Reading – Pages

My digital library:
Audiobooks
eBooks

Reading – About my book reflections

Reading has been a key continuity in the flow of my life, a primary focus since I was a child enthusiastically bringing home armloads of library books each week. When I launched this website in 1999, I decided it would be interesting to record my reflections on the books I was reading, and so it has gone over the decades since.

Once in awhile I take a few minutes to look back over my musings, to recall how a book left me feeling or reread a favorite passage. For me personally, that's highly valuable. Other than that, I think my impressions are of questionable value; I allow myself to be entirely subjective when I write them so they can be quite colored by my mood at the moment, sometimes saying as much about me as the book in question.

Reading – Et cetera: 2009 - 2014

After ten years of reading and recording my reflections at an average pace of a bit more than a book a week (1999 - 2008), I decided to do something different going forward: to share my musings only of the books I most enjoyed or appreciated, the ones I previously would've given the highest ratings. I titled this new section: Et cetera.

After a couple years of doing that, long enough that I had started a second Et cetera page, I reread an old favorite book, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and decided it would be the final one I wrote about. My life had become intensely busy, so much so that I felt a need to prioritize how I spent my diminishing free time. I continued to read, though at a reduced pace, and a couple times over the next few years enjoyed a book so much that I couldn't resist writing about it, but that was it.

Reading – & Now: 2015 - present

In early 2015, the intensity of life finally began to wane a bit and I rediscovered the luxury of free time. I read a book that had a profound impact on me and realized I wanted to start writing the occasional reflections again. To celebrate this, I started this new section of reviews. I'm continuing to share my musings only of the books I most enjoyed or appreciated reading or listening to, which over the years has worked out to be about one in every three or four.

Reading – Appreciating the playground

Over the years, my relationship with books has shifted from being exclusively a reader for much of my life to becoming primarily a listener. I remember listening to my first few audiobooks and feeling almost like I was cheating, until I realized that I was actually taking a journey to the original roots of storytelling. While I still read a book occasionally¹, for years now, I've listened to the vast majority of books I experience.

Having listened to well over a thousand audiobooks, I can say this: initially, the quality of audiobook narration wasn't very good; a lot of the readers sounded like bored older men who smoked too much and the production quality was noticeably poor. Over the years, though, production quality has improved enough to disappear and narrators have become more diverse and artistic, so that the basic act of recording the reading of books has transformed into performance art.

A skilled narrator can impart a fresh dimension to a story, giving it an added sparkle and depth. That's why I always acknowledge the narrator when I write about an audiobook, and give an extra shoutout for performances I find exceptional. Sometimes, a narrator is so good that I'll search through all their recordings looking for additional books to imbibe.

See also: How they make audiobooks⩘ with Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, by Merphy Napier, Aug 2021, via Boing Boing.

1) For example, when an audiobook version isn't available or is available only from a vendor like Amazon/Audible that I don't want to do business with, or when I realize that I don't want to listen to a specific narrator.

No AI !

I recently (2025) read that Audible has plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks, and to make this technology available to other publishers.

Let me be absolutely clear: I will NEVER knowingly purchase or listen to an audiobook with AI narration. For years now, I already have avoided Audible for their dishonorable business practices. Going forward, I also will avoid any other publisher who converts to AI narration.

Follow up: Well I just passed on my first audiobook with "virtual voice narration". When I'm finding books to dive into, my process is to first read about them. If I'm intrigued, I take the second step of checking to see if there is an audiobook. If there is, I listen to a sample to ensure I'm okay with the narrator. If I am, I purchase the book and add it to my queue. Today, I got to the second step for a book I wanted to listen to, but then saw that it uses virtual voice narration. Nope ! Bye !

See also:

Audible unveils plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks⩘ by Lucy Knight, The Guardian, May 13, 2025.
Why I hate artificial intelligence⩘
Shun Amazon!⩘

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