FOR as long as I can remember, I have loved books. As a child I would read literally anything I could get my hands on - including some very informative magazines left in toilets like Woman’s Own or Take A Break, which may be the reason I got called a ‘granny mush’ for knowing about the menopause when I was six.
One of the first books I remember reading was a battered old tome of stories I found in my Great Aunt Sadie’s house with The Little Match Girl and the terrifying tale of The Red Shoes. I now realise it must have been a collection of Hans Christian Andersen tales that got six-year-old me hooked on the escapism of reading.
I spent countless nights in bed delving into different worlds while helicopters whirred overhead – a sound which I found oddly soothing and only noticed years later when they no longer hovered, and the absence of their noise was deafening.
I therefore have been intrigued by a debate taking place online as to whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading. As a relatively new convert, I can say that once upon a time I was entirely averse to the idea of having a novel read to me by a voice actor. I would argue that it would replace my own narrative voice and hinder my imagination when it came to how characters sounded.
While these points remain valid to a degree, I was swayed by the fact that I found reading became more of a luxury as I settled into parenthood when falling asleep with a book was replaced with falling asleep holding a child. I decided to give audiobooks a go. After all, you only live once.
However, George RR Martin aptly put it “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies” and I was desperate to live vicariously again. It was a revelation, as not only could I find the time to enjoy a novel once more, but the household chores were also being done while I listened to books. I could wash the dishes and have two loads of laundry folded while trekking across a dystopian landscape with a heroic band of renegades in my mind’s eye.
Long car journeys to and from gigs pass all too quickly while listening to an autobiography read by the author and I even took up running once because I could be distracted while attempting to exercise. What a wheeze that was.
I could wash the dishes and have two loads of laundry folded while trekking across a dystopian landscape with a heroic band of renegades in my mind’s eye
However, the audiobook v reading debate isn’t simply down to a reluctance to conform to new technology or either party arguing that one is more enjoyable than the other. It is true, at least semantically, that listening is not reading but the fact of the matter is: regardless of the medium, you have still finished a book.
I find that at the centre of the reading camp lies a snobbery where those who make statements such as “listening to audiobooks isn’t real reading” are really saying “people who listen to audiobooks should not be held in the same regard as those who read them”. Some have even labelled them as ‘ableist’ because it suggests that those who are vision-impaired or dyslexic cannot be well-read if they need to listen to books.
The snobbery around what we read will always be a thing regardless of how it is consumed. I enjoyed getting an insight into this during lockdown when many an ad-hoc Zoom interview for news items was unfailingly given in front of the bookshelf at home. I would pause the TV to have a look at what titles were behind the speaker to judge how pretentious they were and giggle imagining the minister for finance hiding his Dan Brown novels behind The Iliad.
There are certain books that people enjoy displaying like trophies of their intellect. I once briefly shared an office with a guy who made a show of displaying his ‘favourite books’ which I rather bitchily took a photograph of to prove my point to a friend. I love a good honest talk about reading and I won’t judge whatever you enjoy - except perhaps Fifty Shades Of Grey.
One of my favourite interactions was with a taxi driver who I jealously listened to telling me how he used his time in prison reading “everything”, but when I asked if he read War and Peace he said: “For god’s sake, love, I was only doing seven years.”
In case you’re wondering, I haven’t read it either and I don’t plan to. However, if I watch the BBC adaptation with subtitles would it count?
