Audiobooks have become my latest favourite form of reading. Gone are those days when I used to commute for hours to go to work, or have idle mornings, or an evening tea break; all of which included a book in my hand.
As time passes by, we tend to become really busy. Being a married freelance designer now-a-days, my days are full of work and cooking and cuddling the pets. But my love for books hasn’t died. I may not have the time to read all the books I want to, but books still excite me and give me major FOMO. That’s when I found out about audiobooks. I knew about them, obviously, but I did not know if they were for me.
The very first audiobook I listened to was Harry Potter. Of course. 😀 I love Harry Potter and I love Stephen Fry. It was magical. I would listen to it all the time. While cooking, eating, bathing, working, before bed, almost all the time. And I loved it. Absolutely loved the experience. I always liked being read to, and now I did not have to ask my husband to do that for me, I had Stephen effing Fry!
I went on to listen to the whole HP series, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Born A Crime by Trevor Noah, some Jane Austen, and Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore. They were amazing. All of them.
You know what the best part about the audiobooks were for me? I would sometimes miss the tonality of a statement while reading. The sarcasm or the jibe. But in audiobooks, it cannot get clearer and easier. Books, because they come from various places have a different cultural context to them. When Trevor Noah uses Afrikaans in his book, it is a hurdle for english readers like me. The pronunciation. How the hell does one pronounce an exclamation mark?! But in the audiobook version, Trevor himself pronounces these for you and you just go with the flow of the whole thing.
On the downside, there are so many narrators who just don’t click with you. I was heartbroken when I couldn’t listen to Michelle Obama’s narration of Becoming for more than a chapter. It felt so slow. I downloaded that book purely out of my love for the woman. And I thought I’d finish the book in a day, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t concentrate when she was reading. Such a bummer!
Another pitfall is when someone walks in on you listening to the book and starts talking over the book! Argh! It is so irritating. I have to shush them, then pause the book, then ask them to continue. And once they’re finished, go on to rewind the book and start again.
But all in all, I think audiobooks are pretty close to reading. I retained all the information a book had to give me. It’s like a friend telling you some fresh gossip or something. You remember everything. And I finished many more books that I would’ve, had I been reading the physical copies only when time permitted.
An advice for people starting with audiobooks – give yourself time. Like you pick up speed by the time you are towards the end of a book, you’ll get so much better at listening to the books. You might have to rewind many times during your first book or the first chapter of the book. But eventually, you get used to the accent, the speed and the characters, and then there’s no going back.
Do you listen to audiobooks? How’s your experience been?
Just a journal 