Secondary Reading

When the comedian Nate Bargatze sits down to watch television, he sometimes thinks to himself, "This is when you should be reading."¹ But he never does. Reading, he jokes, is simply too much work: "I don't do it because every book is just the most words. It doesn't let up. I mean, every page is more words."² Bargatze's suggestion that books should occasionally include blank pages to give readers a breather captures a widely shared feeling that reading has slipped out of sync with the tempo of contemporary life. In a digital culture shaped by constant connectivity, accelerating demands, and shrinking attention spans, the act of reading can feel both burdensome and aspirational. I'd like to address this crisis in reading through the rise of audiobooks, since their growing popularity might seem to confirm the worst fears about contemporary reading: that we no longer have the time or attention to sit still with a book. I want to suggest almost the opposite. Audiobooks show how readers are adapting to an environment increasingly hostile to sustained reading, finding ways to preserve contact with books by fitting them around the rest of their lives.

No one taking part in this cluster needs to be reminded about the polycrisis threatening the future of reading. Busy lifestyles, digital distractions, mental health challenges, curriculum reforms, the cost of living, Covid hangovers, and a broader perception that books are losing cultural relevance within today's algorithmic-driven meme culture have all contributed to the perennial angst about the decline of reading. Even the highly motivated minority who enjoy reading are finding it increasingly difficult to immerse themselves in as many books as they would like. According to a recent NPR poll, the number one reason people don't read more is lack of time due to "other life activities."³ Reading is usually the first casualty when people are forced to make difficult choices about how to spend their diminishing leisure time.

Before giving in to despair, however, it is worth noting the encouraging trends identified by these otherwise dispiriting polls. Namely, not all forms of reading are in decline. One recent survey by Britain's National Literacy Trust registered a steep drop in reading for pleasure while showing a rise in the number of young people who enjoyed listening to books. For the first time since the organization began tracking listening habits, more children said they preferred listening to books (42.3%) over reading them in print (34.6%).⁴ The fact that more boys than girls enjoy listening offers a glimmer of hope that the "manosphere" is not utterly beyond the reach of authors. The National Literacy Trust responded to the findings by urging UK government ministers to add audiobooks to the country's school curriculum.

The National Literacy Trust's findings match broader global trends since one of the biggest developments in the book industry over the past decade has been the audiobook's remarkable growth in popularity.⁵ At a time when nearly all other forms of reading have flatlined or are in decline, the appetite for audiobooks continues to grow. Although there are numerous factors driving the audiobook boom, the one I'll focus on here is the potential solution audiobooks offer to the increasingly common problem of being too busy to read—for, as anyone with kids or a long commute will know, one of the chief attractions of audiobooks is that they can be read while doing other activities—the very obstacles cited by poll respondents.

My own conversion to audiobooks came while making long-distance road trips across Texas as a teenager. Spending entire days behind the steering wheel kept my hands occupied while leaving my mind free to roam. The conditions were ideal for secondary listening or what might be called "secondary reading" as I worked my way through novel after novel constrained only by the meager selection of cassette tapes available at truck stops scattered along the desolate highways of the Texas panhandle. Following the advent of what Raymond Williams influentially called "mobile privatisation," portable listening devices from Walkmans to iPhones extended this reading time to other areas of my life, too.⁶

More and more I found myself listening to books instead of reading them in print as my life became increasingly busy with childcare and the seemingly endless list of chores that come with adulthood. As is the case with many people, audiobooks were less a deliberate choice for me than a way to preserve my reading time against the onslaught of life admin. Over time, though, I noticed that most of my reading seemed to be coming through audiobooks simply because there was not enough time to read them in any other way. What had started out as a way of supplementing print was gradually supplanting print.

In terms of attention, audiobooks were initially understood to have more in common with the radio than with print. Whereas the printed book has long been idealized as a medium that requires the audience's full attention, radio has typically been classified as a secondary medium, consumed while doing other activities such as driving, cooking, or exercising. Most people listen to the radio passively or as background noise. Empirical studies have confirmed that radio listening tends to be enmeshed in the routines of everyday life, serving not only as a source of information and entertainment but also as a form of companionship for listeners navigating busy and often solitary schedules.⁷ There are, of course, exceptions as families have been known to gather around the wireless to devote their full attention to serial programs like Amos 'n' Andy or Lux Radio Theatre.⁸

The distinction between active and passive listening was one of the first topics investigated by radio researchers. Books featured prominently within these accounts as the model of primary attention. The Psychology of Radio, a pioneering study published in 1935, explicitly compared radio listening to reading print before concluding, "Most people prefer listening to reading... It takes less effort."⁹ A subsequent study titled Radio and the Printed Page addressed the technology's potential to cultivate forms of "serious listening" characterized by media historian Kate Lacey as "careful, readerly, and unemotional attention to programming with educational or democratic intent."¹⁰ The Radio Research Project responsible for that study's findings initially regarded the new medium less as a competitor to print than as a potential ally in the cultivation of reading habits. However, its findings ultimately suggested that most listeners preferred radio precisely because it accommodated distraction rather than demanding sustained concentration. In this respect, audiobook listeners may appear to resemble radio audiences more than traditional print readers.

Even the most vocal critiques of audiobooks usually concede that the format is exceptionally well adapted to the demands of contemporary life. As early as 1994, Sven Birkerts's The Gutenberg Elegies sought to defend print against technological disruption even before the most transformative developments to the digital ecosystem (namely, ebooks, smartphones, and social media). Yet Birkerts recognized that the popularity of audiobooks was driven less by an intrinsic preference for listening than by changes to the way we live now: "As life gets more complex, people are likely to read less and listen more."¹¹ Paradoxically, then, a mode of reading often dismissed as distracted may offer a more stable form of concentration than traditional print reading within a media environment designed to capture our attention.

Audiobooks can thus be understood as a technological solution to a problem that itself originated with technology. While we should remain skeptical towards Birkerts's characterization of Baby Boomers as the first generation cognitively evolved to multitask, few will dispute that the environments in which readers find themselves today are increasingly inhospitable to the sustained concentration associated with deep reading. Within these distraction-rich environments, what were once thought to be the audiobook's vices might even be considered virtues. The fact that someone else is doing the reading for you, that someone else's vocal inflections are shaping your perception of the narrative, that someone else's pace is beyond your control may take just enough of the friction out of the reading experience to make it tolerable to tech-addled minds, many of which have come to rely on the narrator's voice to propel them forward. Although Birkerts worried about being seduced by audiobooks, seduction may be precisely what distracted readers need right now.¹²

My own experience raises the question of whether secondary reading can become self-reinforcing: whether people who initially turn to audiobooks because circumstances make print reading difficult eventually find that their habits and expectations as readers have changed as well. The experiences of a growing cohort of audiobook converts suggest that this trajectory is far from unusual. Testimonies from this vocal minority are readily available on Reddit, a social media platform which since 2008 has hosted a lively forum described as "a community of audiobibliophiles." Many of its members portray audiobooks not simply as a supplement to traditional reading but as a format that has fundamentally altered their habits and expectations. Here are a few representative posts:

"Audiobooks have ruined me for regular reading."
"Does anyone else feel that audiobooks have ruined your patience for reading?"
"Ever since I have turned to audiobooks, I have been so lazy to read the actual book."

Taken together, these comments suggest that what begins as a practical accommodation to circumstances can develop into a more fundamental shift in reading habits, as an auxiliary medium gradually becomes the principal means through which readers encounter books.

A Reddit thread titled "Audiobooks killed the book reader" captures this transition particularly well. Its author describes beginning with the practical advantages of listening but finding that convenience has gradually developed into a preference for audio:

I've loved reading my entire life but now I want all the books to be audiobooks. I can walk the dog, drive to the store, clean the house, do a craft, all while enjoying a great book. I get to enjoy twice as many books as I could through reading. ... Has anyone else found that audiobooks have taken over reading?

The appeal will be instantly recognizable to busy readers overwhelmed by those "other life activities." But the post describes something more than a practical accommodation to a busy life. The author's claim that "now I want all the books to be audiobooks" suggests that a format initially valued for its convenience has become a preference in its own right. Secondary reading has not simply created more opportunities to read; it has begun to reshape how readers want to encounter books.

The thread "Audiobooks killed the book reader" resonated particularly strongly with bibliophiles for whom this transition from print to audio had already taken place and who now found most, if not all, of their reading taking place via ear buds. Respondents describing themselves as "lifelong bookworms" admitted to no longer having any contact with printed books at all. Many expressed nostalgia, and at times grief, for an earlier period when sitting down with a book had occupied a central place in their lives. Yet they also struggled to imagine returning to their former habits. As one father in his forties put it, "I was an avid reader all my life but over the last decade I have not read a single full-length novel. 100% audio. Not sad about it, just the way it is." What emerges from these accounts is not simply a preference for the convenience of audiobooks, but a more fundamental change in reading habits: a format initially suited to the pressures of contemporary life has become the only one that fits comfortably within it.

These Reddit posts suggest that few readers consciously decide to abandon print. More often, that decision is effectively made for them by circumstances largely beyond their control. Nearly every respondent described lacking time for "a dedicated reading session." (The very idea!) Parents no longer had the "quiet time" necessary for reading since having kids, while working long hours robbed others of what they called "disposable minutes" for books. Even when opportunities to read did arise, some reported finding it increasingly difficult to sustain the concentration print demanded or simply falling asleep after a few pages. Faced with such relentless demands on their time and attention, not to mention their bodies, most commenters expressed gratitude simply for being able to continue reading at all. It is difficult to disentangle cause and effect here. The same pressures that lead people to adopt audiobooks may also make print reading harder to sustain, while habitual listening may further alter their expectations of how reading should fit into everyday life. What is clear is that these readers have become increasingly format agnostic, less concerned with the medium than with preserving access to books amid the competing obligations of contemporary life.

Several of the thread's most thoughtful respondents challenged the premise of its title, "Audiobooks killed the book reader," arguing that audiobooks are less the cause of print reading's decline than an adaptation to the conditions that have made it increasingly difficult to sustain. No one will be surprised to hear that these readers worry about the effects screens are having on attention spans. "I don't know how I used to sit for hours reading but it ain't happening anymore," posted a mother suffering from postpartum distraction. For readers like this one, the Internet rather than the audiobook is what killed the book reader. More striking, however, is that the difficulty concentrating on print does not necessarily extend to listening. Several respondents reported that audiobooks continued to hold their attention even when visual reading no longer could. As one self-described "book nerd" put it, "Audiobooks tickle my brain in a way a physical or ebooks can't."

Other respondents blame the problem not on technology but on the economic pressures of contemporary capitalism since working conditions that require ceaseless productivity and side hustles squeeze out any time for nonproductive leisure. "You could make the argument that modern life killed the book reader," proposed one commenter. "Between work, kids, house stuff, etc... the idea of sitting down just to read seems absolutely scandalous." From this perspective, audiobooks are not responsible for the book reader's demise but represent an adaptation to conditions that make setting aside time for a book increasingly difficult. By allowing reading to coexist with work, commuting, childcare, and domestic routines, they preserve time for books within lives that might otherwise exclude them. Far from killing the book reader, audiobooks might instead be credited with keeping that reader on life support.

At first glance, then, the rise of secondary reading may appear to confirm the emergence of a postliterate culture increasingly inhospitable to the sustained concentration that books have traditionally required. Yet it can also be understood as an adaptive strategy for maintaining contact with books under the pressures of modern life. For many listeners, audiobooks begin as a way of extending reading into parts of the day otherwise unavailable to it, only to become, over time, the format through which reading seems most readily sustainable. While there is good reason to continue defending the ideal of deep, contemplative reading—an ideal I am personally working hard to reclaim—it is equally important to recognize the resourcefulness with which people continue to find opportunities for narrative immersion amid relentless schedules and increasingly fragmented attention. For anyone concerned with the future of reading, the challenge is therefore not simply to protect traditional models of literacy but to reckon with a changing media ecology forcing us to rethink what reading means, which formats are being used to do it, and how best to engage with evolving forms of it. Seen from this perspective, secondary reading complicates the familiar narrative of reading's decline by revealing something that is too often overlooked: reading's unexpected resilience.

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Matthew Rubery is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Reader's Block: A History of Reading Differences (2022), The Untold Story of the Talking Book (2016), and Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies (2011). He also co-edited, with Leah Price, Further Reading (2020), a collection of essays for the series Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature.

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References

1. Quoted in David Marchese, "Nate Bargatze Doesn't Mind If You Think He's an Idiot," New York Times, April 19, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/magazine/nate-bargatze-interview.html. ↩︎
2. "Nate Bargatze Stand-Up Monologue—SNL," YouTube, October 29, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED5RX-fou34&t=34s&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive. Bargatze's Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2025) contains two chapters containing only blank pages. ↩︎
3. "NPR Reading Poll," Ipsos, February 28, 2025, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/most-americans-read-its-not-our-priority-leisure-activity. ↩︎
4. Irene Picton and Christina Clark, "Children and Young People's Listening in 2024," National Literary Trust, February 2024, https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-listening-in-2024/. ↩︎
5. "Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Predictions 2020," Deloitte Insights, September 18, 2019, https://www.deloitte.com/za/en/Industries/telecom-media-entertainment/analysis/2020-tmt-predictions.html. ↩︎
6. Raymond Williams, Towards 2000 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1983), 188. ↩︎
7. Tim Wall, "Radio Sound," in The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies, ed. Michael Bull (New York: Routledge, 2019), 380-90. ↩︎
8. On radio's efforts to promote active listening, see David Goodman, Radio's Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). ↩︎
9. Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, The Psychology of Radio (New York: Harper, 1935), 17. ↩︎
10. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page: An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1940), 11. Kate Lacey, "Media Studies," in The Handbook of Listening, ed. Debra L. Worthington and Graham D. Bodie (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020): 181-197, 183. Emphasis mine. ↩︎
11. Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 141-150), 145. ↩︎
12. Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies, 143. ↩︎