Print, audio or e? Reading is reading, but there are differences
Lately, I’ve been asked quite a few times if I read electronic or printed books. This question always surprises me because I thought this was answered a few years ago. The answer being another question: “Does it really matter?”
I thought reading was reading. Whether it’s listening to an audiobook, downloading an ebook or buying a physical copy, it does not make a difference. Or does it?
I think the question has popped up again because pandemic parameters have forced people to change their reading habits. I certainly had to embrace that it was sometimes impossible to get physical copies for review and I had to rely on manuscript PDFS, which are, essentially, e-books.
But even though I think reading is reading, for me there are huge differences. Books that I read on my phone or tablet do not make a big impression on me.
I’ve read some amazing books in the past year, but most of the time all I can remember is the title. I struggle to recall the author’s name or even what the cover looks like, which is unfortunate. I had to figure out which app to use — there are thousands — and which one suits my reading style. With some you can scroll down to the next page, while others require you to turn the page digitally, as if it is a book. Some give you information on the number of pages left and others give you that information as a percentage. Either way I couldn’t work it out. I missed the heft of the book. Was I nearly halfway? How many pages left in the chapter? And so on. I just can’t compute that information with an e-book.
Audiobooks are a different creature altogether. I love listening to a book when I am busy with tasks such as cooking, cleaning or gardening. I can’t listen to it if there are other people around or if I’m procrastinating. All I do is think about the task I am not doing, don’t listen to the book and then have to rewind. Listen again, forget I’m listening and rewind again. Sometimes it gets so frustrating I don’t go back to the book.
My partner and I have taken to road tripping around Johannesburg and its surrounds — to stop us from going stir crazy. We travel out of the city some weekends to picnic in places far from the madding crowd — social distancing and all that. Instead of listening to music or dire talk radio on the way there we now play audiobooks.
This somewhat eases the tension of being in a car together. We have realised it is our fighting place, like other people, I hope, and listening to a book helps me to focus on the story and not on the awful gravel pit of a road my partner decided to take instead of following the GPS.
Loads of great audiobooks have been released this year. Now on our drive playlist is George Saunders’s new book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain.
For the past 20 years Saunders has taught a class on the 19thcentury Russian short story to his creative writing students at New York’s Syracuse University. He has recreated this masterclass on the page.
The blurb says it best: “Paired with short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.”
It’s great car listening and narrated by Saunders, Keith David (the pastor from TV show Greenleaf) and actors Glenn Close, Phylicia Rashad and BD Wong, among others.
Other drive-time books we have lined up are Greenlights by Matthew Mcconaughey (read by him, *shivers*), The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (read by him and actor JD Jackson) and a forthcoming book called Malibu Rising, the new novel from Daisy Jones & the Six author Taylor Jenkins Reid.
It’s available next month, hopefully. I have it on pre-order for download as soon as possible. Cannot wait.
Will plan a long road trip just to listen to that book.