My Audiobook Reading Life

I listened to my first audiobook in 2013. It was The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner, read by Olivia Thirlby, and she was a truly fantastic narrator. I loved that she didn’t make up silly voices for the male actors and just narrated the story the way I would read it in my head. After that, I picked up The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, read by Carrington MacDuffie. I didn’t enjoy that listening experience as much, as Carrington used a lot of strange accents and voices throughout the novel. (I would soon learn, though, that Carrington’s way of reading is much more common in audiobooks—and I would come to love that way of reading a novel.)

After that, I took a break from audiobooks for a few years and then slowly started incorporating them into my reading life—five books in 2015, nine in 2017, 20 in 2018, 25 in 2019, and 12 so far in 2020. They’ve been a regular part of my reading life since 2017 and I try to finish two per month, if I can. Obviously, the pandemic and not having a commute anymore threw everything for a loop—I only started reading audiobooks again last month after a three-month break and I’m averaging one per month, but I’m just glad to have the bandwidth to listen again!

People have strong opinions about audiobooks, and I’m not just talking about the lame debate on whether or not audiobooks count as “real” reading. There are those who love audiobooks and those who don’t. Those who only consume books via audio and those who only listen to a few a year. Those who listen at a frighteningly fast speed and those who are happy with normal speed. Those who can only do nonfiction on audio and those who can only do fiction on audio. Audiobook listening comes in all shapes and sizes!

Since I’m a fairly regular listener of audiobooks, I thought it might be fun to take a look into what my audiobook reading life looks like. Let’s discuss!

1. Speed. I listen to most audiobooks at 1.75x speed. For the two mystery series I’m listening to (Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series and the Louise Penny series), I slow the speed to 1.5x, since I want to be sure I’m not missing any pertinent details. I had to work up to listening at a high speed, though—it wasn’t something I did immediately. I listened at normal speed (1x) for a really long time, until I started growing frustrated with how long it would take me to listen to an audiobook. I could read so much faster! When I discovered I could speed up the narration, it made the listening experience much more pleasant. I first bumped up the speed to 1.25x and then when that started feeling slow, I went up to 1.5x. After a while, I decided to try an audiobook on 1.75x and discovered I could understand the narration and pay attention easily.

I’ve been thinking about trying an audiobook at 2x speed, but haven’t made the switch yet. I’m feeling a little resistant to the idea! Maybe because I don’t know if the point of listening to audiobooks, at least for me, is to get them done as quickly as possible.  The point is to slow down and enjoy someone reading a book to me. (What’s interesting about this speed thing, though, is that I don’t do this with podcasts. I listen to them at normal speed. The few times I’ve sped up a podcast episode, I didn’t enjoy the listening experience as much!)

2. Genres. I love memoirs, YA, thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction, and literary fiction on audio. I haven’t ever tried a romance on audio, but I don’t think I’d be able to handle it! (Oh, the blushing I would do!) I don’t do too much nonfiction on audio, especially heavy nonfiction that requires me to pay attention and take notes. I prefer those books in printed/e-book form.

I really like listening to books that I feel would be a bit of a slog if I had to read them myself (Rules of Civility, I’m looking at you!) There’s something about having someone else read to me and allowing myself to dip in and out of listening as I please that makes the reading experience so much better.

3. Narrators. It’s common knowledge that a narrator can make or break your listening experience. A great narrator who can switch back and forth between accents easily? Perfection! A narrator with a voice that grates on your ears? Ughhhh. It’s often just a personal thing, and I think I’m extra-sensitive about narrators because I’m an HSP. There’s one narrator who narrates a TON of popular fiction titles and her voice graaaates on me. I don’t know what it is about her voice, but it just irritates the hell out of me, ha. Many audiobook readers have their own favorite narrators, but I haven’t come across anyone I absolutely love, although I will say that the narrator for the Louise Penny books is outstanding.

4. Libby vs Overdrive vs Audible vs CDs. I mainly use Libby for audiobook listening. I haven’t felt the need to get an Audible subscription since my library system has a great selection of audiobooks. (It’s actually pretty rare for me to not see an audiobook option!) The wait can get long for popular titles, of course, which is why I focus on backlist books for audiobook listening. It’s a great way to finally read all those books that have been languishing on your Goodreads TBR for years and years! Overdrive works well, too, but I like the interface for Libby more.

When I first started listening to audiobooks, though, I used CDs! (This makes me feel really old, ha.) CD audiobooks come with about an hour of narration per disc (so you can imagine how unwieldy a really long audiobook would be!), and there’s always that annoying task of removing one disc to put in the next one in line when the narration finishes. Such a first-world problem!

5. Little things I hate.

• When a multiple POV book only has one narrator
• When an author reads his/her own memoir and doesn’t have any inflections in their tone
• Really long audiobooks (anything over 14 hours is too long for me!)
• Not being able to highlight passages (you can bookmark passages in the Libby app, but it’s not the same!)

6. Little things I love.

• Being able to read a book while I’m doing other things, like cooking dinner or driving
• Fun accents that really bring the story to life
• Learning the correct way to say certain things (especially phrases in other languages—I’ve learned all of the correct ways to say the French names in the Louise Penny series!)
• Audiobooks that feel more like performances (Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan comes immediately to mind)
• Finally reading books that have been on my TBR for years and years
• Having a completely different way to consume a book

What are your thoughts about audiobooks—love them, loathe them, indifferent to them?