.
MYTH: I’ll miss out on something if I don’t read the
print.
FACT: Listening to an
audiobook doesn’t have to be a shortcut. Think of it as watching the whole
production on Broadway versus reading the play for your high school English
class. Audiobook narrators often breathe new life into books with their amazing
nuanced interpretations, which excels if it’s read by the author and the
author’s good at reading out loud.
I
confess I never really got the big deal about Harry Potter when I read the
series in print, but then I listened to the brilliant Jim Dale who finally brought
J.K. Rowling’s universe alive for me through his characterizations and
inflections. The audiobook brought it to a whole new level.
2.
MYTH: Audiobooks narrators have annoying voices.
FACT: Remember that
Seinfeld episode from the nineties when George freaks out because his book on
tape sounds exactly like himself? The production value of audiobooks has gotten
much better. These days, celebrity actors, comedians, and even
the authors themselves narrate books (and some readers have even become famous just for doing audiobooks).
If
you haven’t listened to an audiobook narrated by David Sedaris, Tina Fey, Patti
Smith, James Earl Jones, or Matt Damon yet, you’re so totally missing out. The
rare reader’s voice might occasionally drive you crazy. Don’t let that stop you
from a whole wide world of wonderful.
3.
MYTH: Audiobooks are for people who don’t really like to
read.
FACT: You know the type:
that soccer mom who joined a book club just for the box wine and grabbed a
last-minute Sue Grafton audiobook for the family road trip to Yosemite. I once
stereotyped every single audiobook listener this way. Then I met Kelly. Kelly
and I worked together at my very first library job, and I used to think she was
a witch because she finished books so fast.
She
blazed her way through the American
Library Association’s entire list of banned books in mere weeks. Then
I realized Kelly wasn’t supernatural; she was always listening to an audiobook
— in her car while shelving new nonfiction at the library. Chances are if you
know someone who reads more than you thought humanly possible, they are at
least supplementing with audiobooks.
4.
MYTH: I have no reason to listen to audiobooks when I can
just read the print.
FACT: My absolute number
one reason for loving audiobooks is that they let me keep right on reading
whether I’m walking, running, driving, knitting, cooking, canoeing, or folding
origami peacocks. With audiobooks, any activity that requires the use of your
eyes and hands, but not your ears is now potential reading
time. Audiobooks let you maximize your reading time and read all things.
5.
MYTH: Audiobooks are less intimate than print.
FACT: This is both true
and not true. I don’t read audiobooks curled up in bed or by the ocean or over
a steaming cup of coffee on Sunday mornings. For me, these reflective moments
call for a quieter kind of reading with a tangible bookish object. But one of
my favorite kinds of audiobooks are memoirs, and the intimacy of listening to
an author read her life story to me while it’s just she and I alone together in
my car.
6.
MYTH: It’s too hard to follow what’s happening in an
audiobook.
FACT: I was a little
disoriented when I first started listening to audiobooks. You almost have to
train your ear how to listen to the narrative, and it can be frustrating not to
be able to jump back and reread things you didn’t quite catch the first time.
If
you can follow a radio show or a podcast, you can follow an audiobook. It might
just take a tiny bit of practice. Some types of books are also just easier to
listen to than others so experiment a little. A lot of people say they really
like listening to a nonfiction narrative on audio.
7.
MYTH: Audiobooks are too expensive.
FACT: Any public library
is going to have an enormous audiobook collection of current sought-after
titles. If they don’t have the exact title you want, they’ll borrow it from
another library for you. They’ll carry audiobooks in multiple formats,
including audio cds, mp3 cds, and downloadable mp3s through apps like Overdrive
and One Click Digital.
“I’ve never listened to an audiobook before,
and I have to say it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book,
the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to
happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over
your eyes”
(Robin Sloan)[i]
[i] Sources used:
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