Notes on this blog

The two main genres I read are ‘literature’ and fantasy. For the most part, I read literary fiction in book form and listen to genre fiction as audiobooks. Lately I’ve been sprinkling in a few non-fiction books in audio form as well.

Both formats have their place. I still believe a physical book is the ultimate way to read, but listening to audiobooks allows me to double, if not treble, the number of books I can get through.

I try to use the audio format for books that require less focused attention (e.g. more plot-focused books) and read in physical form the ones whose words and imagery I want to soak in, whose meaning I want to carefully contemplate.

For each book, I’ll annotate whether I listened to or read it and may make reflections on how this affected the experience (look out for the book or headphones icon at the top)

With audiobooks, the narrator can make an enormous difference to the experience of the story, which is unfortunate in some cases where it might be hard to determine if it was the writing that was grating or just the narrator’s voice and style.

Inevitably, in audio, some details will be missed as I’m almost always listening while performing some other task and prone to potential distractions. Similarly, while reading a book, I’ll sometimes find my eyes glazing and realise I’ve not actually taken in a word of the last two paragraphs, but somehow it’s easier to notice this and go back to re-read any missed bits. So, while audio is undoubtedly the poor cousin of hard copy, it’s the cousin that lives nearby and so comes around to visit more often. For relatively straightforward narratives, audio will be just fine, but there are times when the format definitely influences perception.

There is the odd occasion when listening to a book in audio format feels like an enhancement of the reading experience. Hugh Grant’s narration of A Christmas Carol is a superb travel companion on the trip to family Christmas. I also enjoy hearing books narrated by the author, who can interpret the text in exactly the way they intended when they wrote it and make you feel like the author is in the room with you, telling you their story.

I’m not a quick reader and though I’m getting better at making time for reading, I’m still trying to fit it around approximately 100 other mini-projects, so I don’t expect to publish blog updates all that frequently, but if you’d like to be notified of new posts and engage in discussion, please sign up below.