AUDIO BOOKS - DO THEY COUNT?

You may have surmised that a lifelong avid reader of books like myself would have thought audiobooks as anathema. Perhaps regarding it as something a little infantile, reminiscent of a parent reading to a child, or just the province of the lazy arses. Well, while I wholeheartedly do turn up my nose at those ghastly companies offering condensed summaries of Important Books for the consumption of the consummate dilettante, I have recently been rather curious as to what the audiobook experience would be like.

Certain questions formed: does it really count as having read a book? Would I be able to concentrate properly? How much of it would I retain afterwards? How would a passive acquisition of literature compare to an active one?

And then there was the question of how to procure an audiobook. I have heard terrible tales from authors about the leading audiobook company (which shall remain nameless) and its disreputable practices regarding the reimbursement of authors. Not to mention the fact that I refuse to sign up for yet another subscription (I swear to God, the business model of these companies consists of in part the hope that a certain percentage of those who sign up just completely forget they’ve done so, letting their subscriptions ride for decades : money for nothing!)

Something else holding me back from trying an audiobook - when was I going to find the time for it? You see I have a full roster of podcasts to digest and I listen to these throughout the day as backdrops to various other tasks. Bedtime is when the book reading takes place. 

And then suddenly last week, the opportunity finally arose.

As a result of staring at my computer for hours on end, I got really bad eye strain and realised that I would have to take a rest from using my peepers intensively for a few days. I was also off work on holiday so there was plenty of time available. I needed some listening material fast, and I suddenly wondered whether someone somewhere had been putting out audiobooks independently for free. Not an unreasonable thought when you consider that there is a vast corpus of literature that is more than fifty years old and therefore not subject to copyright claims. To this end I squinted at my iPhone through my headache and had a quick look on Spotify: were there any playlists of audiobooks? Yes, there were! 

I soon discovered a volunteer organisation called Librivox who put out audio versions of the classics. Scrolling quickly through the list, I sought something that I might not otherwise get round to in book form. First, a misstep: The Great Gatsby - ugh!! I’ve never wanted to read this out of instinct, and listening to the first five minutes was enough to confirm my gut feeling. Not for me.

Next, I hit gold. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I’d bought two Brontë novels last year - Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, as yet unread, and Emily’s Wuthering Heights, a bit of a disappointment. Here was a chance to try another.

The choice was immediately proven to be a good one: excellent audio quality, and the American voice actor (Elizabeth Klett) doing the entire thing, all eighteen hours, in an excellent British RP accent. The story too, proved engrossing: not just Victorian literary tropes but some surprising twists and turns and a very refreshing protagonist who is no beauty and stubbornly asserts her freedom throughout. 

Three days of sofa-riding later I was done! My first audiobook experience completed.

So, how did it compare to reading? For one thing, the process is a lot slower. Now, I am not the fastest reader, but I suppose I am quite fast. Audiobooks are considerably slower, with each word having to be fully enunciated. 

As regards retention of material, I think I can say that I retained as much, and perhaps even more of the details of the story than when reading a book. Perhaps the more dramatic nature of the reading actually enhanced it, which was quite a surprise.

There is one obvious danger with audiobooks, though. Because you are a passive participant, it’s much easier for your attention to wander or even for you to nod off to sleep, particularly if you are lying in bed or otherwise supine, and once or twice I did have to rewind a little bit as I’d missed chunks.

Now that my eye strain has gone, and I’m back to my normal computer gazing and book reading regimen, perhaps there is no more need for me to use audiobooks, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of starting a new one on Spotify, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters (also read by Elizabeth Klett), but I am going through this at a much slower pace due to time constraints. Despite this, I think I will continue to occasionally indulge as there is something undeniably pleasant about having a story read to you.

In conclusion, I don’t think audiobooks are ever going to replace my active reading habits , but I think they will be a useful adjunct to my pursuit of literature. I mean, isn’t it the perfect way to approach that thick volume you’ve been putting off reading forever?