On audiobooks

I started listening to audiobooks during Covid. I was taking long walks every evening and soon got bored of listening to the same music playlists on repeat. I tried podcasts and found the lack of structure too annoying to keep up. Then I turned to audiobooks.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century was my first. It was dense with information and the ideas were stimulating. Learning something while walking or doing house chores felt like a productive use of time. But when you read, you can pause and contemplate. When you listen, you need to keep up with the narrator. My thoughts would drift and the voice in the ear would start interfering. Sometimes the books are verbose and repetitive. Then I tend to speed up the audio to 1.3x - the same way I'd skim through the pages and only linger on the engrossing parts.

Besides the contents of the book, the narration plays a big role. When you read, you interact directly with the written words, your own voice in your head doing the reading. In audiobooks, there is a middleman. I truly realized how much somebody's voice and delivery changes my impression of what they are saying. Take The Handmaid's Tale narrated by Elizabeth Moss. Her narration was so monotonous, every line spoken like a whisper, that it always made me sleepy.

The genre I fell in love with, though, are autobiographies narrated by the authors themselves. Here the middleman disappears. It's just the author - their words, their voice, their own rhythm. It feels more complete than reading. I've found myself moved by stories that I might not have connected with on the page. Finding Me by Viola Davis, Born A Crime by Trevor Noah (extraordinary narration, like he's talking just to you), On Writing by Stephen King - all great. Anna Kendrick's Scrappy Little Nobody had me slowing down to 0.8x instead of speeding up because her delivery was so quick and funny, and I didn't want to miss anything.

My favourite audiobook, though, is a bit of an exception to all this. It's We Did Ok, Kid by Anthony Hopkins, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. It follows his journey from a bullied schoolboy to a troubled young actor to an old man looking back at the people he's loved and lost. It is deeply affecting. And Kenneth Branagh, in a deep voice that almost sounds like Hopkins himself, brings every word to life. The accents, the meaningful pauses, the gravitas - it's a performance to be experienced. I listened intently, often with moist eyes.

From my initial aversion to audiobooks, I've come to see their value and how they can enhance a book. It has been a worthwhile journey.