PSA: I judged audiobooks as 'not real reading' for 9 years and my library hold list changed my mind
I was at the Roseland branch of the Chicago Public Library last Tuesday for our book club pickup and the hold shelf for audiobooks was completely empty while every copy of the print pick was checked out. The librarian, Dana, told me 6 of the 11 people in our club asked for the audio version this month. I always thought listening was cheating because you skip the sentences you'd normally slow down on. But then I tried the audio of our pick on my drive to work and I caught a theme I totally missed in print. So how does everyone else handle the print vs audio thing in their club?
Been noticing this same thing all over lately, where people defend the "real" way of doing something until life forces them to try the other option. My uncle swore for years that texting ruined letter writing, then he got a flip phone and now he sends paragraphs. Same deal with podcasts versus reading the news, or GPS versus paper maps. We build these little rules about what counts as the proper way to do stuff, and a lot of the time those rules just keep us from getting the thing done at all. The librarian telling you 6 of 11 picked audio is the real story here, that is not a fluke, that is a trend. Your club could try letting people do whatever format works and just talk about the book itself instead of how they took it in.