Audiobooks are books and we should say so
I love books. I’ve always loved books. When I was a child, I would bring them everywhere — to the dinner table, to recess, and to class (much to the chagrin of my teachers). I became a reader in the absence of digital audiobooks, and they never really entered my world of reading beyond the periphery. For me, audiobooks were almost solely for long car rides, and on occasion, for the long and dreaded hours I spent cleaning my room while listening to the entirety of an “American Girl” book series on CD. Nevertheless, with the rise of smartphones, audiobooks have exploded in popularity, and as with any new interest, new criticisms have risen in response — in this case, the claim that audiobooks aren’t really books, and that listening to them isn’t really reading. I’ll admit, I used to be on the other side of this issue. I used to think that audiobooks “didn’t count” because you could listen to them passively, and I got annoyed with people who said they had read this or that number of books when their lists included, or were perhaps entirely made up of, audiobooks. But I’ve come around since then, both on a personal and on a societal level.
I do still think reading a book and listening to an audiobook are different — they just are! They use different areas of the brain, they’re permissible in different contexts, and they have different pros and cons. One of my biggest annoyances is spacing out during an audiobook and realizing I have no idea where I stopped paying attention . And I’m also still a print book purist — I hate ebooks, and I only use them when it’s tough to get a book any other way. But I have grown to love audiobooks for the distinct advantages they offer — for example, some have voice actors do distinctive voices for different characters, or actually put melody to songs that only have lyrics in the written text. A great example is Cary Elwes’ “As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride.” Elwes narrates the book himself, and brings other actors from the film like Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, and Robin Wright from the film to narrate their own sections. That’s just an experience you’re never going to get with a paperback.
One of the biggest issues I’ve had with audiobooks is that Audible, the largest purveyor of audiobooks by far, is owned by Amazon, and I absolutely despise Amazon. Along with their serial union-busting, intellectual property theft, and skirting of regulations, they have long priced books deliberately under profit in order to bankrupt brick and mortar stores (and that wasn’t by accident, it was their original business model). Independent bookstores, which already have to compete on unfair terms with nationwide chains like Barnes & Noble, just can’t match Amazon’s artificially low prices, which cheapen both the value and concept of books. But that’s just one particularly rotten business, and it shouldn’t affect the way we see audiobooks generally. For a more ethical way of consuming audiobooks, I suggest the Libby app, which allows you access to thousands of audiobooks for free when you sign up with your local library card.
The line of thinking that would let us believe that audiobooks “don’t count” as reading isn’t just elitist (although it’s also that) it prevents people from reading. If someone struggles with print books, and they find out that audiobooks are the best way for them to engage with stories, they will listen to more books. If that same person is berated, judged, and teased by book-purists purely for preferring audiobooks, they’re just not going to engage with those stories at all. If we want to build a world of readers, (which I certainly do) we have to support reading in any form, not only the one we deem “acceptable” or that we personally would prefer.
If any readers have read the book “Fangirl” by Rainbow Rowell, they know that one of the main characters struggles with reading. He doesn’t have dyslexia, and he doesn’t have ADHD. He just, for whatever reason, can’t focus on text. In order to survive college he records lectures, meets up with other students in the class to discuss the topic, and comes up with other coping mechanisms. It is our university’s responsibility to create citizens who engage thoughtfully and critically with the world around them. Part of that responsibility falls with the students to contend with perspectives other than our own, and reading is an easy access point for that. We should be encouraging people to read and doing whatever we can to make that work for them — the world is not one size fits all, and if you go into it trying to only do what you think is the “correct” way, you’re setting yourself up for some very painful failure.
Sometimes I prefer an audiobook. It’s the only way to read if I’m on a long drive or if I want to multitask. Sometimes I prefer a book. I love the way books feel in my hands, I love flipping pages, and I love collecting bookmarks.
Engage with books however you want. Buy them, get them from the library, borrow them from friends, download them online, it doesn’t matter. Don’t we have better uses for our time than to pick apart how other people take in information?
