Why an audiobook is the perfect companion
It’s never been easier to listen to a good book. So what are the essential ingredients? Charlotte Runcie has some sound advice
I’ve never read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, but it’s one of my favourite books. I once had a temp job stuffing envelopes for a bank, a task so boring that on day one my boss took pity on me and told me to bring in an audiobook the next morning. I chose the unabridged Rebecca, read by Anna Massey, because it was the longest one I could find.
As I gradually wore away the skin on my fingers with folding, sealing and stacking reams of paper, I was thrilled, unsettled and generally bewitched by the story, and the hours slipped away like minutes. It was as if Massey was confiding it to me in particular. The haunting, slightly questioning, slightly fearful way that Massey said the name “Rebecca” still gives me chills whenever I think of it. It was a full-body experience. I don’t think anyone can ever have had a better time stuffing envelopes.
When you’re stuck indoors, as we all are these days, there’s nothing nicer than reading a good book, except for, sometimes, listening to one. Hearing another person’s voice telling you a story is a simple way of feeling more connected and less alone. And in the age of the smartphone, all of us carry the means for listening to long stretches of audio in our pockets.
As well as the boom in the number of podcasts being made in recent years, there has been a rise in the demand for audiobooks, and a huge corresponding increase in the quality of audiobooks available to enjoy.
Figures released by The Publishers Association last year showed a 43 per cent increase in audiobook sales compared with the previous year. And demand means that the most popular audiobooks are real investments from a publisher: rich storytelling performances, properly produced, and with the listening experience always first in mind. There are awards given for the best audiobooks of the year, and major Hollywood actors are employed by publishers to read their biggest releases.
I was lucky to have stumbled upon Massey’s performance of Rebecca. It wasn’t just a reading but a feat of real old-fashioned storytelling.
Not all audiobooks are as much of a pleasure as that. Rather than what makes a good audiobook, it’s maybe easier to talk about what makes a bad one. Reading boring audiobooks badly is even a form in its own right: there’s a podcast called Boring Books for Bedtime in which people read dry non-fiction books in as dull a voice as possible, ostensibly to help insomniacs get to sleep. Publishers often offer authors the chance to read their own audiobooks, which is a hit-and-miss strategy.
The average author, untrained in public speaking, is in danger of delivering their own book in a nervous monotone and not doing it justice. A listening experience like that is never going to be as good as reading the book for yourself. Writing a book is a different skill from performing it. When my own non-fiction book,
Salt on Your Tongue, was published last year, I didn’t want to inflict my inexperienced reading voice on any poor listeners, so I asked for the audiobook to be read by Jessica Hardwick, an accomplished radio drama actress whose voice is warm and expressive. Much better.
Some authors do also happen to be very good at reading their work, and seem to relish making sure it comes across as they intended. The result can be an audiobook that’s even more enjoyable than the printed version.
The author Marian Keyes is blessed with a gift for twinkly, knowing storytelling that injects her novels with new life. Philip Pullman narrating the full-cast versions of His Dark
Materials trilogy is another good example. His books have so many fantastical concepts and coinages that it’s helpful to hear him tell them in his own words.
Memoirs, too, can be best when read by writers who double up as good speakers: Michelle Obama’s training as a lawyer might be the reason that her delivery of her autobiography,
Becoming, is so thoroughly direct and well-balanced throughout. It won a Grammy this year for Best Spoken Word Album.
Comedians are particularly good at reading their own audiobooks. After
all, it’s difficult to forge a career telling jokes on stage without mastering pace and nuance. One of the best is Amy Poehler’s 2014 memoir, Yes Please. Poehler, who started out in sketch and improvised stage comedy, brings in a host of friends to join her in reading the book, including Seth Meyers, Patrick Stewart and Kathleen Turner, as well as her own parents. The result is real added value with a bonus helping of humour, depth and colour.
And some comedians go even further. The two Alan Partridge books, written by Partridge himself (with some help from Steve Coogan, Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Armando Iannucci), are great fun in their printed form, but you’d be mad not to listen to them as audiobooks, too, read by Coogan in character throughout.
What the comedians understand is that an audiobook is its own kind of entertainment. While holding a book in your hands is a private experience, an audiobook is like someone holding your hand and guiding you through the story, and you develop a relationship with the voice you hear across the hours of listening.
Maybe that’s why some of the most popular audiobooks on Amazon’s audio streaming platform, Audible, are heavyweight classics read by famous actors, including Miriam Margolyes reading Dickens and Rosamund Pike reading Austen. Juliet Stevenson reading
Middlemarch is a more friendly prospect than tackling the printed book itself, because Stevenson gives the book atmosphere and emotion that draws you in straight away. A large tome on the shelf can be an intimidating prospect, but a book read out by a familiar voice feels approachable.
After all, books may be a printed technology that’s been around for hundreds of years, but even older than reading is the timeless art of telling, and hearing, a good story aloud.
Figures released last year showed a 43 per cent increase in audiobook sales