Reading Audiobooks

Abstract

The development of digital media technologies like the MP3 file and the smartphone has changed the status of the audiobook from being a by-product of the printed book to being a mass medium in its own right. This chapter takes a context and user perspective on audiobooks and asks the fundamental question: to what extent can one say that one ‘reads’ an audiobook? Based on the Danish author Helle Helle’s novel Ned til hundene (Down to the Dogs, 2008), the authors discuss how the audiobook experience as a whole can be analysed regarding ‘technological framing’, ‘reading situations’ and ‘the performing voice’. They also investigate audiobook reading in relation to the experience of time and depth.