Many readers enjoy books in different ways. I personally love e-books and sometimes physical books, while some people only read physical books, or some read only e-books. And that’s okay. But, there’s another way to enjoy books, and it’s called audiobooks.

Audiobooks are prerecorded narrations of books, where you don’t read the words yourself, but instead you listen to the words instead. There are two different types of audiobooks, there are physical audiobooks that are burned on CDs that can be then played on a device that supports them, and then there are e-audiobooks where there is no disc like what Alexa has. Alexa can play an audiobook that is downloaded on your Amazon account. Now an argument can be made here that if you are listening to a book, then you are technically not actually reading but instead listening to someone else read. But, I remember as a little girl listening to my elementary school teachers read out loud to the class and was still able to enjoy the books. So I guess audiobooks are not a way to read a book but instead it is a way to enjoy a book.

I haven’t listened to an audiobook before but my friend the other month gifted me an Amazon Alexa (which I thought to be overpriced and unnecessary from the start but was still flattered to get). In my exploration of this new device Alexa had the thought to inform me that she can play audiobooks for me and she is able to read to me Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, book 1 of the Harry Potter series. Being a big Harry Potter fan I thought to myself why would I wanna listen to the books when I have the physical books that I can read right here? Besides, I have a hard time listening to people talk, my imagination always gets the best of me. But I thought about it, decided to try something new, so I told Alexa to read to me.

Now from the start, I knew exactly what was going to happen and pretty much had this series memorized, so I did not know how well I will be focusing on the words and how effective it will be. As Alexa started and the story was going on, I did notice that I wasn’t paying attention to the words if I happened to be doing something else as well (so no multitasking for me), and yes in fact I was not able to catch all the words as good as when I myself reading. So I guess it was going exactly how I expected it to be. But, then I became to realize that even though I knew the story and I myself wasn’t reading, I still found myself laughing at the funny parts. But, I eventually came to realize that I was having a hard time paying attention even when I was staring at a blank because my ADD brain kept wandering off and I frankly don’t know what to do with my hands seeing as I had nothing to hold and twiddling my thumbs just felt ridiculous to me.

After finishing this book with Amazon’s Alexa, I have compiled a list of all of the pros and cons that I could think of, to decide if I liked this new way of enjoying books or not.

Pros

1. Convenient when traveling or running errands, you can listen in the car while driving or listen with headphones/earbuds while doing activities.
2. Lightweight, a physical book is heavy.
3. Convertible, can be listened to on a phone, car, Alexa, and several other electronic devices.
4. Can be listened to in the dark and not strain your eyes.
5. Many other people can listen along too with you if play it out loud.
6. Can be taken anywhere so you don’t have to stop if you are in the middle of a good part in the book (shower can be included).
7. Inclusive if you are unable to read for any reason, you no longer have to read but instead listen.
8. Private, nobody will know what you are reading when you are in public.
9. You will know the correct pronunciation of words and/or names. As a kid I had a hard time pronouncing words correctly because I learned lots of them reading and never heard them out loud.
10. Cheaper, audiobooks tend to be cheaper than physical books because just like e-books, you are not paying for paper.
11. Save paper, in this way audiobooks are a way to save trees.

Cons

1. No physical touch or gratification of the feeling of holding a book in your hands.
2. No book smell (if you love the smell of books like me).
3. Won’t grab your attention, I kept on getting distracted and ended up not listening.
4. The recorded narration plays the words not in your own pace which means that it might go slower or faster than your ability to read.
5. Hard to play backwards, if you missed a word or misunderstood it’s really inconvenient or at least timely to play back what was immediately said or a specific word.
6. You can’t tell where you are in a story. I always like to see how long in a book I got to or what I still have left of the book or chapter. The title and number of the chapters are always announced in audiobooks, but it does not announce how many chapters are left to finish the story every time you start a new chapter. This is not an option with an audiobook with certain devices, Alexa does not have this as an option for example. Sometimes I like to stop reading, close the book and look to see how much I have left, that is highly convenient with an e-audiobook.
7. If you are using a device, you can run out of battery power while physical books don’t need batteries.

Here’s another list that someone else made on the benefits of reading audiobooks if you are interested.

In the end I realized that audiobooks are probably a no for me, but I still got to see why some people love them because despite everything I still was able to laugh and feel emotions throughout the read. Although I have found that there are more pros than cons on my list, the cons outweigh the pros for me personally. However, I have come to find a new respect for audiobooks even if it’s not for me, but if you find that they are for you, here’s a list of the top rated audiobooks from Goodreads.

If you would like to check out audiobooks, the UW Libraries do have e-audiobooks and physical audiobooks for you to check out. However at this time, physical pick up is not an option at UW libraries so physical audiobooks are not an option at this time, however you can still find e-audiobooks on the UW Library’s website. You can also find many audiobooks at your local public libraries, although they are not open at this time they still have online reaches for e-audiobooks. King County Libraries Online, Snohomish County Libraries Online

– Lana S.