Nope. Not happening.

My name is Shaina, and I have a confession to make: I've never listened to an audiobook, and a part of me never wants to.

All right, so I'm fudging a bit here. I've definitely heard an audiobook before, but this was back in the day when my grandma used to rent cassettes and CDs from the library to play in the car, and who really pays attention to those old lady books, anyway?*

Despite knowing what they were and how to get them, I never sought out an audiobook for myself as a kid, and I still haven't as a supposed adult. Accessibility isn't the issue; getting my hands on them is easier than ever among Audible, Amazon, Scribd, the library and probably dozens of other perfectly good outlets. Nope. This is audiobook discrimination, plain and simple.

I'm not sure where this staunch opposition comes from. I adore podcasts (that is, when I make the time to listen to them), and my favorite part of my stint as a journalism student was putting together audio packages for a multimedia storytelling class. I also love the idea that I could do some other low-key activity—cooking, crocheting, coloring, cat-petting—while I got my pages in for the day. Bonus: my bag would be so much lighter if I could store my reads of the week on my phone. This even goes for e-books; my phone is a full 50 grams lighter than my Kindle. The benefits are endless, people!

The only legitimate roadblock I can think of is that I tend to space out while listening to things. Things include podcasts, music and people talking to me. It's bad, and I'm working on it. I might be afraid that, if I shifted part of my reading over to the audible variety, I would miss out on a lot of the nuance—and, heck, some of the larger plot points—of whatever book I was listening to. I know this is the type of problem that I could surmount over time, but no amount of rationalizing has lit a fire under me yet.

There's never been a better time for me to face my biases; my Books on the Nightstand summer bingo card includes a conveniently-located square for an audiobook. I keep telling people that I'm excited to try one out, but I'm having the growing realization that that's a teensy bit (or perhaps a substantial bit) of a lie.

And so I arrive at a plea: can anyone persuade me to get over myself and give an audiobook a shot? I know many of you love them and I've seen oodles of recommendations for good stories and readers, but alas. It just seems too great a (first-world-problem) mountain to climb, and there are so many wonderful paperbacks here at the bottom.

*Old lady books rock.