How Audiobooks Have Changed My Reading Habits—D.M.K Ruby
On Mother’s Day 2023, I made a trip to the emergency room in my hometown. I had noticed some visual changes in my right eye, like a shower of sparks and then fuzziness on my flight to Calgary earlier that day while I had been reading a Norwegian mystery novel. I decided to ignore it, but at 5 am, I woke up and as I was trying to figure out who the killer in Bergen was, I noticed the same fuzziness and couldn’t see properly. I woke my mom and had her take me to the emergency room, Happy Mother’s Day.
The ED doc, like me, was worried I was having a retinal detachment and sent me off to the urgent eye clinic in Calgary so instead of the brunch we had planned with our neighbours to celebrate our moms, we spent that time driving to Calgary where I was very relieved to hear that I did not have a retinal detachment. However I DID have a posterior vitreous detachment, normally an uncomplicated part of the aging process in the eye (in case I needed further evidence that I was middle-aged), but in my case, the vitreous had pulled away from the back of my eyeball unevenly so I had fuzzy patches and some pinpoint black spots and could no longer see clearly out of my right eye. And oh yeah: the same thing was going to happen to my left eye, most likely within six months.
My loved ones freaked out and banned me from reading for at least six weeks, the amount of time the ophthalmologist figured my brain would take to get used to the changes and compensate; the fuzzy patches would hopefully sink out of my visual fields. He told me I was at a slightly higher risk of a retinal detachment, so I decided to cancel my planned trip to New York City the following day in case I had a complication and couldn’t fly for six weeks.
I love to read so much; I realized just how much time I spend reading when I was no longer doing it – I admit I was scared and didn’t want to end up with a retinal detachment, now that I knew I was at higher risk, so I was following directions. The ophthalmologist had also told me to avoid contact sports and jumping down and jarring my head - no problem for this house kitty whose main exercise is walking and swimming, not rugby or hockey. I was almost as frustrated as when I was eleven years old and my mom banned me from the library because she was worried that all I did was read and she didn’t want me to become an asocial hermit. Sigh. But eleven-year-old-me managed to get a job as a volunteer there, and she was torn between immigrant work ethic and social isolation; immigrant work ethic won! I was back at the library, baby!
This time, when I couldn’t read, one of my writing group buddies introduced me to the Libby app on my phone – I already had a Public Library card and although I drop in occasionally to write, I rarely borrowed books because I would stress about getting them back on time. I had tried listening to books on tape (remember those?) on road trips, but I much preferred reading to listening, so I’d never really explored the world of audiobooks. Now I had little choice, so I forced myself to try them again.
Well, technology has changed a lot in the past 40 years. As well, I’d already been listening to podcasts for a few years so somehow the switch was a bit easier this time. I was headed to Europe for a big trip and on a day-long bus ride from Porto, Portugal, to San Sebastian, Spain, I managed to listen to most of an audiobook called Limelight, by Amy Poeppel, in one sitting. I realized that I could get into a story even if I wasn’t physically reading it, especially as there was nothing else to do but watch the gorgeous scenery go by. I listened to a couple of other audiobooks once I was home, and by the time I had gone through three, I realized that I could pay attention and enjoy the experience - especially after speeding it up to 1.25 times the speed which to me, sounds more like a natural conversation.
I still find that I focus more when I’m reading than when I’m listening, but listening has given me another option; and now I find that I might listen to a book even if I’d bought a physical copy of it because I can do other things like walking while I listen - which is probably why I still don’t find listening as immersive an experience as reading.
I am learning what kind of stories I like to listen to which has been an interesting journey of self-discovery. For example, I find it embarrassing to listen to the kind of open-door romances that I enjoy reading because somehow reading is more private than listening, probably because I can imagine the voices and reality doesn’t intrude the way it does with the real voices in audiobooks.
I also abandoned a mystery I was listening to because it was written in the form of emails and texts, which I quickly found annoying to listen to although I love those kinds of stories when I’m reading them. It was harder to keep track of the large cast of characters in the village murder when I couldn’t quickly flick my eye up to see who was sending the message again. However, there have been many audiobooks I’ve enjoyed without straining my eyes, including my beloved Agatha Christie short stories.
Most recently, I listened to Freya Sampson’s The Busybody Book Club and realized that I’d guessed the killer correctly because of the way the narrator voiced the killer’s character that made me think, “She did it!” There was something cloyingly sweet about the narrator’s voice and I’m not sure I would have come to the same conclusion if I had been reading the book myself. One of my writing buddies suggested I write to the author to say, “Hey, your narrator gave away your killer!” but I suspect she has little control over who narrates her books.
However, overall, consider me a convert to audiobooks. Especially because as the ophthalmologist had promised, six months later, I noticed changes in my left eye. Luckily, this time, they weren’t as severe as with the right eye, and this time I knew what was happening. I have heard the arguments by snobs who say that listening to audiobooks is not “real reading”; and to those folks I say, storytelling in any form is a fundamental part of the human experience and no one way is more superior to another, come fight me in the comments if you disagree!