I have to admit, I am very late to the audiobook/podcast era. I, of course, knew about them and have been thrilled by the amazing narrators for my books, but I never listened to audiobooks. Certainly not to my own. Well, I listened to the first sentence of the first book, then hit stop. I couldn’t allow someone else’s voice in my head. And that, of course, is the immense power and pleasure of audio.

As a former radio broadcaster, I know that audio is intimate, warm. And being read to is almost primal, taking us back to when we were children, lulled to sleep by the comforting voice of mom or dad. We were not alone. Not only was our parent there, but so were all those characters, coming alive in our nascent imaginations. But as an adult, I never really gave audiobooks, or even podcasts, much thought.

Until the pandemic, when I started working out. My God, it was boring. If it was possible to die of ennui, I would have. Until ... I discovered audiobooks! Okay, hardly a discovery since everyone I knew had been listening for years, but still, a revelation for me. Suddenly, what had been not just boring but kind of unpleasant became something I looked forward to: the next chapter. And I still listen. As you will see, I don’t listen to much fiction, but I do love learning, often obscure things, and mostly choose hefty tomes. —Louise Penny, author of

Louise Penny is the award-winning author of the