As sophomore Eta Gao prepares for a road trip, she puts on her headphones and plays an audiobook to pass the time. To many like Gao, audiobooks have become a popular way to enjoy stories and stay informed. According to an article by Dianne Coan, one of the main reasons for the increase in popularity is because they enable individuals to multitask while still finding entertainment.
Although initially made to assist the visually impaired, students like freshman Itamar Maor prefer to use audiobooks while performing other hobbies.
“Instead of taking 10 hours to read, I can just take five days and I’d listen to it for two hours a day. While I do that, I can go outside, I can go on a walk, I can go to the park,” Maor said. “I can do it while I’m doing something else. That’s my favorite part.”
Maor, however, reflected on times multitasking with audiobooks has been challenging.
“Let’s say I’m biking and I’m making a turn, I have to pay attention to the road. I can’t just make a turn without paying attention when there’s cars around,” Maor said. “You go back a couple of seconds and listen from there.”
Though multitasking is a major reason for the increase in audiobook usage, Gao feels they also improve her grasp on stories.
“When I read on my own just with the books, I read the same line over and over again,” Gao said. “Having an audiobook really drives your eyes (to the accompanying text) to make sure you’re on top of it and get the information into your head.”
Some listeners like freshman Leotaro Casupang have observed how audiobooks can shape their perception of the story itself. He pointed out how the tone of the narrator can help engage a listener and convey a certain emotion or idea.
“I feel like the tone of the narrator affects your understanding of the story,” Casupang said. “Say the person in the book is sad. If they (the reader) put on a sad tone of voice, then it helps immerse you better into the book because then it feels like the character is actually saying the words.”
For some, however, the ease of listening can come at a cost of creativity, at times dulling the listener’s own perception of the story. Teacher librarian Jonathan Wilson had a lackluster experience when listening to “Paradise Found,” a book about the 2018 Paradise fire.
“I realized as I was reading the audiobook that I lost out on all the extremely moving photographs and pictures that are within the book,” Wilson said. “I had much preferred the physical copy because of those photographs.”
With the growing population of audiobook listeners, Wilson concluded that this form of reading can help increase readers’ understanding of the author’s ideas.
“I know from what I have experienced that audiobooks tend to be read by the author, and so you get an insight of the book from the author’s perspective, and then you can visualize the book,” Wilson said. “The author tends to tell the story much more accurately, so I think that’s why it’s increased in popularity.”