An Ode to Audiobooks

My favorite way to read a book is sitting in the chair in my personal library room and piling myself with a bunch of warm blankets, reading a physical copy of a book while drinking a hot cup of tea! However, as the world demands many things of me, this is not always entirely possible. I often read right before bed, which is cozy but I can only read so many pages before drifting off to sleep even if I am invested in the book. I take the bus to get to my day job and for awhile really enjoyed being able to read on my ride to work. However, for some reason the Minnesota winters have made the roads much more bumpy, causing me to feel too queasy to try to read a book. So I have been immersing myself in the wonderful world of audio books. Audiobooks have a different ideal setting. When I was laid off from another job earlier this year, I spent my mornings going on long walks, enjoying the crunch of the leaves beneath my feet. Listening to Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones definitely increased my walking speed and Jaime Jo Wright’s Souls of Lost Lake made me wonder what was lurking behind the trees. However I did find that listening to books on the bus made me feel like someone was trusting me, whispering secrets into my ear. I even got so immersed in Over My Dead Body that I missed my bus stop! I’ve found that on the days that my day job has been very quiet listening to House of Eve and Bandit Queens helped an otherwise mundane afternoon of doing data entry and auditing documents feel interesting. I’ve always enjoyed listening to audiobooks and podcasts while doing things around my apartment like cooking and folding laundry. This past weekend listening to Episode Thirteen made the chores I needed to do a lot more bearable and I also found that as sound played a huge role in this creepy story, that listening to the book added a dimension that I would have lost if I simply read it in print format. When I got nostalgic for my theater days a few years ago, I listened to a lot of Shakespeare plays on Libby because I knew that Shakespeare is meant to be experienced not just read. Recently when I talked with a co-worker at my day job who said that she wished she could read more but just had a hard time sitting down to read if she had considered audiobooks. Even though I love the written word, I digest material differently when I am listening than when I am simply reading. My first read through of Cultish was with the audiobook. As much as I love research, sometimes its easier to find time to navigate a non-fiction book as an audiobook. Some of my other favorite recent audio non fiction books have been Lets Get Physical and The Secret History of Home Economics, reminding me of how much I loved gender studies when I was studying sociology as a college student. Somehow listening to those books made me feel like I was back in the liberal arts classroom, which I still crave intellectually at times. Audiobooks have definitely grown on me quite a bit as I face the realities of the world. However, even though I appreciate so many things about audiobooks, nothing beats being able to read a physical copy of my highly anticipated How to Sell A Haunted House or curling up with a Victoria Holt paperback that I found at a used bookstore. However, I don’t have time to enjoy these pleasures every day and audiobooks still count as reading books if I am doing a crafty project or tackling a chore!