Image source: Photo by Ushindi Namegabe on Pexels
When I was growing up, I was an avid reader. Everywhere I went, I had to have a book with me. I was reading at all times. Even if I didn’t have a book, I had to be reading. At breakfast time, I couldn’t sit and just eat breakfast; I’d have to pull over the box of cereal and read every bit of text on the box. So, yeah, I’ve always been a reader.
As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve had less time to read. More things outside of reading fill up my days, and then when I do have time to read towards the end of the day, I’m exhausted. It had gotten so bad that as soon as I was in bed and picked up a book, my eyes would instantly begin to drift downward. Oh no! Reading had become synonymous with sleeping for me.
At some point, I picked up listening to audiobooks. Although it took me a little bit to get used to listening to and following a story as I listened to it, I did begin to really enjoy it. Finally, I was able to fill my life with “reading” again. There are books that are harder than others to listen to. I find books with a very large cast of characters to be especially difficult to follow along with.
And now, I’m reading a paperback book, The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto, that I simply couldn’t imagine following along as an audiobook. It is a nonfiction book about writing simply and clearly, and its main thesis is outlined by a series of figures showing you how to place the most important point of your communications at the top of the pyramid. Throughout the book, there are representations of writing elements that are communicated to the reader instantly as a visual. I suppose you could describe each element of the visual using words, but then the concept would not follow the very principles of the book itself.
I suppose it makes sense that what is essentially a textbook would be difficult to follow along as an audiobook. I do listen to quite a lot of nonfiction books and find many of them easy and informative to follow along by listening to them, but these don’t have extensive visuals that are used to impart their lessons, including The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul and The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Hannah-Jones Nikole.
In the fiction world, one of the books that I could never imagine making sense as an audiobook is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This fever dream of a book that starts off with the investigation of a mysterious house that has inside measurements larger than its outsides and then spirals and swirls around literary critique and narrative magicianship. The physical text initially bifurcates between the story told by a junkie of a manuscript he found and the text of the manuscript itself, which is itself a literary critique of a documentary movie about said house.
Following the conventions of an academic text, the story, or rather stories, utilize endnotes, footnotes, and appendices. As you get deeper into the house’s story, the notes begin traveling across the page, changing color, marching up and down and even backwards. It’s hallucinatory, and at times I found myself physically moving the book around in my hands and even upside down or placing it to face a mirror so that I could read the text. It was such a physical experience that anchored me closely with the story; there really isn’t a way I could see that happening as an audiobook since, with those, I need to have a pretty strong and clear storyline so that my brain doesn’t get distracted by what I’m seeing in the world around me.
I’m still going to keep listening to my audiobooks — it has allowed me to get back into my love of reading. But now, having written that description of House of Leaves, I may pick it up to read again. For me, in this day and age of audio and digital books, there will always be a place for physical books.
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