As I said last week, I’m not a big audiobook listener. But when I have listened to audiobooks, the thing that’s make-or-break for me is the narrator.
Sure, I’ll pick out a book to listen to based on the author and the book description—the story. But what makes the story worth listening to—or not—is the quality of the narrator. A great narrator can make an average story sound exciting. A less-good narrator can send me to sleep with even the most exciting scene (and that’s A Bad Thing, given I tend to listen to audiobooks while I’m driving).
My very British grandmother would only listen to audiobooks with British narrators. I’m not so fussy, but I do like the accent to match the characters and setting. Books set in England and featuring British characters should probably have a British narrator—unless the main character in the book is American.
The best narrators can play multiple characters—male or female, British or American. They can give each point of view character a distinctive voice, so listening to the audiobook is more like listening to a radio play.
But I’ve started audiobooks where the narrator spoke in a monotone, to the point I couldn’t tell the difference between the point of view characters, or even between the male and female characters. There was such a complete lack of expression, even when the point of view character thought they’d come upon a mass murder scene, that I thought I was listening to a computer read. I wasn’t—I checked.
So if I was going to start listening to audiobooks, I’d make sure I checked the audio sample first. Because the narrator is definitely the most important thing to me.
If I’m enjoying a story, I want to get on with it … which means reading faster and faster, not waiting for the audio to catch up with my thoughts. Yes, I know audiobooks (well, some audiobooks) can be played at 1.5 times or 2 times speed, but then they can end up sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks …
Where I do have car time, I tend to listen to podcasts—they’re shorter, and it doesn’t matter if you miss a couple of details (the really important content, like the links, will be in the show notes). With a novel, it’s important to be able to see/hear and retain all the details because missing an important detail might affect your overall enjoyment or appreciation of the book.
I can see the appeal of audiobooks for someone who has an hour or more a day of otherwise dead time e.g., driving or waiting for children, or even exercising (assuming they’re going for a quiet walk, not taking a class or exercising in a gym pumping loud music out of the speakers).
If you’ve got a good chunk of time each day and can get through an audiobook in a week or two, then I can see them as a great way to pep up otherwise useless driving or waiting time. But they are less good for someone like me who would only be listening in ten or fifteen-minute slots two or three times a week. It would take forever to get into the story, and would be too easy to forget the details between sessions.
First, and most important, is that I’m a fast reader. I’ve done some of those online tests and learned I read at somewhere between 500 and 600 words per minute. In contrast, people speak at somewhere around 180 words per minute. That means I can read most novels in around one-third of the time it would take for me to read the book.
My next reason for not listening to audiobooks is related—time. I don’t have time to listen to audiobooks. This is mostly because I work from home, which means I don’t spend much time in the car. Even when I am in the car, it’s usually for no more than fifteen minutes at a time.
I have been through periods in life where I’ve commuted—my London tube journey was about 40 minutes each way, five days a week. That was great in that it gave me plenty of reading time, and I worked my way through most of the classics of British literature during those years.
I’ve also commuted by car—three hours each way, but fortunately only once a week. Reading while driving is illegal, but listing to audiobooks is not. The only audiobook I had at the time was the King James Version of the New Testament, so I listened to that a lot. I also borrowed some audiobooks from my local library. Some were excellent but others were not, and that had more to do with the narrator than the book. The worst were the ones who read in soporiphic monotone. I was driving. I needed to be kept awake, not sent to sleep.
And that’s my final reason for not listening to audiobooks: the varible quality of the narration. Yes, you can sample the narration, but it’s not as though there are multiple narrators on offer for a specific book. If you want to listen to a story, you have to listen to the story with THAT narrator, good or bad.
If I ever got to the point of having long driving commutes again then I might spend the time listening to audiobooks. Until then, I’ll stick to reading my books.
