What do you think about audiobooks?
We resisted them for a long time—partly out of habit, and partly out of the idea that listening to an audiobook isn’t reading. It’s letting someone tell you a story.
And then it hit us. That’s the best thing about them.
Books didn’t come first in the evolution of story. Narration did: the mythologies we dreamed up by firelight in the caves of our ancestors; the fairytales we invented to pass long, winter nights; the magical hopes and dreams we shared beneath the harvest moon.
The magic of books came later, when we began to write them down. But books weren’t the first magic.
Unfortunately, the modern world doesn’t believe in magic, so audiobooks have been reinvented as time savers. They let us read while driving, or cooking dinner, or mowing the lawn. (And it’s true. They do.) But that’s exactly how a lot of them are narrated: like a multi-tasking tool, divorced from the laughter, suspense, tragedy, and hope that lie at the heart of every great story.
So we’re on a mission: to find the best audiobooks on the market and share them with you.
We’ll review each underlying story, like we always have, but we’ll also tell you what we thought of the narration itself. Was it lyrical or dry? Monotone or captivating? How did the narrator handle the dialog? The tension? The mood?
We’ll still read old-fashioned books. And we’ll keep reviewing them. But we’re excited to be adding audiobooks to our review list. We hope you’ll be excited, too.
Tell us what you think!
Do you listen to audiobooks? Love them? Hate them? How do they fit into your reading life? Tell us in the comments!
