The Guardian – In this time-poor, podcast-friendly world, audiobooks are booming. “So what is the science behind them – and do they change our relationship with the written word? “Are audiobooks the new… books? It was recently revealed that audiobook sales rocketed by 43% in 2018, while those of print books declined (by 5%) for the first time in five years. Can people no longer be bothered to read for themselves? Is this, rather than the ebook, the harbinger of the slow death of print, about which we have been warned for so long? And if so, what does that mean for literary culture? Let us first retain some historical perspective by noting that Homer’s Iliad was essentially an audiobook before it was ever written down. Oral literary culture long precedes the book and there are many reasons for its rising popularity. Some people I spoke to use audiobooks to send them to sleep after a stressful professional day; others listen while walking, or looking after a baby, or as an alternative to TV. Parents say they are great for keeping children occupied in the car, and commuters use them on their journeys. The time-pressed listen at 1.5x or 2x normal speed, or use websites such as Blinkist, which boil down non-fiction books to their “key takeaways” in 15 minutes. One writer told me that he gets audiobooks “for research into stuff that I fear my pleasure-seeking brain would give up on if I had to read with my eyes”…”