Tandem Talks: Audiobooks - Listening is Reading
Jen - Hello and welcome to the Tandem Collective Talks podcast.
Lex - Tandem Collective celebrates books, film, TV, podcasts and more with our global community.
Lucy - Weโre Jen, Jaide, Lucy and Lex, members and friends of Team Tandem. You might already know us from Instagram or TikTok, but if not, it's great to meet you and welcome.
Jen - We're here to chat to you about what's new in the world of books, publishing and film, interview some of your favorite authors and hear your thoughts on what you're reading and watching at the moment.
Jaide - You can find us at @tandemcollectiveuk on Instagram and also @tandemcollectiveglobal
Lex - Hello everyone and welcome back to the Tandem Collective Talks podcast. Today you are here with us for an episode on all of the things that we love about audiobooks. Of course, you've got myself, Lex, Lucy and Jen, and today we have a very special guest with us. We have the wonderful Sammi, who is part of our South African contingency, who you can find on Instagram at @sammikoalareads.
So Sammi, firstly, thank you so much for coming to hang out with us. We are so pleased to have you here.
Sammi - Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.
Lex - I'm so excited to get into some good audiobook recommendations. Firstly, Jen and Luce, do you want to give us a little bit of insight into your own audiobook listening? Jen, do you wanna go first?
Jen - Yeah, of course. So I think Luce is going to be much better at this than me because I'm a bit rubbish with audiobooks. It's very rare that I find an audiobook that Iโm very into, and I think that's because I am a really fast reader.
So I think like you Lex, I can quite often read a book, 500 pages or so in a morning, whereas if you've got that length of audiobook, you're committing to it for days and days and days. So occasionally I'll find an audiobook I really like. I really enjoyed the audiobook of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, but it is definitely a rarity that I find an audiobook that I want to give the time to.
Luce - And Luce. So for listeners who are unaware, Lucy actually runs our Plots and Pastimes strand of Tandem Collective, which is our specified audiobook listenership for audiobook superfans. So Luce, you've got to be a superfan yourself, right?
Luce - I am. But I mean, I love hearing how people discovered audio and what I'm finding at the moment, the more that I speak to our community is that people have a lot of preconceived ideas about audio, which, I mean, I, I used to think, oh, it's not really for me. And I'd kind of written off before I'd even tried it like before I'd even properly give an audiobook a go.
And then the reason I found or got into audiobooks was after I had my son and I was out and about walking him and I would often listen to a podcast and have like my 12th coffee of the day by mid-morning. And someone said to me, โOh, but you really like reading, why don't you try an audiobook while you're out pushing the pram?โ
So that was when I started listening and I was like โOh my Godโ. Like, this is revolutionary. I'm still able to access books in these really kind of precious like snatches of time and then you know. So I just kept listening to them more and more. And now I find, like what I say to everybody that they make, you know, chores or things that you just find really laborious, like you do the washing up or, you know, batch cooking for my toddler and anything like that.
If I have an audiobook in my ear at the same time, it almost makes those tasks enjoyable because you're just it's the same escapism and you know, it can be and a book I'm enjoying, it distracts me the same way that reading does. In terms of what I listen to, I would say I have listened up until now I've listened to more nonfiction just because I find those more difficult to read in general, because I can't get lost in them the same way. So I've listened to quite a lot of nonfiction, but some really good recommendations from across our team as well. So Jaide, fellow podcast host who's on maternity leave, she recommended Ellie Taylor, My Child and Other Mistakes from Ellie Taylor the comedian. And they're really, really funny, I think very, very relatable to any parents out there. So, yeah, a lot of nonfiction up until this point. But then more recently I have got into fiction audiobooks and I'm loving them as well. Like one of my favourites was actually something we did a title that we did a Tandem listenalong for, Taylor Jenkins Reidโs Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
And that was yeah. I mean, a brilliant book anyway. But I just felt the voice of Evelyn was exactly how I kind of imagined it to be, like a very kind of silky, like just glamorous sounding narrator. And, yeah, what I really find is that people and I used to do this the things say, oh, it's not really for me or, you know, I just prefer a physical book or the experience of reading a physical book.
But you don't have to pit them against each other. Like there is 100% a time and a place for audio, you know, in your life. I think if you're willing to give it a chance and what we're starting to do more and more of at Tandem is hybrid Readalong/Listenalongs because people are really enjoying having that opportunity to split between, you know, reading chapters and listening to chapters.
I mean, some of the other titles weโve run listenalongs for - Three Sisters by Heather Morris. People said that hearing the story, obviously something like that is very emotive and quite hard hitting as a subject matter that like listening to it rather than reading it, the feedback from the group and that was a whole group of people who had never listened to an audiobook before.
They said that, you know, hearing it spoken added a completely new dimension to the experience. So of course, I'm an audio advocate, but I do just think there is 100% a time and a place for them, and it doesn't mean that you love a paperback any less.
Jen - Luce, that's a really interesting point for me, what you just said about the Taylor Jenkins Reid book because I think another way I struggle with audio and it's the same reason that I get on with films less than I do with books, is that it gives you so much of the story, there's less to imagine. Do you find that having people kind of do the voices and give the personality in that sense takes away from your ability to kind of imagine the story or not so much?
Luce - No, because I stillโฆ I think maybe I completely understand some of what you're saying, but I think it's maybe just one of the senses, like it's the hearing is, you know, that's sorted for you because the narrator is provided. But Iโm still imagining what they look like and still imagining maybe things that are happening outside of what is shared with us in the plot.
So all of that is still going on in the background, but the narrator has to be right for you to have a good audio experience. I think, you know, going back to that Three Sisters listenalong some people were really receptive to the narrator and thought they were a great fit, but other people found her irritating just because out of the three characters, the three sisters, the younger one, she would often impersonate in quite childlike voices, obviously, to imitate the age that the character was. But people from the group, some people in the group said that they just found that off putting and even irritating. So I think, you know, personal preference did play a huge part in it. And also I just think it's quite a lot of pressure as well to get the narrator right, you know, because that can really make or break your experience, I think.
Lex - Hey, there, it's Lex here with a reminder of how important it is to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on your preferred podcast player. We would also love to hear what you think and which episodes are your favourite. Hit us up on podcast@thetandemcollective.com. Now back to regularly scheduled programming.
Lex - Sammi, my love, tell us a little bit about your journey into audiobooks and also how you feel about narrators because Luce I think you're right. I think it make or breaks.
Sammi - I think that's exactly. Lucy, you touched on a very important point because how I got into audiobooks was at the beginning of 2021, I got COVID. I was knocked out, absolutely fatigued but bored out of my mind. So I was like, โCome on, this would be a great chance for me to read if only I could keep my eyes open and hold up a bookโ and in comes audiobooks.
So the first one that I jumped into was A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Holly Jackson. And when I say I inhaled that, it took me, obviously I played it at 1.5, and when I discovered that you could speed up audiobooks - completely changed my life. So I had the best experience for my first audiobook, it was a full cast and added sounds.
At the same time, I found out I could speed it up and it was a book that was part of a series so I could carry on with the whole story. So I mean, that book series got me through COVID. It was really, really good, but did set the bar high for audiobooks going forward. So when I did get into my next audiobook, which, shame I won't say what the title was, but I DNFโd it because the author put on this odd accent. I don't know what he was trying to do. And it ust didn't add to the story and it kind of just ruined the whole thing for me. So I think with audiobooks a narrator really will make or break your book much the same as like an editor would for a written book.
Lucy - I also I'm quite partial to, again talking about nonfiction, I quite like a celebrity memoir and obviously I think they're often self narrated. So if you're hearing them, you know, hearing them speaking it, I don't know, you kind of feel like you're getting to know them a little bit better than if you just reading it off a page.
Sammie - Yeah. Like Will Smithโs one, you feel like you're sitting with him and he's telling you his life.
Lex - I recently listened to the three books in the Hidden Iceland series by Ragnar Jonasson and Amanda Redman narrates them, and I only know her as an actress from an old crime TV show called New Tricks, which was just like a Sunday afternoon kind of TV show that you would watch with your parents. But she was absolutely brilliant at this narration, which must have been super hard because the books are set in Iceland. So there are a lot of Icelandic names and locations and she pulled it off so well and absolutely sold that series to me. It was three books long. Each book was probably about the 350/400 page mark, and I think I listened to them all in five days, six days, because like Sammie, like Jen, I'm a kind of 1.5, 1.75 kind of girl when listening to books.
And actually, on that note, I recently listened to The Binding Room by Nadine Matheson, which is the sequel to The Jigsaw Man, which I absolutely loved and had I have been reading the paperback of The Binding Room, I would have given up because it's a 600 page novel. But being able to listen to it via audiobook and like Sammie said, sped up a little bit, went out on a few nice walks, and I somehow managed to sink a 16 hour audiobook without even really thinking about it.
It was great. I love that book.
So what is your favorite thing? So Sammie, you touched on it a little bit like multicast narrations, additional soundscapes. What's your favorite thing about listening to an audiobook? Obviously narration is way up there for me and potentially for Luce as well. But what's the golden nugget of audiobooks for you? Luce? You wanna go first?
Lucy - I think for me it's the flexibility. Like it's the you know, especially like I say, I discovered audio when I became a parent. And I think when I found them it's like โoh my god, I can do this over snatches of time or other opportunities that I hadn't previously thought of where I can readโ. And that's why I'm such a pusher for everybody to at least give them a chance.
Because I think you can kind of discover that it's like you've been given the gift of time to read. So yeah, the flexibility, probably the biggest one for me.
Sammie - I really love how inclusive audiobooks are just having been sick and bedridden, I realized there might be different people who are experiencing different health issues and might not have the time on their hands to sit down with a book. But, you know, people who might have chronic fatigue syndrome, for example, people who are visually impaired, that sort of thing.
And I just loved that I could access books and get through them and enjoy it in a way that I hadn't previously. And I think it just really made me realise just how privileged I am to only have thought that reading was reading if it was a physical book and it really knocked it out of me. This snootiness of audiobooks aren't really reading because my friend, I found my favourite autobuy author and that's Holly Jackson because of audiobooks.
So that was great. I think that was a great learning.
Lucy - I mean, talking about the preconceived ideas that people have about audio. So I do think that that's still quite prevalent because people do think audio isn't really reading. They associate it as something like the equivalent of watching a film or an adaptation of a book. But it's really interesting because I think a lot of people have those ideas before they are introduced to audiobooks and then they very quickly change your mind.
Or like from my experience, most people do change their mind.
Sammie - That's true.
Jen - I think the audio is so important for inclusivity. I mean, I know locally to me, and I think UK wide is a charity called Talking Newspapers who literally their whole thing is that they read newspapers to people who are visually impaired. And I think audiobooks are such a gift in that way, but also to children who possibly arenโt engaging with what we would consider to be standard reading as easily as perhaps we might be.
Audiobooks are shown to be as kind of valuable and to expand vocabulary and to enhance empathy and all of those things in the same way that printed books do.
So I do really think that getting past that kind of snobbishness over audio is something that we need to move towards. Like, reading has such value regardless of whether it's printed reading or whether you're listening to it.
Lucy - Mhm. I completely agree. Yeah.
Lex - And I think that point about kids is really important as well. Like I would always say that my first audiobook that I ever listened to was The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell, which was this year.
But actually it wasn't because when I was a kid I used to have those like storybook cassettes and I would, you know, put them in my little walk around cassette player as I was going to bed at night. And I would fall asleep listening to a kind of bedtime story that was probably something like Sophie Hits Six by Dick King Smith or something, but that definitely changed the way that I consume books and got me to do it from such a young age.
But I have two more questions and both slightly controversial, I think. So the first one being if you listened to an audiobook and you absolutely loved it, do you then go out and buy the physical copy of the book to add to your collection?
Lucy - I probably would, but only because I feel I'm quite a hoarder with my books anyway. Like if I really, really love a book, I'll recommend it to people. But itโs quite unlikely I'll give away my own copy. Or if I do, it's. It's very clearly made, very clear it's on loan. I do expect it back. So I feel if I really enjoyed the audiobook yeah, I think, I think there's a strong chance I would go out and buy the hard copy too. So I've then got that to read at some point in the future.
Sammie - You know, what I've done is I've just downloaded the audio, I've got my favourite book on audio is The Wives by Taryn Fisher, which is a twisty thriller, suspense. What is going on? Kind of a book. I've listened to it five times and I promise you, every time I listen to it, something new comes out. I'm like, Oh my goodness, that was a clue.
How did I not pick up on it? And what I've done, which is very I feel like it shows where we're at in the world is I've sacrificed 400 megabytes of my phone's data or whatever you call it, so that I have it on hand as my comfort reread. And I feel like my online bookshelf is has that title on it.
So, much in the same way someone would have a hardcover or a special edition or would go buy a physical copy. I've sacrificed that space on my phone to make sure that I have my copy of The Wives for if I'm feeling low or if I need a pick me up or something to get me out of a slump. Or just because.
Lex - You're so right Sammie, I think that's such a big like very telling millennial commitment that you will give up that much space. And that's how important this book is to you. I think that's really worth it. Jen, I have a feeling that I know what you're going to say, but go on, enlighten us anyway.
Jen - I think you might be wrong Lexy B, go ahead, make your prediction.
Lex - I think if you absolutely loved it and I mean, it would have to be creme de la creme five star tippity top read, then you might buy it. But if it came in any lower than that, absolutely not. That's my strict prediction.
Jen - It's actually a good prediction. So I was going to say that, well, if you listen to this podcast, you know how tough I am on actually keeping books.
However, The Only Good Indians, I listened to it, loved it, and then because I wanted to reread it, I thought โThere is no way I'm putting this amount of hours back into this bookโ and bought it. Just remembered, it's not actually on my shelf at home because I sent it to you Lex. But yes, so if I really loved an audiobook and wanted to reread it, I would buy the book of it. But if it was just an average listen, I wouldn't.
Sammie - There's also the opportunity to like listen and read it. So that really appeals. And as you were talking I was thinking, I really enjoy this book, so I might as well get a copy of it and listen to it as I read. It's kind of like the narration is reading to you, like you're a kid again, which is really comforting. You just follow along.
Lucy - Hmm. Or again, going back to the flexibility of audiobooks. If you, you know, if you have to go somewhere that's maybe a bit of a duty family visit and you don't really want to go. And it's perhaps like an hour's drive and you're really into your book and youโre like I really donโt want to have to go to this, you know, Ruby wedding anniversary party or whatever it is.
And then if you, you know, you have to stop reading where you're at in the physical copy, you can just enjoy the journey on the way there by listening to the audio.
Lex - So that actually brings me quite nicely to my next slightly controversial question because the first book that I ever listened to by audiobook I had the pleasure of the physical copy and also the audiobook. So I had the privilege to switch between both and Lucy, to your point, I 100% loved it because when I was cosy on my sofa, I could just sit there with the pages.
But then when I had to do the washing up, walk the dog, I could continue. But audiobooks are expensive and I completely understand why they are expensive. You know, it's high production value, it is massive recording studios, it's multi cast. I understand all of that. It's the production. However, I don't know if I can afford a book and an audiobook and sometimes, given the cost of the living crisis at the moment, I don't know if I can afford an audiobook, which is why I'm actually doing most of my listening at the moment on Libby. But tell me where you guys are listening and where you're getting your audiobooks. Sammie, you go first.
Sammie - Libby is brilliant. I love that because also you're using your local library and that's something that's a resource that a lot of us have forgotten to use because of COVID and us being indoors. So Libby is an opportunity for us to get e-books and audiobooks from our local libraries. But I use Scribd which is a subscription, and I get all of my books and they are up to date and it's a flat rate.
And if you're a big reader like me or a big listener like me, you can listen to ten books, but or you could listen to two books. I find it a lot more financially accessible than other platforms.
Lucy - So I subscribe to Audible and I have done for a couple of years, but I'm a big fan of library based apps like Libby, I think they are a brilliant concept. And also we've recently done a collaboration with the ZigZag app and they after we did some market research at Tandem about what would put people off audiobooks, one of them was they don't want to have again going back to the Cost of Living Crisis, another monthly subscription that they have to pay by direct debit each month.
And the ZigZag app, you don't have to pay a subscription fee. You can subscribe or download the app and then you just pay per audiobook, kind of like you can kind of dip in and out. So again, having that choice and not being so tied to it with a monthly subscription cost, that was something that people found a big appeal.
Lex - Jen, thoughts and feelings?
Jen - Yeah. So Iโve got an Audible subscription, not so much for me, but for children's books. And then so some books like Dracula, which I mentioned before in an earlier episode, are of course, on Spotify. So I guess that's when there is a certain age, isn't it and they're outside of license. But if you want to listen to kind of classics, you can sometimes find them in chapters on Spotify as well.
Lex - That's a great shout. I had totally forgotten about that, actually.
Right. Okay, guys, we are going to wrap it up. But before we do, I'm going to ask you for your one audiobook recommendation. If you want anybody to leave this podcast with one audiobook recommendation, what is it going to be? I'll go first to give you a little bit of time thinking. So if I'm going multi voice narrator it is The Family Upstairs/ The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell 100%.
And if I am going single voice narrator I am going to have to go back to Amanda Redman reading The Darkness by Ragnor Jonasson. And I am going to pick Lucy to go first.
Lucy - Okay, I have quoted Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo already, which I do stand by. But if I'm going for my best multicast narration, I think I would say Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment. And then my favourite single narration. I think I'm going to go with Ellie Taylor. Just I mean, obviously it's a funny book anyway, but yeah, I mean, I was walking down the road like genuinely laughing out loud at points of that and getting some, some strange looks from people I passed in the streets.
Lex - I mean, I'm also pretty proud of you for getting a crime recommendation in there. I feel like we're slowly turning you around to the criminal way of things.
Lucy - Crossing over to the dark side.
Lex - Okay, Jen, time's up. What you got?
Jen - Okay, so actually, I'm just going to recommend a fiction and a nonfiction. So fiction is The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, obviously. And then nonfiction. I really enjoyed Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman, which is super fascinating. So if you're into your feminist nonfiction, give that one a try.
Lex - Amazing, Sammie, you want to take us out with your final recommendations?
Sammie - So I would recommend full cast A Good Girlโs Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson and single narrator would be The Wives by Tarryn Fisher. I'm going to be cheeky and add another one. I'm so sorry.
Lucy - You can do that Sammie, youโre our VIP guest, you can have a bonus one.
Sammie - Thank you. But my top audiobook of the year has to be Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola. And that was one of those with, with the different soundscapes. And I loved it. And it was a romance and it was fab. So that's another one that I recommend.
Lex - Awesome. Thank you so much. So listeners, if you cannot find anything in that recommendations list to delight your ears, then I'm not sure what I can do for you. But if you would like to share your recommendations, we would absolutely love to hear from you. So please drop us an email to podcast@thetandemcollective.com or drop into the caption, the comments of our most recent Instagram post.
Sammie, thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us this afternoon. I'm thrilled to be able to add another thriller audiobook to my TBR.
Sammie - Thank you so much for having me. This was loads of fun.
Lex - No, you're so welcome, my love. All right, guys, I will love you and leave you and we'll see you later.
As always, thank you so much for joining us today. Please do take a minute to rate review and subscribe and we'll see you next week.
Jaide - As always, we're open to your feedback, so please do hit us up @tandemcollectiveuk on Instagram or using the hashtag #tandemcollectivetalks. If thereโs anyone content creator wise or industry superstars or your favourite author that you think we should feature in the podcast then let us know.
Bye!
