Audiobooks Saved My Reading Life

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Somewhere along the way, many adults stopped reading, not because they stopped loving books, but because modern life made sustained attention feel nearly impossible.

[00:00:11]And I would actually argue that most people don't stop loving literature.

[00:00:15]They simply stop having lives that make traditional reading easy. There's exhaustion, there's commuting, your fragmented attention, and you know, you got to take the kids here. The general pressures of adulthood slowly crowd out our ability to sit down and read. Now, there's an elephant in the room here.

[00:00:34]The debate about physical books versus audiobooks. And people tend to get quite moral about this in ways that, to me, at least feel very bizarre. There's this idea that real reading only happens when you're, you know, sitting quietly with a physical book, eyes on the page, no distractions, and that any other form of reading, any other engagement with literature is somehow less valuable.

[00:00:58]It's a lesser version, less serious, less legitimate. Maybe it's not as intellectually valid, people even argue.

[00:01:04]But I think that that framing totally misses something that's quite important.

[00:01:09]Yes, physical reading is wonderful.

[00:01:11]sitting by a campfire or in an armchair in your room or on the beach with a book. It's one of my favorite things.

[00:01:19]It's it's a great pleasure in life.

[00:01:22]There's this particular stillness and beauty to it that I don't think anything can truly replace, but I don't think it is inherently morally or intellectually superior to audiobooks. You could also be walking by the river listening to a great audio book and have a wonderful engagement, wonderful experience. Every time I hear this debate, I just feel like it totally misses the real question, which is very simple. Are people staying in contact with the literature or are they reading at all or simply are they drifting away from it?

[00:01:54]The truth is that this is a question that also affects me quite personally.

[00:02:00]It's quite personal because in many ways audiobooks helped keep literature alive in my life. When I was in my undergrad, I wasn't studying literature. I was taking a lot of classes. I was working a number of jobs at the same time.

[00:02:12]Lifeguarding, construction, landscaping.

[00:02:14]I think I was also doing a little bit of tutoring at the time. Basically, I was burning the candle at both ends, which in hindsight is a really bad idea. But sometimes we don't have a choice in life, right? Either way, I didn't have a lot of time to sit down and read physical books during this period of my life. So, what should I just stop reading? Should I just quit? No. I started listening to audiobooks while I was working, especially while I was doing construction and landscaping as they were physically intensive jobs that had a lot of requirements obviously physically but with stretches of more repetitive work where I could listen effectively or my mind was free even if my body was engaged in something and I ended up reading voraciously during those years even though I had far less time to read in the conventional sense.

[00:03:04]Now, something that has disappointed me and really surprised me quite a bit uh is that after this uptick in audiobook reading over the past several years, just how much snobbery still exists around audiobooks. I mean, maybe I wasn't completely surprised. Whenever a new way of doing things starts or it becomes more popular, there are a lot of people that are going to strive to maintain uh the way that things have always been done. And you know that isn't always a bad thing depending on what we're talking about but often the debate with audiobooks has become quite venomous I think needlessly so like it comes from a bad place and that to me is really enough to delegitimate the the conversation in many cases and I think the whole conversation misses the point too. There are many ways in which literature can enter a person's life and the format is definitely not the most important thing. It's not the essence of it. It can matter and it can shape our experience but it's not the core of the transformation.

[00:04:05]Right? Like reading physical books is wonderful as I said before but it is not inherently morally intellectually better than listening to an audio book. And in fact there are many cases where I actually think audiobooks are better.

[00:04:21]They're the better experience than the physical book. And a lot of this comes down to life circumstances, but a lot of it also comes down to the performance or the narration of the audiobook, which can make a huge different difference in one's reading experience. So on this video, I want to share five books that I genuinely preferred the audiobook version. And by the way, if you find videos like this valuable, consider liking and subscribing. It really helps uh the channel. So let's get right into it here. The first book that uh that I really think is actually superior in terms of an audio book compared to the to to the to the physical one and I've recommended this to a number of friends and family specifically the audio version and that is Project Hail Mary by Andrew Weir Andy Weir I think his name is Andrew. It's Andy Weir but maybe maybe his full name is Andrew. Um this book is wonderfully entertaining and actually it's it's a pretty recent read for me. I listened to it while I was on a road trip and the narration by Roy uh by Ray Porter. He's the one who does the narration. It's really excellent. I would argue that the delivery here really enhances the book just makes the experience so much richer than just reading it physically. The humor is amazing, the pacing, the emotional like phrasing, the pauses, the per the performance is just wonderful and it becomes a completely different vehicle for experiencing this than when silent reading it. So, the first book, Project Hail Mary, narrated by Ray Porter. Next, we have a very fun and entertaining really, it's a collection of books, so I don't need to choose a single one, and that's the complete works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is narrated by Steven Fry, and it really is another wonderful performance. Fry's own books are also very interesting for any anyone who's interested in poetry in particular if you if you want to start it as a hobby or just as a way of life.

[00:06:15]He has a book called The Ode Less Traveled. That's quite nice. But back to the detective, you know, I think that in a lot of ways Sherlock Holmes was literally written to be spoken. Like the way that his character is written just lends itself to the audio format.

[00:06:29]There's something inherently performative about the stories. And so there's like the voice, the cadence, the wit, all this stuff makes it such that when you have a great narrator like Fry, it's really really compelling and really uh, you know, an amazing experience to listen to. Fry also has a performance background. I'm a huge Black Adder fan, so I'll always think of his roles there whenever I think of Steven Fry, but but he really leans into this component of Sherlock Holmes beautifully. There's wonder, there's mystery, there's intrigue. It's just great. So, the second audio book here is The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, narrated by uh Steven Fry. Third up, we have a really great classic. This one is fantastic, whatever format you choose, but there is an excellent audiobook performance by the actor Tim Curry. It's also got a whole ensemble cast um uh with a lot of other big stars and that is Dracula by Bram Stoker. Now, normally I would be cautious with the full cast productions of audiobooks, but that's because they're often abridged, and that is one area where audiobooks have kind of had a historical disadvantage. But now, most often, it will say pretty clearly if it's an abridged or not, an unbridgeided version. And this one is unbridgeged, so it's what we're looking for. Honestly, this is the perfect example of atmosphere being transformed by voice.

[00:07:55]And the novel is already super eerie, right? On every page, it's dripping with that um Gothic horror sense, but hearing it performed gives it that the theatrical presence that really heightens everything, I think. And the whole cast is really great in this. So, it's, you know, it's strange to me at least because I grew up knowing Tim Curry as the actor of kind of these generally silly antagonists like in Home Alone 2 or Annie or Rocky Horror Picture Show, but he does a really excellent job as Van Helsig here. And I really think I preferred listening to Dracula than actually reading it. So, that's my third recommendation.

[00:08:33]Next, the fourth book here is another true classic that is definitely one of the most influential Gothic romance novels of all time. And of course, I'm speaking about Janeire by Charlotte Bronte. Um, of course, this is a wonderful book and I've spoken about it before, but I didn't mention that this is one of the classics that I listen to as well. It's it's a great book to experience in the audio format, provided you have the right narrator. Um, I think that the one that I listened to was narrated by Sandy Newton, and she really does a great job. It honestly surprised me this one, too, to be honest. I thought it would be better to read it physically. I don't know why. Maybe just cuz it's kind of like a a or a literary classic, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it. And honestly, I feel like I got more out of it in this format reading it, maybe just reading it the second time, though I did physically read it a long time ago. So, it feels super intimate and and you know, the characters really came alive to me by the Andy Newton. So, um you know, Jane in particular. So, Janeire is the fourth book. Now, the last one here might be a bit controversial, but I do love this audio book and it's one of the few audio books I've read multiple times in the format, the audio format, and that is The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolken.

[00:09:46]Now, I really love this book in any format, but it really is one book, and although you have to buy three audio credits as it's split into a trilogy for a variety of reasons we won't get into today, um it's a great audio book. The one narrated by Andy Circus, who was the voice and physical movement actor of Gollum, because that was, you know, they had a new technology there in the Peter Jackson movies. His narration is just incredible. Not just Gollum, although of course you do get the Gollum voice, right? Even Gollum sounds better than Andy. Circus is really precious. Okay, that was I have to work on my Gollum voice. Um, but Circus doesn't. All right, he's he's excellent. He doesn't just read the story. He doesn't read it all in the Gollum voice, obviously. He just reads the Gollum sections like that. And he really brings you into the world of Middle Earth. Or I would even say more, he brings the world alive through voice. feels like it feels like the oral tradition really coming to life which uh there is an argument that that is what Tolken was after in the first place when he wrote this uh this wonderful narrative. So it's a great place to start. Number five, Lord of the Rings, the Andy Circus version is another audio book I highly highly recommend. So stepping back, my broader point on all of this is that literature should be able to accompany our lives, human life in general. When we're whether we're walking and we're riding the train, we're cooking dinner, we're grieving, we're tired, we're happy, we want to go to the beach, we live in a thoughtful world, but it's a distracted world. And if it's hard to incorporate physical books due to time restraint or due to learning style, we need to adapt.

[00:11:27]And I think audiobooks are a big part of how we do that. The mission here is that we need to make reading normal again.

[00:11:35]Not more rarified, not more academic.

[00:11:38]Okay? There's already rarified academic reading sectors and those will always be the case.

[00:11:44]We need to make it more real. We live in a world of very real demands on our attention and our time. So audiobooks are not just an option anymore, but for many of us, if we are to remain readers, they are a necessity. So whether you're sitting in your favorite armchair with a physical book or walking by the river listening to an audio book, you're reading, okay? And I care more that people love books and stay in contact with literature than I do about the format that they use to get there.

[00:12:16]So happy reading my friends, whatever form it takes.