I hate Charles Dickens. Ok, I don't really hate him. I just hate his books. I know! I'm sorry! I'm a terrible person and should be chased out of the English department with torches and pitchforks. I've tried to love his work, I really have. I think he is extremely clever and has brilliant prose. But I cannot stand his characters or his stories.
As you can imagine, I have come across Dickens a few times in my undergraduate career. Each time I gave it a valiant effort, but ended up fudging my way through that section.
I had resigned myself to never, ever being able to make it through a Dickens novel. But, I was saved. Who was my proverbial knight in shining armor?
I discovered audio books because my family used to listen to recordings of storytellers and comedians during long car trips. My mom then bought the first few Harry Potter books on tape. Since then, both my younger brother and I have listened to every single Harry Potter 20 plus times each. When I think about anything Harry Potter, the voice in my head sounds like Jim Dale, who narrates the books.
Audible is a website devoted to audiobooks and the purchase thereof. Both Audible and iTunes make audio books readily available for my use.
Currently, audio books take up more space on my iPod than music does. The last time I counted I had more than 50 audio books. I listen to books while I am cooking, cleaning, working (I'm not being negligent! I work custodial), walking or driving to and from campus, grocery shopping, and pretty much whenever I can get away with it and still be polite.
A few years ago, my brother listened to the Silmarillion and then shared it with me. I had tried to read the Silmarillion before and had not been able to do it. But, listening to it was a whole different experience! Listening made it much easier to follow what was going on and comprehend the sometimes heavy language. It enabled me to raise myself to a LOTR nerd level somewhere between High and Dangerous (do YOU know where the light in Frodo's star glass originated? I do! Hint: Its absolute origin is not the star). From this experience, I learned that sometimes I learn and comprehend better when I hear something rather than read it.
Last year I discovered that if I download a difficult assigned novel, I will get through it much more quickly and easily than if I tried to sit down and read it. I have since used this strategy multiple times, and I am currently slogging my way through Our Mutual Friend. I even found myself wishing in class today that I had an Audible version of the critical essay I we were reading, as I would have had a better sense of the totality of the text rather than just bits and pieces of comprehension.
There is a downside to this. If someone asks me if I have read a book and I have only listened to it, I feel like I have to tell them that. I can't just say, "Why yes, I have read A Confusion of Princes." It has to be, "Yes! Well, I listened to it anyway."
So my question is this: what place do audio books hold in academia? Is listening to a book really the same as listening to it? If not, what are the differences?
Tune in next time for more discussion on those and similar questions!
