05 May 2023

Listen


audible.com

One day while I doom scrolled Twitter, a writer declared listening to audio books to be cheating and not really reading. I may have unfollowed him or some other petty overreaction to all things social media. I also told myself he's entitled to his opinion no matter how wrong it is. 

Audiobooks are about a third of the books I consume in any given year. Last year, it was half. And while it's not reading with one's eyes, it is reading. There's even an editing technique having Word play back a manuscript. (Use that only for yourself. Edits for clients should contain track changes, and listening to that would be torture.) So, instead of whatever your inner narrator sounds like as you scan the page, you get an actor. Or several in the case of scifi author Gareth Powell.

I listen to audio books during my commutes to the office (only two a week now as we've gone hybrid.) and when I'm out taking a walk. Sometimes while doing the laundry or yard work. My listening lists range from memoirs to history to fiction off the beaten path (or can't get to with my towering stack of books and Kindle editions) to ancient texts to classics. I'm currently listening to The Iliad, read by Dominic Keating. Keating played Reed on Star Trek: Enterprise, so it's great to hear him perform something besides an overworked security chief on a balky starship. 

And often, it's the reader that makes the difference. Some, like Alice Walker, are authors reading their own work. In the case of Walker, who is also a lecturer, it's perfect. Walker wrote The Color Purple in dialect and could read it properly. Other times, it might have been nice if the author hired, if not an actor, then maybe their teenage niece or nephew who just did the high school musical.

Other times, publishers or authors hire a reader. Wil Wheaton has a thriving second career doing audio books, and he reads with a wicked sense of humor that was perfect for The Martian (after the publisher decided it didn't want original reader RC Bray, himself no slouch.) Other times, like some apocrypha I've been listening to, the reader probably needed some caffeine. I kept making fun of one reader but aping his annoying monotone as a forgotten Bible character asking God why he snored during his prayers. "Oh, Jedediah, my son. I would listen but your monotone has caused me to rest an eighth day, and lo, all the Heavenly host are face down in their lyres."

But is listening reading? Depends on how you define it. Sometimes, I choose by performer. Johnny Depp is hilarious reading Keith Richards's autobiography, Life, even doing a stoner Keith from the 1970s before Keef himself takes over. (And Keith is actually not a bad reader, but I often wonder how many takes he had to do, given his propensity to mumble.) One of my favorites was Jean Smart, she of Designing Women fame, when she did the VI Warshawski novels. She was VI Warshawski.

But if reading is consuming text, then yes, listening to audio books is reading. If you're adamant reading is done with your eyes, and listening is just hearing a dramatic performance (except when Mr. Monotone prompts the Almighty to nod off. Then it's not so dramatic.), then no.

I listen to Audible exclusively right now. I may roll back to the library's offerings if I slow down, and the subscription is no longer worth it. But until then...

I'm not done with the book until I hear that voice say, "Audible hopes you've enjoyed this program."

4 comments:

  1. I don't know who said that listening to audio books is cheating, but that's about as appalling as Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that step-moms and adopted moms aren't "real mothers". A plague on both their houses! BTW, Lynn Redgrave did some really great audiobooks. And Stephen Fry is wonderful doing "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

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  2. Larry Keeton07 May, 2023 11:49

    Audiobooks are a must to really enjoy some books. I'll buy the kindle and audible version of a book if I want to use my driving time wisely. What I've found by listening to the books, versus just reading them, is the cadence of story and sentences. Something I don't necessarily pick up on when I'm reading. Thus, it's helped me in my own efforts to listen to the stories I write to see if I've emulated or established a cadence that is music that is pleasning to the ear.

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  3. As the Harry Potter arc was building, acquaintances bought their children audiobooks, read for the US by Jim Dale. After the first movie came out, the kids thought it was 'okay', but preferred the audiobook version. Apparently, the audiobooks better coaxed the imagination.

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  4. I actually wrote a fan letter to Jayne Entwhistle, the actress who reads Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce mysteries. I have listened to eight of them and I suspect if I read the next two I would hear her voice throughout.

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