For the Love of Audiobooks
Saturday is the perfect time to wander through the stacks (that’s librarian-speak for “bookshelves”) and talk about books and the people who write them. Pull up a comfy chair and settle in, because today I want to chat about a particular medium of book – the audiobook.
I first started to listen to audiobooks as a pre-teen, when they became something of a family bonding activity for me, my sister, and my parents. The public library had an impressive collection of books on CD (to give you some context to when this story is taking place!) and we took full advantage of their offerings. For a while, it felt like every other week, we would head to the library, pick out an audiobook, then hurry home and pop it into the home entertainment system and gather round, listening to the story until the room went dark.
As I grew older, I started to listen to audiobooks while driving and found that, for me, it was one of the few things that kept me awake during long solo drives across states. I listened to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere this way and it felt right, somehow, that I was going on a literal journey at the same time the characters were going on their own, often internal journeys.
At this point in my life, I don’t get to listen to audiobooks nearly as much as I would like. But my partner listens to them all the time during his work day and I am super envious of him! He must go through four or five books a month that way and the way he delights in telling me about different narrators idiosyncrasies or the sound effects used in a particular book — it makes my heart glow.
Do audiobooks have a place in your reading heart? Have you never listened to one? What’s your favorite audiobook to date? Let’s chat about it in the comments below!
Robin Jeffrey 