Book Blogger Hop: Do You Listen to Audiobooks?

This prompt was submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews:

Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, do you prefer listening instead of reading?

“Books on Tape” (what people of a certain age grew up knowing audiobooks as) weren’t really something I was much aware of growing up. In college my friends and I would hit up a truck stop on the drive home, you could rent one (like a Videotape/DVD) and return it to that truck stop/another one for a couple of bucks. Those made the drives a little more entertaining—assuming you and whoever you were riding with could agree on one. Most often, the length of the book determined if you’d rent it—why get a book you couldn’t listen to on the way home—or maybe over the round-trip, assuming you weren’t driving home for the summer. It was primarily a service for truck drivers, obviously, but hey, we’d take advantage of it, too. But beyond that? I didn’t listen to them.

But the first time I tried to listen to one outside of that was a disaster. I was working the graveyard shift and there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do—but I figured I could move around and do my paperwork and whatnot while listening. And that worked fine. But when I sat down for a minute between tasks (and there was a lot of that time), the audiobook was like listening to someone read me a bedtime story and I couldn’t stay awake. Which is pretty much the opposite of what I needed at 2 a.m. I really didn’t have time outside of that to listen to one—and I wasn’t taking road trips then, so I didn’t have time for one (and I think truck stops weren’t renting them anymore by that point).

Fast-forward a decade, and I’m working a day job (phew!!) that involved a lot of data entry that I didn’t need to think much about—and I could only listen to so many podcasts in a day before getting burned out. So I tried my library’s Overdrive services, and never looked back. I’m not in that job anymore, but I’ve found ways to keep listening while I work (although I do hit pause when I come to something that takes a little thought, I don’t want to miss anything) and will find time to listen every weekday. I have an audiobook in progress at all times nowadays and have a healthy library of my own titles.

I love audiobooks now and have a decent list of go-to narrators (and have even tried a couple of books I was on the fence about just because of them). I’m not sure that I could just sit and listen to an audiobook like I tried to do at work years ago—I think I’d still fall asleep. But while working, cleaning, cooking, driving? It’s a great way to keep moving on my TBR, try out a new series, or revisit a favorite. I also tend to do better with listening to Non-Fiction than I do reading them—I think I’m just more willing to devote the listening time than the reading time to it. I’m not sure I can explain that.

But on the whole, I prefer the experience of reading myself, not being read to—not just because I generally stay awake while doing that. It’s easier to stay in a passage and think about it—to flip back and double-check something, etc. Because I’m not multi-tasking I can get sucked in deeper (although some authors/narrators make it so that I’m close enough that I don’t care).

While I’m talking (far too much, I realize) about audiobooks, let me take a moment to say that Libro.fm is my preferred source of audiobooks, check them out!

What about you—are you an audiofile?