Now that I’ve finished Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading, I have nothing to listen to in the car. Oh, sure, I have a case of CDs, and there’s always the radio (praise be to Radio IQ), but nothing passes commuting time and gives one a sense of self-righteous efficiency like a good audiobook. I have two teens under driving age, so to say I spend a lot of time in the car is an understatement. I hate not having a fresh book ready to go as soon as I finish the last one.
A new blog has kicked off its first post by listing the advantages of audiobooks. To Jeff’s list I’d like to add a couple more. My kids starting listening to audiobooks from the library before they could read, and they continue the habit to this day. I believe the habit of listening has given them an excellent ear for their own writing and a good understanding of how narrative works. They are both better writers with wider vocabularies than I think they would have been reading paper books alone. Some parents worry that there’s a danger in audiobooks replacing “real” reading because it’s easier. But I have found that listening and reading are complementary experiences. Occasionally I will listen to a book I’ve already read, and I find myself gleaning more from it — patterns in the story’s structure, repetition of key words and themes, emotional import that eluded me the first time around.
