Up until 2018, the last time I had listened to an audiobook was as an elementary school student. Robert Munsch’s books were my absolute favourites. Weird and wacky, I looked at the incredible illustrations while Munsch read his book on tape. Audiobooks have come a very long way since then. I had thought to leave them in my past, a fond memory yet one rarely dusted off.
My husband reintroduced me to audiobooks. “You’ll like this one,” he’d said. It was “Shahnameh”, read by Marc Thompson. By the time Zahhak was tricked by Ahriman, I was sold on not only that book, but on audiobooks once again.
AUDIOBOOK ACCESSIBILITY
My husband reads thousands of lines of codes a day at work. Once he’s left, the last thing he wants to do is sit down and read more. It meant the primary stories he experienced were through videogames or movies. Stories that he could watch unfold around him without the sterility of the page. Listening to audiobooks has given him a new avenue to experience stories he’d never have the opportunity to while walking to and from work.
I have numerous health conditions which can periodically leave me couch bound or bedridden. While podcasts used to be my go-to, audiobooks are quickly carving out their own bit of airtime. When I can’t focus on a page or open my eyes, a smooth narrator reading a fantastical story (or a morbid one) helps take my mind off the pain.
A TOUCH OF HISTORY
Oral storytelling was the first form of storytelling. Both culturally, historically, and personally. Parents reading to their children, teachers reading to classrooms. There is something profoundly different about hearing a story told to us than reading it — particularly for those of us who notoriously speed read and undoubtedly miss details.
OVERCOMING OBSTACLES: THE BOOKS WE ‘SHOULD’ READ BUT WON’T. BUT WE’LL LISTEN TO.
The Necronomicon. Dune. Iconic books that, as a person writing a desert fantasy with macabre details and old gods, these are books I felt drawn to — if not a little guilty that I hadn’t already read them. But I always felt a barrier to entry. That Dune was a dry read, The Necronomicon problematic and difficult. Each of us has a book that we want to read but for whatever reason we can’t make the time for. Audiobooks have solved that problem for me. My audio library is full of books made far better, and more digestible by brilliant narrators.
What is your favourite memory of an audiobook or a story being read to you?
Aside from Robert Munsch, my favourite auditory story moments were given to me by my mother. She loved reading to my brother and I aloud. We would get books from the library, and she’d sit down to read them with us. It was how I read Harry Potter. They’re the one series I know I can’t listen to as an audiobook. The narrator will just be incorrect.
-LJ
