Magic of Audiobooks

New Year’s Goals are more valuable and realistic than New Year’s Resolutions. Resolutions are a final product or accomplishment you must achieve, and anything less is considered a failure. New Year’s Goals give you something to actively work towards, and success is found simply in trying. Luckily for me, I tried and succeeded at one of my main goals for 2018: to find my way back to reading. 

I was always the most avid bookworm but lost the habit once my junior year of college picked up. Post-college there doesn’t seem to be time. Television felt like the more convenient option because I can enjoy it while doing other things (laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc). It felt like the world of literature was closed off by the demands of everyday life. Between a full-time job, errands, and chores, how could I have time to sit down and devote myself to a book anymore?

In January I took advantage of the New Year promotion to sign up for Audible. While you don’t have to be a member to purchase an audiobook, membership gets you 1 free audiobook per month (no matter the price) and 30% off their entire library. Audiobooks are significantly more expensive than eBooks or regular books, which is fair considering the length and production costs, so that discount is pretty significant. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. I always considered myself a ‘visual’ learner, and before joining Audible would have told you that an audiobook wouldn’t hold my attention. I am so glad to say how wrong I was!

My first audiobook of the New Year was Sharp Objects, which I was planning on reading anyways since the HBO series is comes out this summer. Between the compelling story and hypnotic performance of the voice actor, I was absolutely hooked. I was loving the story, and I could enjoy it all the time! On the treadmill, in the car, while doing chores… cheesy as it sounds, but it was like reading had been given back to me.

Plenty of naysayers like to say that Audiobooks don’t “count”. I consider this viewpoint peak literature-snobbery. To prefer physical books over audiobooks or eBooks is absolutely fine, but putting people down for finding alternative methods of reading is ridiculous. If introducing electronic mediums to the world of books encourages people to enjoy stories they otherwise wouldn’t have read, how on earth can that be negative? By saying “Audiobooks or kindles are cheating”, you’re excluding people who are trying to find their own ways of absorbing stories.

Particularly in the case of Audiobooks, we should be celebrating their rise in popularity. Audiobooks are the only way the visually impaired can read. The more popular audiobooks become, the more books will be recorded as audiobooks, and the more books they will have to enjoy. Everybody wins!