If you’ve identified as a Reader for any length of time, I have no doubt you’ve seen shifts in your reading preferences and patterns. I certainly have! While I’ve been a book lover since the days when my reading stack consisted entirely of board books, I have been many types of readers in my four decades, with no two reading years looking exactly the same. From the types of books I’m consuming, to my purpose for reading, to when and how and where I’m reading—it’s a personal hobby that is always in flux.

One area of my reading life that has seen huge changes in the last handful of years is the role that audiobooks have played in my reading. I have been an audiobook enthusiast for nearly as long as I’ve been a reader, and I have many vivid memories of sorting through stacks of Books on Tape at our local libraries during summers as a teenager. Those cassettes were replaced with Books on CD when I was in college, and by the time I’d reached full adulthood and had become the (initially reluctant) owner of an iPhone, I was listening to audiobooks via library apps such as Libby and Hoopla, which is where I continue to download audiobooks today. (I’m fairly certain I’ve never paid for an audiobook, though I do have the Audible app on my phone so that I can listen to books Luke has purchased on our shared account).

For years I didn’t know any other readers who listened to audiobooks, and while I enjoyed consuming books in that format, it somehow felt like cheating. Could I really count a book as “read” when I’d only listened to it? (The answer, of course, is yes: according to experts, our brains process the written word in much the same way whether the words are read to us via audiobook or we read the words from the page with our own eyes.) But the subtle sense of shame I felt over about “reading” in a way that was different from my fellow readers never put a damper on my audiobook consumption, and for many years—including my earlier years of parenting—approximately two-thirds of the books I read were in audio format.

Audiobooks worked for me then in that I was able to consume a lot of books from a range of genres in the audio format. As years passed, though, I started to realize that my audio reading was never as enjoyable or as memorable as the reading I did on Kindle or in print. With the exception of a few creatively-produced audiobooks, I would generally come to the end of an audiobook and know that I would have had a more satisfying reading experience if I had read the same book in another format. I also noticed that books I’d read on audio were much less likely to stick with me long term.

Life stage also factored into my dwindling interest in audiobooks. As my kids got older, they needed more of my attention, and since I could no longer listen with them present, it was getting harder to find time to listen to books. What time I did have with my earbuds was largely dedicated to podcasts, which required less brainpower or careful attention and were more conducive to interruptions.

At the time, my shift away from audiobooks seemed subtle, but looking back I see that it was actually pretty drastic: in the years leading up to 2020, audiobooks regularly made up two-thirds or more of my reading (in 2020 I read a total of 168 books and 124 [74%] of those were audiobooks). But in 2021, only 45% of my annual books were audiobooks, and that percentage has gone down every year since. At the time of this post in mid-July, I have read 98 books in 2024; 37 were on Kindle, 29 were in Print, and 32 were on Audio, meaning that audiobooks have accounted for about a third of my reading for the year. That seems to be my new norm and I don’t foresee changes to this ratio in the near future.

Another notable change in my audiobook consumption is in the types of books I listen to. These days, my audiobooks are almost exclusively nonfiction which was NOT the case for me in the past. I no longer have the attention span for novels on audio, but I do love audiobook memoirs, especially when they are read by the author (bonus points if that author is a celebrity). Books on sociology and psychology also tend to work well for me on audio. However, I reserve self-help books (especially Christian Living books) for Kindle or Print so that I can highlight and make notes as I read.

One final change in my audiobook life is that I am listening to audiobooks at a slower speed than in the past. I once listened to books at around 1.75x speed or higher, but now I rarely go above 1.35. Any higher and I start to lose focus and interest. (Strangely, I always listen to podcasts at 2x speed or higher. I have no easy explanation for that discrepancy!)

I have been fascinated to observe that as my own love for audiobooks has diminished in recent years, audiobooks have EXPLODED among the general reading population. It’s not uncommon for bookish influencers to acknowledge that they do most of their reading on audio, and book reviewers regularly factor audio production into their book ratings. I have many IRL friends who consume dozens of books per year, all of them on audio. A number of these friends don’t have time to sit down with a book, but audiobooks are easy to fit in on a daily commute or while doing mindless tasks at work or home. Other friends have difficulty focusing on books in print, but audiobooks can hold their attention. (I find it so strange that I have the opposite problem—everyone’s brain works differently, I suppose.)

I love that increased popularity and access to audiobooks has contributed to the growing interest in books and reading! Audiobooks might not be working that well for me right now, but I am thrilled that they ARE working for so many others!

How about you: do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are you a long-time audiobook listener or are they new for you? Do you find that certain genres work better for you on audio? If so, which types of books are you more likely to listen to with your ears than read with your eyes? Which books are better at holding your attention, books on audio or books in digital/print? And one final question: what is the BEST audiobook you’ve enjoyed that (in your opinion) should only be consumed in that format? (For me, that award goes to Daisy Jones and the Six.) I can’t wait to hear from you in the Comments!