Too Impatient to Listen - by Harini Nagendra

If you listen to audio versions of books, do you also read them? Why or why not? Or do you never listen and, if not, why not?

Harini here – responding to this week's question, but filling this in a day late, as we’ve had a major power and internet outage here in Bangalore. Climate change, everyone - it's been raining, and our infrastructure is not equipped to deal with this level of stress. I just read a fascinating - and scary - piece in The Atlantic about how heat is going to stress cities because of its effects on steel - for instance, on especially hot days, we can't run trains at full speed - because speed creates friction, and friction creates heat - and there's already too much heat in the system. So, train speeds will slow down in summer - and what's that going to do to railway timetables? 

But I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Do I listen to audio books? No, because I'm too impatient. With a paper book, or a Kindle, I can flip backwards and forwards, and also - I read fast. I can't listen to an audio book and complete it in an hour or two, whereas I can easily complete a good mystery in that time.  

The only time I did listen to audio books was way back in 1998, when my husband and I did a long road trip from San Diego to Montana. For part of the route, we took a detour onto US Route 50, also called the Loneliest Road in America - and we covered the distance of 1200 miles in a little over a day. Driving past flat farm landscapes in Idaho, with no visual relief to distract us from the road, we needed something to keep us awake - fortunately, we'd borrowed an audio tape of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, from the local library. We came to an especially fascinating section where Mandela described his engagement with Gandhi's philosophy of a non-violent struggle for freedom, and the reasoning behind why he eventually rejected such an approach. Suri and I paused the tape - something you can't do as easily while reading a print book - and got deep into discussion about the Indian debates on non-violence in 1920s and 1930s. 

Some of what we spoke about that day stayed in my mind, and eventually, years later, made it into my latest book in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, A Nest of Vipers - where my protagonist Kaveri Murthy gets caught up in some of these debates, while investigating threats to the Prince of Wales' visit to Bangalore in 1922. 

There's much to thank that audio book experience for. 

But that's the only time I can remember listening to an audio tape from start to finish. Except my own, of course - I am extraordinarily fortunate to have had Soneela Nankani, one of AudioFile's Golden Voice narrators, narrate all the 3 books in my series - she does such a fabulous job. 

But otherwise - I'm too impatient (a general failing, not just with books). I read books non-linearly, a habit I've picked up from having to read dozens of research papers in a day and summarize them for an article. I skim fast, I go backwards and forwards.

If it's a mystery, fantasy or thriller - my favorite genres - I often get too tense to wait for the end, and have to skip ahead. I get to the last couple of chapters, reassure myself that my favorite characters have made it through safely, and then go back to the beginning. Other times, I read till the middle of the book, and then realize I missed a critical plot point, and go back to look for it. 

Or, I just like a turn of phrase used in dialogue or to describe scene and setting - The Lord of the Rings being one of my favourite examples - and I open the book again, and again, to reread the best sections. I can't do that in an audio book.

But then, I'm fortunate to have mostly avoided long commutes to work and home. I've either worked from home, or lived at the most half an hour away from my place of work - and I do listen to podcasts all the time, when I'm on the road, or exercising. Occasionally, I've even picked up a short story to listen to. If I had a longer commute, or we did another long car trip, I can imagine we'd turn to an audio book again. 

But I'd definitely have to work on becoming more patient.