Why I Love Audiobooks
I'd love for some statistician to verify whether or not it is, but I'm certain that 90 to 95 percent of all plots to murder members of one's family begin in family vehicles on road trips.
Consider a moment, dear reader, my reasoning for believing this.
You're in a confined space, a car, a van, or what have you, thus eliminating any chance of privacy. You're in a sedentary position, literally strapped in for safety's sake, unable to move, thus eliminating any means of removing yourself from a situation. You're there for x-amount of time, usually a lengthy time, until you reach your destination. Finally, you're in this cramped space, crunched up, for an extended period of time, with people who know, better than anyone on the planet, how to push your buttons because, as (I believe), Elizabeth Gilbert once said, "They're the ones who installed them.
Anyone who knows a little about chemistry knows that when you mix two or more volatile agents in a confined space, say a beaker or a bottle, the reach is almost always an explosion.
This was certainly the case for my family when we still did things like this, years ago.
Please, dear reader, take a trip with me back in time. (*Cue the Twilight Zone them.*)
This was an era before Wi-Fi, before unlimited data, before smartphones, just at the dawn of the era of cars with built-in TV screens which cost loads to buy. To listen to music, we have these things called Walkman, with non-noise canceling headphones that wrapped around your head.. We couldn't stream movies or TV shows. We had to play them on clunky portable DVD players or on jerry-rigged set-ups in our vehicles. Ours was a little portable TV, about the size of a boxy PC monitor, which had a built in VCR, and for power; for power, we plugged its cable into a converter box, which we then plugged into the old cigarette lighter port on the dashboard, just below the radio.
It wasn't a simpler time. It was a time when boredom was an actual possibility, and to stave it off, you had to get creative.
You could used one of the primitive methods mentioned above.
You could annoy the other passengers in your road-trip carpool, thus adding to the statistics of devising murder plots I mentioned earlier.
Or, as a means of free entertainment, you could go to the library before you left on a road-trip, as my parents, did and have us browse through the audiobooks section of the library and take out everything we could and listen to it on the road.
I'm fairly certain audiobooks, or as we called them in olden-times, "books on tape," are the only reason my siblings and I are still alive.
On every road trip, even the ones we went on after we learned to jerry-rig the TV set, we always made a customary stop by the library the day we left. We took a lot of these road trips when we were kids because, while my family was always comfortable, we never had obnoxious amounts of disposable income to spend on vacations. We didn't take cruises. We didn't go to resorts. We didn't take trips by airplane (unless we had no choice). We drove everywhere, and when it got too dark, we lodged in nearby cheap motels. It was slower, yes, and it wasn't classy by any standards, but it was cheaper and in its own way, fun. Almost always, we were headed to one of the National Parks.
The year, for example, when we went to Yellowstone National Park, we picked up several audiobooks, a few old favorites and some new ones. That was the year Harry Patter and the Order of the Phoenix had finally made it on audiobook. We took it, along with several old favorites, like Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy, The Skull of Truth, and The Lord of the Rings out as well.
As we drove across the Northwestern United States, to kill time between natural national moments, like Old Faithful and the Hot Springs, we listened to these books. To our parents relief, it kept us from murdering one another and from driving them totally batshit (although, we did drive them batshit enough to turn their hair grey).
It was also that year we learned to stop taking out the books that were actually on tape. Something rude people tended to do with the books on tape--either because they were too poor to buy their own copy or just felt the need to ruin nice things for everyone because they were such shit people--was copy the tapes. This process, however, invariable ruined the original, leaving what remained of the original recording a scrambled screech of death. You'd put the tape in, without worry, and then suddenly, your sound system turned into a Screaming Banshee intent on rupturing your eardrums. We found this out that year when the tape copy of Order of the Phoenix did this to us. From then on, we stuck to CDs.
We did that before every road trip, and with many different titles.
Over several years and several road trips, we listened to nearly the whole of the A Series of Unfortunate Events novels by Lemony Snicket. I say nearly because the books were still being published as we grew up. We also listen to several novels by the German writer Cornelia Funke, including Dragon Rider, Inkheart, and The Thief Lord. Another favorite was Lois Lowry's then Giver trio, The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger, strange haunting stories loaded with imagery uncommon in children's and YA books then, along with the first two books of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle and the Septimus Heap books by Angie Sage. And, of course as they came out, we listened to the last four of the Harry Potter books.
Between seeing sights like the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Badlands, and Mount Rushmore, we simply devoured these books, one CD at a time.
On an even personal note, as someone who grew up with "reading difficulties," (that's a euphemism for dyslexia), audiobook were indispensable. Sometimes, when the words would start to scramble on the page, having a audiobook where all the words were spoken, and thus made understandable. We had to do a lot of "book report" projects on books we read in Middle school, and sometimes the books we had to read seemed so voluminous, without the audiobook, I don't know if I would've read them. Without audiobooks, I have a hard time believing that I would've made it through school.
I think the appeal of the audiobook is not just the simple appeal of being "read to," it's the more basic appeal of having someone tell you a story. Many parents, still to this day, read to and/or with their kids at night. Humans, as many people have said, are story animals; we're the only species on earth--so far as we know--that tells stories. We tell true stories (history, experience, and anecdote), and we tell fictional stories (everything from moral parables to grand fantastical epics, like Homer's The Odyssey). Before the popularized practice of writing and, by proxy, popular literacy, we told each other stories. It is that experience, of having a story slowly recounted to you, that audiobooks recreate.
Now, thanks in large part to Audible, I'm able to listen to almost anything, and I listen regularly. It isn't just because they helped me overcome my difficulties as a student. It isn't just nostalgia for one of the highlights of my childhood. It isn't just because the stories I listened to kept me from plotting my older siblings murders (I'd worked those out at age 8, but I haven't needed to implement them...yet). There is something simply soothing about listening to a story, as its words flow over you. Nothing else compares to it.
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| Source: The Walrus |
You're in a confined space, a car, a van, or what have you, thus eliminating any chance of privacy. You're in a sedentary position, literally strapped in for safety's sake, unable to move, thus eliminating any means of removing yourself from a situation. You're there for x-amount of time, usually a lengthy time, until you reach your destination. Finally, you're in this cramped space, crunched up, for an extended period of time, with people who know, better than anyone on the planet, how to push your buttons because, as (I believe), Elizabeth Gilbert once said, "They're the ones who installed them.
Anyone who knows a little about chemistry knows that when you mix two or more volatile agents in a confined space, say a beaker or a bottle, the reach is almost always an explosion.
This was certainly the case for my family when we still did things like this, years ago.
Please, dear reader, take a trip with me back in time. (*Cue the Twilight Zone them.*)
This was an era before Wi-Fi, before unlimited data, before smartphones, just at the dawn of the era of cars with built-in TV screens which cost loads to buy. To listen to music, we have these things called Walkman, with non-noise canceling headphones that wrapped around your head.. We couldn't stream movies or TV shows. We had to play them on clunky portable DVD players or on jerry-rigged set-ups in our vehicles. Ours was a little portable TV, about the size of a boxy PC monitor, which had a built in VCR, and for power; for power, we plugged its cable into a converter box, which we then plugged into the old cigarette lighter port on the dashboard, just below the radio.
It wasn't a simpler time. It was a time when boredom was an actual possibility, and to stave it off, you had to get creative.
You could used one of the primitive methods mentioned above.
You could annoy the other passengers in your road-trip carpool, thus adding to the statistics of devising murder plots I mentioned earlier.
Or, as a means of free entertainment, you could go to the library before you left on a road-trip, as my parents, did and have us browse through the audiobooks section of the library and take out everything we could and listen to it on the road.
I'm fairly certain audiobooks, or as we called them in olden-times, "books on tape," are the only reason my siblings and I are still alive.
On every road trip, even the ones we went on after we learned to jerry-rig the TV set, we always made a customary stop by the library the day we left. We took a lot of these road trips when we were kids because, while my family was always comfortable, we never had obnoxious amounts of disposable income to spend on vacations. We didn't take cruises. We didn't go to resorts. We didn't take trips by airplane (unless we had no choice). We drove everywhere, and when it got too dark, we lodged in nearby cheap motels. It was slower, yes, and it wasn't classy by any standards, but it was cheaper and in its own way, fun. Almost always, we were headed to one of the National Parks.
The year, for example, when we went to Yellowstone National Park, we picked up several audiobooks, a few old favorites and some new ones. That was the year Harry Patter and the Order of the Phoenix had finally made it on audiobook. We took it, along with several old favorites, like Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy, The Skull of Truth, and The Lord of the Rings out as well.
As we drove across the Northwestern United States, to kill time between natural national moments, like Old Faithful and the Hot Springs, we listened to these books. To our parents relief, it kept us from murdering one another and from driving them totally batshit (although, we did drive them batshit enough to turn their hair grey).
It was also that year we learned to stop taking out the books that were actually on tape. Something rude people tended to do with the books on tape--either because they were too poor to buy their own copy or just felt the need to ruin nice things for everyone because they were such shit people--was copy the tapes. This process, however, invariable ruined the original, leaving what remained of the original recording a scrambled screech of death. You'd put the tape in, without worry, and then suddenly, your sound system turned into a Screaming Banshee intent on rupturing your eardrums. We found this out that year when the tape copy of Order of the Phoenix did this to us. From then on, we stuck to CDs.
We did that before every road trip, and with many different titles.
Over several years and several road trips, we listened to nearly the whole of the A Series of Unfortunate Events novels by Lemony Snicket. I say nearly because the books were still being published as we grew up. We also listen to several novels by the German writer Cornelia Funke, including Dragon Rider, Inkheart, and The Thief Lord. Another favorite was Lois Lowry's then Giver trio, The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger, strange haunting stories loaded with imagery uncommon in children's and YA books then, along with the first two books of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle and the Septimus Heap books by Angie Sage. And, of course as they came out, we listened to the last four of the Harry Potter books.
Between seeing sights like the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Badlands, and Mount Rushmore, we simply devoured these books, one CD at a time.
On an even personal note, as someone who grew up with "reading difficulties," (that's a euphemism for dyslexia), audiobook were indispensable. Sometimes, when the words would start to scramble on the page, having a audiobook where all the words were spoken, and thus made understandable. We had to do a lot of "book report" projects on books we read in Middle school, and sometimes the books we had to read seemed so voluminous, without the audiobook, I don't know if I would've read them. Without audiobooks, I have a hard time believing that I would've made it through school.
I think the appeal of the audiobook is not just the simple appeal of being "read to," it's the more basic appeal of having someone tell you a story. Many parents, still to this day, read to and/or with their kids at night. Humans, as many people have said, are story animals; we're the only species on earth--so far as we know--that tells stories. We tell true stories (history, experience, and anecdote), and we tell fictional stories (everything from moral parables to grand fantastical epics, like Homer's The Odyssey). Before the popularized practice of writing and, by proxy, popular literacy, we told each other stories. It is that experience, of having a story slowly recounted to you, that audiobooks recreate.
Now, thanks in large part to Audible, I'm able to listen to almost anything, and I listen regularly. It isn't just because they helped me overcome my difficulties as a student. It isn't just nostalgia for one of the highlights of my childhood. It isn't just because the stories I listened to kept me from plotting my older siblings murders (I'd worked those out at age 8, but I haven't needed to implement them...yet). There is something simply soothing about listening to a story, as its words flow over you. Nothing else compares to it.
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