Read With Your Ear Holes
At the time of writing this post, I am currently sitting at a respectable twenty-three books so far this year. About this time last year, I had read less than half that number. Unfortunately, being a busy, busy person living a busy, busy life, I like many people, don’t actually find that much time to sit down and read. In my recent blog post Coffee Table Books, I explained how, in an attempt to read more, I now permanently keep a second book on my coffee table which I turn to every time I find myself doomscrolling on the sofa. So far, this tactic is paying dividends, but I’d bee lying if I claimed it was the sole reason for my success in having read so many more books this year. The truth is, I have a dirty little secret: I have started listening to audiobooks!
Right now, I imagine you are experiencing one of two emotions to this incredible revelation. Either, A, indifference, a mere shoulder shrug followed by the words, “So what?” or, B, outrage. “Audiobooks don’t count! How dare you include them in your book count!” Well, this simple fact of the matter is that audiobooks are still books, and we can get as snobbish as we want, but it doesn’t change anything. Like ebooks, audiobooks are just a different format.
In an ideal world I’d still be consuming all my books traditionally; I prefer reading a book to listening to one. But, as I’ve already explained, I don’t have half as much time to just sit and read as I’d like. I do have time though, and a decent amount of it at that, where I am sat down, not on the sofa, but in the saddle, unable to read, but where my mind is generally otherwise underutilised, which at the end of last year I realised I had the massive opportunity to capitalise on.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I’ve started cycling everywhere. Unlike my Mini Cooper, my bike is lacking a radio; fortunately however, when I got into running last year, I invested in a set of wireless earbuds, ones which give the option to pipe in ambient sound from your surroundings i.e. the BMW driver speeding up from behind, about to come with in inches of knocking me off my bike in a desperate attempt to overtake and shave a few seconds off his commute—that sort of ambient noise. At first on my cycling commute, I was just listening to music, what I used to do when I was driving to work, but given that my journey in and out of work is now slightly longer, (although admittedly not by much,) I figured it was a good opportunity to start taking advantage of the time.
I subscribed to Audible, something I had been debating for a good few years now; but until recently, I had figured that I wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of the service. Now however, I listen on my bike, clocking up about forty-five minutes of listening a day—all whilst getting some solid exercise and journeying to and from work; if that’s not effective multitasking then I don’t know what is!
I can’t really listen to audiobooks when I’m doing anything else. If I have one on whilst I’m doing housework, my mind gets distracted and I find I stop paying attention. Likewise, if I were just going to sit down and listen then I’d prefer to simply read the book the old-fashioned way. But whilst on a bike, my mind is disengaged just enough that I can focus on the narrator whilst my body is kept otherwise preoccupied. The two activities go together surprisingly well.
Audible is obviously the big name in audiobooks as Kindle is to ebooks, and given that they are both Amazon companies, it makes things all the simpler. Its not a Netflix or Spotify subscription model, in that signing up doesn’t give you access to their full library. There is a good deal of ‘free’ content that you can listen to you when you sign up, but the main way it works is, each month you get one credit that will let you claim any audiobook in their library. Given that it costs £7.99 a month, whereas some audiobooks would normally set you back near £30, with the average probably clocking in at about £15, its pretty decent value. But actually, it’s much better value than it at first seems; they are forever having two for one deals which your credits count towards, and so if you play your cards right you can make your money go a lot further. One book a month might not sound like a lot, but that seems to be what I am averaging with my listening, and so by taking advantage of the deals, I’m accruing books faster than I am listening to them.