A Bookworm's Defense of Audiobooks
My name is Philip, and I am an audiobook listener.
I am, as anyone who knows me can attest, a compulsive book acquirer and book reader. There is tremendous value in a physical book, the history it contains, and the tactile experience of reading a real life book. As my friend and colleague Kirstin Anderson Birkhaug has recently argued, physical books contain the stories of their authors and their owners and unite readers across generations to both. This is, in my estimation, irreplaceable.
But often, those of us who cling to our physical books like dragons hoarding gold can be a bit snooty, protective of our status as “readers,” and feel the need to paint audiobook listening as something qualitatively different (and maybe even “worse”) than REAL reading. Snobbishness is common, and perhaps warranted! Or so we like to tell ourselves.
But I am here to confess, so confess I shall. Yes, I listen to audiobooks. I am a subscriber to Audible. I borrow audiobooks from electronic library services, I sometimes increase the playback speed, and I even log these listening experiences as books I have “read” on my Goodreads reading challenge. I think that audiobooks are good and useful resources, if best used as a supplement, and I would like briefly to explain why.
My first exposure to audiobooks was through Librivox, a service that invites volunteer readers to perform public domain works of literature. Some readers through this service are excellent, and the classic stories they perform captivating. It was through these freely available audiobooks that I realized that my intellectual curiosity didn’t have to be placed on pause when I was laboring with my hands. I spent many hours listening to hilarious P.G. Wodehouse novels while pulling weeds or feeding goats or cleaning toilets at my various odd places of employment. Any monotonous or mindless task that arose at home or at work, I was able to, if I desired, supplement with imaginative works in a way that would not have been possible with hard copy texts.
This, I would say, is the first major benefit of audiobooks: additional time spent with books.
The problem with volunteer readers is, of course, that quality is decidedly mixed (I can heartily recommend against the Librivox readers for Crime and Punishment and Les Miserables, for example). Thus, I was driven to more institutionalized audiobook producers to get my fix. I have found in these performances something captivating and worthwhile, a welcome supplement to my usual reading habits.
For example: I recently “read” Moby-Dick via audiobook, read by William Hootkins. Hootkins, probably best well-known for his role as Porkins in Star Wars: A New Hope, was a successful stage actor in addition to his popular film roles. I have attempted to read the physical text of Moby-Dick in the past, and, likely due to a personal failing, I was unable to get engrossed in the book enough to make any significant progress.
Hootkins’ reading, in contrast, instantly compelled me. A narrator’s voice gave life to the wit and humor present from the very first lines of the story, and his passion and attention to detail carried me through the story and across the waves along with Ishmael and Queequeg et al. Again, my failure to read Moby-Dick on the page may be condemnable, an example of a lack of imagination that ought to be corrected, but the form of the audiobook enabled me to fall in love with a story I may never have completed without it.
Another recent example: It has been many years since I read Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in full. I have read The Hobbit more times than perhaps any other single book besides the gospels, but the “trilogy” is an undertaking I have avoided revisiting. I recently completed Andy Serkis’s reading of the series in full, from The Hobbit to Return of the King. While anyone who has read the stories in full can attest that it is compelling in any form, a narrator’s touch, a variety of voices, performances of songs and poems, and the passion of the spoken word made this a truly unique and emotional experience.
This, then, is a second major benefit of audiobooks: the captivation of spoken word performance that a text merely read alone may lack.
The combination of additional “reading” time and engaging form or presentation is, to me, sufficient to give great praise to audiobooks as a medium. But let me be clear: the availability of easy and constant distraction is a possible negative as much as it is a boon. It may be, as Alan Noble has argued in his book Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age, that our constant need to occupy our every free moment with noise and stimulation of some kind is preventing us from pursuing higher things.
When substituted for social engagement, human conversation, or quiet contemplation, audiobooks as much as any other distraction can be a negative and ought to be handled accordingly. We must develop virtuous habits in our use of audiobooks and podcasts as we must with any other technology we hope to integrate into a flourishing life. Properly utilized, however, I would contend that audiobooks are a lovely addition to a reading regimen, one that captures an essential component of human storytelling (oral performance) that reading alone and silently does not.
Many years ago, my first published piece of writing was in praise of podcasts. I argued that podcasts were tapping into an ancient, participatory form of verbal storytelling that many people are missing, and were utilizing a medium that is older than text and tome that has stood the test of long centuries. I stand by that defense (though I wish I could serve as editor to my past self).
There is something ineffable about oral storytelling. It’s why I treasure reading to my children and my memories of being read to, it’s why my memories of fireside stories will never fade, and it’s why, yes, I will continue to devote time and resources to the “reading” of audiobooks. Though I may prefer a book in hand on many or most occasions, I choose to participate in a tradition much older than written texts and printed word every time I queue up an audiobook and press “play.”
About the Author
Philip D. Bunn is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Lyceum Program in the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Theory from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He writes on politics, technology, and literature at his personal Substack,
. You can follow him on Twitter @PhilipDBunnPlease check out these other resources and writers associated with Mythic Mind!