Books vs Audiobooks

Apparently Audiobooks and podcasts are all the rage these days. I hear about people recommending them because they’re easier to “read” by listening to them while you’re working out, commuting to work, and doing the 20 other things that you do every day.

I’m an avid reader–by Goodread‘s account, I have read 374 books (but I presume it’s closer to 700 or so, considering I don’t recall all those books I’ve read between K and 12th)–so I’ve been looking for a way to continue reading.

Actually, the truth is that I read books way too fast and my mom stopped buying them for me when I was in high school because they didn’t last long enough. I also outgrew the local library.  So for a while I had stopped reading, because it was easier.  But I always knew that I wanted to get back into it.

So my uncle suggested audiobooks because I was “butchering” the Polish language, as he claimed. He had downloaded me a few to listen. Excited to re-learn the language, I started listening.

Soon enough, I started mishearing words. Then sentences, and paragraphs. After I finished it, I stopped listening to audiobooks.

A few years later, I tried again to listen to audiobooks, because I wanted to go to the gym–and how are you supposed to read while running on the elliptical? Three books later, of which I remember absolutely nothing, I realized that this was useless. So I returned to not reading at all.

A year after that, at a chance visit of the Amazon store at Columbus Circle in NY, my boyfriend had easily convinced me to get a Kindle.  I had, until that point, been against electronic books because I love the feel of paper. But I took a chance.

And I never looked back.

Books are an important part of me, and my experience as a hard of hearing individual, because when the kids refused to play with me on the playground after school, I found solace in a book. I’d be off on different adventures with the many friends I had made in the book, the characters that lived on the page. In many ways, books, along with travel, made my school years just a bit easier.

Since I never leave the house without my kindle, and they make up a huge portion of my travel time (whether that’s the 18 minute train ride to work, or the 12 hour flight to the other side of the world), I’ll include them here too, in case you are looking for something to read.