I was totally wrong about audiobooks being 'cheating' until I commuted through Denver traffic for 3 months

I used to be that person who said listening to a book didn't count as reading it. Then I got a job driving from Aurora to downtown Denver every day, 45 minutes each way. By week three I was desperate for something to fill that time, so I tried an audiobook of a book my club had picked. I finished it in 5 days and caught details I'd missed when I skimmed the physical copy. Now I do a mix of both formats for our monthly discussions. Has anyone else switched their stance on audiobooks after a long commute or specific situation?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_elliot2d agoTop Commenter

I live in Texas where everyone drives everywhere so the commute thing is real. But I still don't get why people act like audiobooks are some deep revelation. You listened to a book in the car instead of reading it on the page. It's not that serious. I tried audiobooks a few times but I zone out too easy and miss whole chapters. Then I have to rewind and it defeats the purpose. Plus you can't flip back to check something or highlight a good quote. I think for nonfiction where you need to absorb facts they're fine, but for novels it feels like a different experience entirely. Maybe people just want validation for multitasking.

kelly6382d ago

Agree with you completely on the zoning out thing. I tried listening to a novel during my commute and by the time I parked I realized I had no idea what happened in the last twenty minutes because I was thinking about work drama. I had to rewind so many times I gave up and just switched to podcasts. For nonfiction it works way better because I don't care as much about missing a sentence or two, but for a story with characters and plot I need to be able to go back and check things. That's the whole reason I still buy physical copies of novels even though my car time is perfect for audio. I don't get the hype about it being life changing either, it's just another way to consume words when your hands are busy.

nancyn6923h ago

The thing that helped me was switching to 1.2x speed, not faster but just enough to keep my brain locked in. I used to zone out all the time at normal speed because my mind would wander during pauses. Also I started listening to shorter books first, like 6-8 hours, to train my focus before jumping into a 20 hour novel. For the highlighting problem I keep a voice memo on my phone and just say the timestamp when a good part happens, then I go back later and write it down. The rewinding issue is real though, I had to accept that some books just don't click for me in audio and I'll buy the physical copy instead. It took me about 6 months of experimenting with different genres and narrators to figure out what actually sticks in my brain during a drive.