Chels

I’m not a great listener. I don’t mean socially – I can hold a conversation, and I’ve always been able to take in information in a classroom – but in terms of media, listening is not my strong suit. It’s why I’ve never weighed in on the debate of if listening to audiobooks counts as reading or not. I like podcasts, but only when they’re also filmed so I have visual stimuli. I listen to music in the car, when my eyes and hands are focused on driving. I don’t like talking on the phone. There must be some psychological or neurological reason, but I really struggle with audio-only.

I understand that the point of listening to audiobooks is to be able to read while also completing other tasks, but if I try to occupy myself with things, I find myself losing focus on what I’m listening to. I listened to one book during my degree, because the library didn’t have enough copies, and I was lucky – the reading was posted on Youtube, and I could watch the narrator read aloud from a physical copy of the book.

I do feel like I’m missing out – there are so many audio-only podcasts, audiobooks, and even radio plays that I don’t get to enjoy because I can’t seem to focus, so this week, I’m attempting to learn to listen.

Audiobooks

I didn’t want to pay for a subscription to an audiobook service if it turned out that audiobooks weren’t for me, so I turned to Librivox, an online service where volunteers read stories no longer under copyright, for free. For my practise run, I decided to listen to Transformation by Mary Shelley. I chose it for two reasons – firstly, it’s only a short story. It was around 40 minutes on LibriVox, as opposed to full length novels that take hours and hours to listen to. Secondly, I only recently read the story, so it was still fresh in my mind. I hoped that it would help me connect with what I was listening to as it was already familiar to me.

I didn’t dislike the experience. I enjoyed the voice of the narrator – a woman with an Australian accent. In fact, I think having a female speaker for a story told in first person by a male character added an interesting layer to this story specifically, and it worked really well. However, I think this was a double edged sword for my listening. I was caught up in the implications of a female speaker – what if the character actually was a woman? There was room for gender ambiguity, and it made the body swap plot more thought provoking. However, I found myself focusing more on these implications and drifting away from actually listening to the story as it was being told. I went in and out of focus, and at some points paused the recording and went back a few seconds to try and reign in my focus.

It didn’t necessarily save me a lot of time, either. Including my pauses and breaks, it probably took me just over an hour to listen to Transformation, and I’d estimate it took around the same time over a couple of sittings to read it. 

Radio Plays

I went into my first BBC Radio Play with a new hypothesis – perhaps I would be better suited to listening to dramas. They’re inherently more dynamic – they’re predominantly conversation focused, without long descriptions and narration. This time, I chose The Vanishing, from 2010, a play adapted from a novel and a film that both come highly recommended. I’ve been getting into the thriller genre lately, so it was the perfect play to try.

I was correct in my hypothesis. While the total runtime of the play was just under an hour, I managed to listen to it in one sitting, with no pauses. I do think the dynamism of the medium was what helped me to focus – the back and forth between characters, the sound effects, and the fact that, unlike stories designed to be read slowly and savoured, there were no long and winding descriptions to risk losing focus to.

It was suggested to go into The Vanishing without knowing much about the story, and I definitely agree with that, so I won’t talk a lot about the actual content, but I was surprised at how easy it was to follow in terms of character voices and plots. What I will say is that the story is set in France and Amsterdam, and the Dutch characters are all played by actors with English accents, and the French characters are all given Scottish accents, which was a funny touch.

I really enjoyed The Vanishing, and I’d like to listen to some more radio plays to see if I just got lucky with a story I loved, or if radio plays are actually for me. For now, I would tentatively say that I’ve found a medium that I can listen to, though I still don’t think I’m someone that could listen to full audiobooks.

In terms of the discourse, I think I remain in the same position: who am I to say what counts as reading? For me though, I don’t think that radio plays (or even audiobooks) can count as reading – while I don’t know any of the silence, I’m certain that the two activities are engaging different areas of my brain. They’re completely separate activities for me. That’s also not to say that one is more worthwhile than the other – as some people have interpreted the discourse – they’re just different.