I’ve heard people say they struggle with sitting down to read books. They lose focus or just don’t have the time. That’s one reason I highly recommend audiobooks! I love both reading physical pages and listening to audiobooks, but in the last five years, I have listened to more audiobooks than I have read physical books. Nanci and I were both lovers of audiobooks, and I still am. I like the quiet of reading physical books, but also the companionship of hearing quality narration of audiobooks. If you don’t have a subscription to Audible, Amazon’s audiobook program, I highly recommend you consider one.
I listen to audiobooks when I run, when I walk with my dog Gracie, and when I do dishes and wash clothes (those are more recent experiences for me since Nanci’s decline and departure). I still read and enjoy physical books, and there’s no substitute for those, but I also listen to many books a year, both nonfiction and fiction.
You may have already tried them, but in any case, I encourage you to try them again. There is literally no day of my life that I am not listening to audiobooks! I listen to God‘s Word on audio and many, many other books, and I’m a huge fan.
I have been listening daily to Kristyn Getty read the ESV Audio Bible. I love that Irish accent and find that different accents and word emphasis, e.g. from David Suchet and Max McLean, really help me hear new things in Scripture.
I just finished one of my favorite C. S. Lewis bios, by Alister McGrath, titled C. S. Lewis: A Life. I recommend Defiant Joy, the life of G. K. Chesterton, by Kevin Belmonte; the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy Sayers; and The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter. I’m also re-listening to many of the classic Nero Wolfe detective novels by Rex Stout, which are my favorites. I have my fictional character Ollie Chandler allude to the Nero Wolfe books in Deception.
I recently re-listened to Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There, which made a huge impact on me as a very young Christian. I enjoyed listening to a new introduction to that book by James Sire, the IVP editor who brought clarity to Schaeffer’s writing. He was one of the last of the old-time editors who played a critical role in shaping great authors.
I also relistened to Shaeffer’s book The Mark of the Christian, which is short and took less than an hour to listen to. (Another thing I love about audio books is it’s simple to speed up the narration to 1.5, which is my normal preference. Some readers are fine at 2.0, or you may prefer listening to a faster reader at .8 speed; it’s up to you.)
I love listening to Greg Allison’s Historical Theology. I loved Secrets of the Octopus by Sy Montgomery who is like an articulate marine biologist! And I’m slowly rereading, for the first time on audio, Pontius Pilate by Paul Maier, a great biblical novel classic I first read when I was in Bible college. The vast majority of the details are of course made up, but it doesn’t contradict the biblical storyline in any way and is overall true to life based on serious quality research of the time of Pilate.
I love those audiobooks, and there are dozens more I’m in process on, and once in a while, go back to. But I find myself starting new ones that catch my interest.
There are countless good books, both nonfiction and fiction, which can feed your soul and mind, and many of them (not all) will help you relax. Too much news overload will burn you out, but good books, including audiobooks, can entertain and not stress you out in the process!
