Paper Books v. Audiobooks: Are you a book sniffer?

There have been a number of Twitter threads lately asking for contrasting opinions on audiobooks v. paper books (and to a lesser degree, e-books). I find this a little strange, as they are clearly different media. But if you ask for opinions on Twitter, you will get them.

So, for example, we had this:

Not a bad question. Here are some selected replies…

And there are, of course, people defending audiobooks

There are also folks who prefer one over the other for cognitive/physical  reasons – which I would never argue with – printed books give them headaches, audiobooks are hard to focus on.

For me, I get very different benefits from printed books than audiobooks.

I listen to audio books the way lots of people watch television. I have them playing through my bluetooth headset whenever I’m doing things around the house, out walking, or traveling. I don’t think of audiobooks as an alternative form of reading; they are just great entertainment.

I got started on audiobooks, then known as Books on Tape, back in the late 1980s when I was commuting from Flagstaff, Arizona to Arizona State University in Tempe to earn my doctorate. Roughly 160 miles and one vertical mile each direction.  Put in a lot of hours in the car. So I listened to what I could get from the public library. That was when I started listening to the Dick Francis horse racing world mysteries. And I also discovered the world of Jeeves and Wooster from P.G. Wodehouse. These were all fun entertainments.

But I also got to dive into some more serious things that I never would have considered if I weren’t looking at a limited number of tapes to choose from. The most notable one was British author Margaret Drabble’s The Garrick Year about the young woman Emma spending a year in Garrick where her husband would be acting. It’s a darkly comic novel about the nature of marriage, having an affair, and finding oneself that I would have never picked up under other circumstances, but it led me to read a number of Drabble’s other novels.

I still get audiobooks from the local public library, now downloaded online using the Libby app on my phone. Like many people do with favorite movies or TV shows, I return to favorite books in audio format with a favorite reader. I also buy them using the Audible app.

I recently completed listening to the entire Patrick O’Brian Master and Commander series on audiobooks read by the great Patrick Tull. (These books are set in the Napoleonic Wars era of the British Navy, and a complete reading of the series is known among fans as a “circumnavigation,” as in a “circumnavigation of the world” that happens at least once in the series. BTW, should you start the series, the books are available with two different readers. I strongly recommend Tull. I read the entire series in paper copies back when O’Brian was writing the latter books in the series.)

I also loved hearing the late Rene Auberjonois reading the Agent Pendergast novels from Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Auberjonois perfectly captures the New Orleans sensibilities of the world’s oddest FBI agent. Most recently, I’ve been listening to actor Andy Serkis reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Serkis played Gollum in the LOTR movies, and he is a splendid voice actor.

So, no, I don’t see audiobooks as an equivalent of print books. When it comes to entertainment throughout the day, I find them vastly superior.

I have plenty of paper books I can sniff if I want to…

There is, of course, a lot of reading I do for work, not entertainment, and for that books with written text are far superior. But as much as I do enjoy collecting physical books, I almost always buy them as e-books if I can. I typically read e-books on my iPad Pro tablet where I can highlight passages and take notes as needed. I also don’t have to worry about where the books are among the myriad of overflowing bookcases in my home.

I did an extended post a few months ago on my feelings about e-books, so I will not repeat that here.