Reading With Your Ears: The Audiobook Debate
There are two types of people in this world. Those who swear by audiobooks and those who think it’s a way to cheat-read a book. For me, as you’ll come to learn, I’m firmly on the side of audiobooks.
Why Audiobooks Just Make Sense
If listening to audiobooks is wrong, then I never want to be right. These days, my life depends on an audiobook - without them, I would never meet the book club deadlines. In a world of constant adulthood commitments and endless washing up (even though you swear you did it only this morning), the audiobook is the hero for the overloaded brains of today. Life is busy, and an audiobook is quietly becoming a daily habit that turns my reluctant walk to the shops into a magical place of thrillers and love stories. But some may argue that convenience isn’t everything…
The Magic of a Book
Let’s be honest, curling up and reading a book still hits different. There’s something about reading something directly from the page that gets you so much more immersed in another world and takes over your entire mind. No distractions. Your outside world just disappears, and you disappear with the characters into the pages of that book. There’s no wonder many people still prefer to read traditionally. According to a 2025 online poll, around 64% of people prefer a book as their favourite way to read. In the audiobook debate, for some people this feeling is hard to replace and is exactly why some people avoid audiobooks altogether.
Since getting my own reading nook (very cool, I know), I have found that being able to settle down before bed has drastically changed my mood and sleeping habits. In the world of the great audiobook debate, nothing can quite replace the feeling of getting lost while turning the pages of a physical book. One person I spoke to felt particularly strongly about this. She stated that an audiobook takes away all personality from the book as she felt it was like someone was reading a book to you and that the narrators commit crimes against the characters voices. For her, reading is about building the characters in your mind and being able to interpret your own tone of voice for them too. She also states listening instead of reading is like cutting corners, like you’re skipping part of the experience. An audiobook can challenge the way people think reading is supposed to look like so they think it is less valid or even a bit like cheating!
It all comes down to how people define what reading really is. People could argue that because you are not physically reading the page, you are skipping the effort altogether - therefore making it an “easier” option.
More Than Just Convenience
That said, audiobooks have plenty of fans. Have you ever read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson? I tried. Without an audiobook, I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did. Some say a good narrator can bring characters to life and make the story more engaging. In this case, the narrator absolutely carried the story with his hilarious pirate accents. Then there’s the multitaskers, including myself, who use an audiobook to occupy their mind that goes 100 miles an hour while they do a task. Another point that people mention is that audiobooks are a lot more accessible. After all, 1 in 10 people in the UK have dyslexia which can make reading books challenging. In a sense, audiobooks aren’t just convenient but they’re the difference between someone struggling to read a book and actually enjoying it. Don’t get me wrong, audiobooks don’t replace books for us listeners, it’s just another way to enjoy them.
At The End Of The Day…
What is the best way to read? Maybe the real answer is both. For me, audiobooks have helped reading fit into my life the way it never did before, but that does not make reading a good book any less special. Calling audiobooks cheating misses the point entirely. However you choose to read, what matters is that the story stays with you.
💡 Now that you've got all you books, just how do you organise them? Check out Rob's look into organising your collection in Your Bookshelves, Your Rules
0 Comments