Eyes… or Ears?
Audiobooks? Friend, or foe? At first, it felt like I was cheating. Cheating on that stack of books sitting in my room waiting and longing to be read. But I was a working mother of four kids, one of whom was an infant at the time. There was no time for reading, let alone a normal night sleep, or showering…
At this juncture of my life, I was working at a large lodge in the middle of the woods. It was my job to clean after guests departed and get it all spick and span for the next arrival. We mostly catered to weddings, reunions, and retreats. Most of the time, as I washed and folded the multitude of linens, vacuumed the mass square footage and climbed triple stacked bunk beds to make them, I would do so listening to music.
One fine day, I decided to listen to one of the few audio books I had in my audible library, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman (if you have never read nor listened, you must, its SO good), and it was like a beam of light had shined down upon me. Three years of cleaning this place culminated in book upon book, averaging two-three a week. I had gone from listening to a book as a bedtime replacement for television to being obsessed. Sure, I am not using my eyes to consume the story, but it brought me back to the place I used to go when my mom would read stories to me when I was little gal.
Does not mean it didn’t make me feel a little dirty. I was still cheating on those unread books…
Now, I have all this time on my hands, well, sort of, still have four kids and instead of going to a job, I spend a lot of time studying my rear off, but I digress, the point is I do have time to read books now. Back to bedtime story telling.
My feelings about audiobooks has shifted. For a lover of great authors, words, and stories, they are amazing for those of us who cannot find more than twenty minutes to dedicate to reading. Of course, it does rely a bit on good narration, but even as a nighttime relaxation method, I say go for it! And I promise that dirty feeling will go away.
My top five audio favorites:
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, narrated by Martin Jarvis
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, narrated by Fisher Stevens
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, narrated by John Lee
Bag of Bones, written and narrated by Stephen King
The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman, narrated by Michael Sheen
Each of these are great novels with amazing narration that help you forget that you are simply listening to a book being read to you. Listening to audiobooks also vastly opened up my tastes and appreciations for other genres and helped me find amazing new authors who books I am now hooked to and cannot believe I had not found sooner.
