Audiobooks and How They Saved My Reading Time

As a busy author and teacher, I’m always trying to figure out how to fit in more reading time. I mean, aren’t we all? I found that the answer to more reading time wasn’t to read at all.

Confused?

Don’t worry. I’m talking about the joy of audiobooks. My favored platform is Audible, for which I keep a subscription, but any audiobook service will do the job. Audiobooks tend to be more expensive than regular books, and much more expensive than ebooks, but that is why I maintain the subscription. For $15 a month, I get a credit toward an audiobook of my choice, and the list price of most of these titles far exceeds 15 dollars, so I’m getting a good deal there. The subscription also makes a variety of titles available for free, especially multiple Great Courses series that I have devoured like the true ivory tower academic that I am.

The point here is that audiobooks allow me to dual-purpose my writing time. I spend lots of hours every day in the car driving around to client’s homes, and that time is almost always taken up by listening to audiobooks. I also bike for the majority of that all-important thing people call exercise, and I take my audiobooks along with me there too. On an average day, I might get two to three hours of “reading” time even if I don’t have any hours to sit down with an actual book.

Are Audiobooks as Good as Real Reading?

The obvious question I had here, especially as a reading teacher (a lot of my struggling readers like audiobooks) is: Are they a good replacement for regular reading? Am I cheating my brain out of the true reading experience by replacing so much of my time with audiobooks? According to a Times article Are Audiobooks As Good For You As Reading? Here’s What Experts Say | Time there’s a lot of discussion to be had here.

Some studies show there is little change in comprehension between listening and reading text, but there is a large caveat to this. It seems to depend greatly on what you’re reading/listening to and what you’re going to do with it. Reading study materials, like a manual or a textbook after which you will be tested on the information is obviously not the same experience as reading a story. Human brains are naturally wired for stories, and we can make connections to a story that helps us remember it in ways we cannot make with nonfiction material. It seems that listening to study doesn’t give audiobooks a good grade, but there seems to be a much closer overlap in comprehension when the material is for pleasure or leisure, as most fiction reading is.

That said, I have a personal anecdote to add here. I’ve listened to quite a few nonfiction texts and the Great Courses series as audiobooks. I can attest to a few things. First, the Great Courses, given that they were lectures and were meant to be listened to, do quite well in audio format. A few times, it was hard because the presentation made it obvious the lecturer was also referencing a visual (Great Courses are actually videos meant to be watched like a real in-class lecture), but for the most part, I got the idea of every lecture well enough to enjoy it and learn from it. In the case of non-fiction books (so far mostly physics and history topics) It’s been a little of both. I’ve had to relisten to certain chapters or even relisten to whole books, but that might be because the subject matter was particularly complex, and I probably would have reread the same material if it had been in print form.

As far as true fiction audiobooks. I’ve never felt the need to relisten to them for understanding or memory. A few I’ve relistened to merely for the pleasure of the story and especially the narrator.

The Narrator is as Vital as the Book Itself

I cannot stress the importance of a narrator. There have been many books I’ve wanted to listen to, but I’ve abandoned them at the sample purely due to the fact I didn’t like the narrator. I’ve also listened to massive books (Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead) and even started The Fountainhead over again because not only are the books great, but the narrator is a pleasure to just listen to, even if you already know the story.

Some narrators completely make a book. For example, Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force is what it is purely because of the skill of the narrator who does all of the books and does them so spectacularly that I would feel like I am missing out if I had actually read the books myself.

There’s also a unique strength to the medium here that I’ve explored only once: audio dramas. I plan a separate blog post just on this since I don’t consider these to be “books” in the traditional sense.

Audio and Print Balance

There doesn’t need to be a contest between print and audio. Both have their roles and advantages. Despite my love of audiobooks, I don’t think they can or should entirely replace print books. Some books just aren’t that great on audio. Others are arguably better on audio than they are in print. It’s important for your reading brain to have a healthy dose of “real” reading as often as you can, but there’s nothing wrong with audiobooks. You are still experiencing the story. You are still processing the words and creating mental images just like you would with print. If any mental activity is missing it is the decoding aspect of reading print—looking at all those little black squiggles and deriving meaning from them.

The simple fact is that most people just don’t have time in a day to devote hours and hours to reading books in print, an activity that rightly demands you do nothing else at the same time. Audiobooks remain a great way to engage with books and stories while also being able to multitask.