By Klancy Hoover
Sometimes, I feel guilty about my reading habits. Not because I shamelessly dog-ear my books’ pages or occasionally find remnants of snacks tucked into their cracked, worn spines, but because I don’t have the same amount of time to read as I did in the past. Honestly, it’s probably for the same reason a lot of other people don’t have the time: I recently started my first full-time job. And as much as I enjoy my new job, it’s been difficult learning how to balance my time outside of the office.
However, I have great news for anyone else like me who struggles to find more time to read— there are solutions! Personally, the solution that has helped me carve out more time to read is audiobooks. Here are a couple reasons why.
Flexibility: With audiobooks, you can listen to stories anywhere or while doing anything, because you don’t have to physically hold the book. You can listen to an audiobook while doing laundry, the dishes, while walking your dog, or on your way to work. I like to listen to audiobooks for an hour before bed as part of my nightly routine. The possibilities are endless!
Connection: Listening to audiobooks, you begin to associate the narrators’ voices with the characters they are portraying. They become those characters. Their voice inflections, their personalities, all of these small attributes included in the narrators’ performance make a character seem and feel real. After listening to audiobooks and associating the narrators’ voices with particular characters, it would be difficult for me to read the same books as physical copies without hearing their voices.
With multiple books on your to-be-read list and limited time to enjoy them all, I highly recommend listening to audiobooks as a potential solution. You’ll be able to dive into new worlds while simultaneously doing everyday tasks. So, don’t let yourself feel guilty about the time you’ve lost for reading. Throw on some headphones and reclaim that time with your favorite characters!
Edited by Elena Van Horn