Read or Listen?
Checking off your Goodreads reading challenge.
For the past few years, I’ve been participating in the Goodreads - Reading Challenges, and reaching book goals has forced me to listen to more audiobooks. The ongoing conversation/debate at hand; should audiobooks count towards a “reading” challenge?
I find the experience is the same when reading a physical book or listening to an audiobook moving around. In my mind I see it all happening in color. Slight nuance being the narrator’s pace and voice. I will forever hear their voice rather than one my imagination would conjure.
Listening to audiobooks, as I research the web, is considered a form of reading but may not have the same cognitive benefits. Not sure I care. When I’m out for a long walk, drive or cleaning my house, I find listening helps me escape the doldrums.
Good point made by - Meghan O'Gieblyn, Wired Magazine
Most of us were read to by adults before we learned to read ourselves, and listening to audiobooks recalls the distinctive delight of being told a story: the rhythms of the prose made incarnate in a human voice; the dialog animated through the performance of a skillful reader; the ease with which our eyes, liberated from the page, are free to roam around the bedroom (or the aerobics room, or the landscape beyond the car windshield) so as to better imagine the actions of the narrative playing out.
I’ve walked away from physical and digital books where the story was boring and the characters were forgettable, but I’ve never put a physical book down because I didn’t like the narrator’s voice!
Thanks to the Libby app, I’ve returned many books due to the narrator lackluster delivery:
Cadence doesn’t match the narrative
Faltered in delivering the right emotion at the right time
Boring, monotone
Over pronunciation
Giving the male/female voice a southern accent when the book is not in the south. (recent book)
I just don’t like the sound of their voice.
As life continues to be busy and I continue to listen to audiobooks, I’m starting to pay attention to which narrator(s) will be telling the story. I started a book from Sarah J. Mass a few months ago, didn’t like the narrator and returned it to the library. Last week, I borrowed another audiobook by Sarah, different series and instantly went - NO, not her again! I was in a dilemma now. So many friends have recommended her books, do I push through and maybe get used to her?
At some future date I will start a list of narrators I love, but for today here’s a small sampling of audiobooks I enjoyed:
Single
Lisa Flanagan - The Glassmaker, Tracy Chevalier
Heather O’Sullivan - The Story Collector, Evie Woods
Lauren Ambrose - The Maid, Nita Prose
Alex Jennings - The Fury, Alex Michaelides
Ensemble
Jane Oppenheimer, Ariel Lawhon - Frozen River, Ariel Lawhon
Lee Ingleby, Lydia Leonard - You Are Here, David Nicholls
Joe Eyre, Sarah Slimani, Roly Botha, Laurence Dobiesz, Tuppence Middelton - The Midnight Feast, Lucy Foley
Avena Mansergh-Wallace, Olivia Mace, Nick Biason - The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods
Now back to checking off my list!
Be kind,
Tracey
I do most of my non-fiction reading via audiobooks and listen while driving or doing chores. My mind wanders when I read non-fiction as a print book, but not as an audio book. I also recommend a lot of memoirs in that form, when the author reads. I just finished The Manicurist's Daughter, which was very good. And there are lots of Vietnamese words and phrases that were powerful to hear pronounced vs me attempting to read them.