How I Got Over an Old Prejudice and Learned to Love Audiobooks

Almost two years ago, I switched jobs. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Yes, there are some things that I lost. But the only one I really miss is, unfortunately, also one of the main reasons I wanted out of my old job: the long commute.

My commute, on a good day, was an hour and a half.


How could this possibly ever be a good thing, you ask? Well, thing is, I didn't drive. I took a bus then metro into DC. This meant several things, but lets focus on the positive one: I got to read. For most of my commute, I got to read whatever I wanted. And I read. I read every day on the way in to work and on my way home. And that time ready was the best part of my day.

Well, I switched jobs and now had to drive myself to work. My commute is now 30 minutes each way. I actually get home in time now to hang out with the hubby for more than 20 minutes. But! My reading went down to practically nothing. I was working on getting a certificate, so classes took up a good chunk of my time and, admittedly, I was overwhelmed with the amount of crap around that house that I hadn't gotten around to doing when I had my old job.

This went on for about a year before I finally swallowed my pride and tried audiobooks. I have a finite amount of patience for listening to the same 3 songs over and over again on the radio, so why not try something different? So, I went to the library and checked out a CD copy (yeah, that's right) of A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness.

It took me three weeks to get through the audiobook, since I could only listen in the car. My commute turned from an annoyance to something I could actually enjoy again. I didn't mind as much getting stuck in traffic because that meant I could continue to listen to the story.

Then, I finally took another look at my library's Overdrive page. I had tried using it before and I hadn't found it particularly user-friendly. But now, I found that it's a freaking blessing. I download eBooks into my Nook and audiobooks into my smartphone. You know what that means? I'm listening to a book while I work on one of my endless array of Excel files or project plans.



Having this kind of expanded access to books has gotten me back up to my one-book-a week habit and it's given me the chance to try out genres that I usually ignore.

I have now listened to the all 13 books from A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Percy Jackson series, and of course I finished the All Souls Trilogy that I started with A Discovery of Witches.

My old hang ups about audiobooks now seem completely ridiculous. Yes, the narrator matters. (Just listen to books 3-5 of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Lord, talk about an unfortunate event.) But, most audiobooks I've listened to have really fantastic narrators. And, if you really can't stand the narrator, you could always just stop and check out the book later.

I think it just matters that you have access to books. The whole point of reading, for me, is that I have access to different worlds--that I can dive into lives that I had no idea exist. Basically, reading opens my mind and makes me think differently about the world around me. I'm still me, a creature of habit with a mild case of undiagnosed social anxiety, but books (no matter how I read/listen to them make me feel like Matilda: