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I swore off audiobooks for years until a road trip through Kansas last month
I used to think listening to a book was cheating and would get into arguments about it at my old club meetings. Then last month I drove 9 hours from Wichita to Denver for a funeral and grabbed my wife's audiobook of a short novel to stay awake. About 2 hours in I noticed I was catching details I had completely missed when I read the same book 4 years ago. The narrator did different voices for a family dinner scene, and it made me realize how flat I read dialogue in my head. At the next meeting I brought up the audiobook and 6 out of 11 people admitted they do both. Maybe the format matters less than I thought. Does your group count audiobooks as reading the book?
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samshah11d ago
Sorry about the funeral, man. That drive through Kansas is brutal even without something heavy waiting at the end of it. Your point about the family dinner scene really hits me, because I had the same thing happen with a book I thought I knew inside out, and the narrator gave one character this little nervous laugh that totally changed how I saw her. When I read it myself I never gave her a voice at all, just words on a page. Six out of eleven in your group doing both says a lot, maybe more than any argument ever would. For what it's worth, hearing your story makes me want to give one a real shot instead of judging it.
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