In defense of reading with my eyes
Let’s clear the air right away: I don’t hate audiobooks.
I do not subscribe to the idea that listening to a narrator “doesn’t count” as reading. (Hi hello yes, I’m just happy people consume writing in whatever way feels best to them!)
I know audiobooks have benefits traditional print and ebooks lack. It’s easier to have good posture when you don’t have to hold physical pages up to your face. You can experience a story alongside someone in the same room without having to read aloud yourself. Audiobooks are key accessibility resources. They almost always have shorter waitlists than Kindle-compatible downloads at my libraries.
But I just can’t get into them the same way.
My aversion isn’t for lack of trying. Last December I had corrective vision surgery that meant I couldn’t look at screens (or much of anything in close proximity) for more than a week. I went through two audiobooks in a few days, and since then Sean and I have listened to several more. They’re a nice way to read together while driving without the passenger (usually me) having to exhaust their voice for hours on end.
One of them, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, might have been better listened to than read… but that’s probably because the book itself was adapted from recorded conversations. It started as a fundamentally verbal experience.
Every other audiobook so far only reinforces my conviction that reading with my eyes is better than reading with my ears.
What traditional print and ebooks give me that audio recordings don’t:
I love seeing style on the page, experiencing someone else’s writing as a visual art as well as through the voice in my head. Is the author using a semicolon? A period? Parenthesis? Em dashes? Was there an apostrophe at the end of a shortened word? These details matter to me as a (wannabe) author myself.
I can quickly look up words I don’t recognize when they’re in front of me on paper (and know how to spell them, which is a key part of this).
I retain control. I can stop, start, go back a page. I can reread a passage I want to sit with longer. I can close my eyes and contemplate.
My reading can be tactile. I can underline with a pen in a book of my own; I can use the highlight function on my Kindle. I can more easily collect sentences, phrases, bits of information to reflect on later when the words are written down than simply floating through the air.
I can use my spatial memory to recall where on a specific page a certain word lived.
I’m in charge of my speed. At a certain point with an audiobook, you can’t increase the pace without distorting the narration too much to enjoy the story. When I read silently, traditionally, I can speed up and slow down as the tale demands. I can move quickly without sacrificing comprehension or clarity.
It’s a more comfortable level of stimulation for introverted, sensitive me. I’m better at filtering my visual experiences than my auditory ones. If an audiobook’s volume varies line to line or the narrator creates dozens of voices for different characters, I often find those (fun and well-intentioned!) additions distracting more than illustrative.
All these things come back to feeling like I am the driver of my reading experience — not a passenger simply along for the ride. Reading is an activity I do with a book. It is not something that happens to me.
So I will take my reading however I can get it. I’ll match the input to the situation. I’ll keep giving audiobooks a chance. And whenever I’m able to… I’ll reach for a worn hardcover from our van’s tiny bookshelf or the small weight of my Kindle first.