Shaina Reads

All right, guys. You were so nice to me the last time I told you a bookish secret, and I've got another I need to unload.

I was recently talking to a friend from college who's been doing stage management and light design since his graduation. He's about to start working on a new show:

Me: What's the latest about?

Him: Musical of Much Ado About Nothing.

Me: Very cool! I still need to read Shakespeare. He's on my Classics Club book list. (Side note: Yes, I talk about the Classics Club IRL.)

Him: Nice, but... how have you not read Shakespeare? You of all people?

Me: Dude, you've got me. I don't know.

I really don't know. Everyone and their mother had to read at least a handful of his plays in high school, but Shakespeare apparently wasn't on my district's list of priorities. (Not kidding about the moms: even my mother ragged on me for never having read Shakespeare. If any of you are my Facebook friends, you know how much she loves me, and this gave even her pause.) It's possible I read all of Taming of the Shrew in freshman or sophomore year, but I also may have read only excerpts. I don't remember—how much I read and what it was even about—and therefore I don't count it.

I haven't done a ding-danged thing to change this situation, and part of me doesn't especially care. Katie's post about not having read the classics fostered a great discussion about how we shouldn't feel "guilty" about what we have and haven't read or feel forced to read what we don't want to. I wholeheartedly agree, and yet I do connect with her point about how often these works get referenced and reinterpreted across literary genres. I know my reading experiences might be more nuanced and satisfying if I had some of the bard under my belt, but honestly? I don't even know where to begin, it's intimidating, and I've got so much other reading to do.

So, again, I turn to you, dear reader. Is Shakespeare all that and a bag of chips? I have Macbeth on my aforementioned Classics Club list, but is that the best place to start? I've heard his plays are easier to digest when read aloud (meant to be performed and all that), so should I break my no-audio book and no-Shakespeare streak at the very same time? Let me know. I'll be here, probably reading anything other than Shakespeare.

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.