Same Addiction, New Format: My Audiobook Paradigm Shift

June is Audiobook Appreciation Month — and as an audiobook narrator, I should probably have a tidy origin story about how I always loved the spoken word. The truth is a little more complicated than that.

I still have the boxes.

Boxes of books. Real ones — paperbacks with cracked spines, hardcovers with dog-eared pages, some with Post-it notes still tucked inside from decades ago. They're not going anywhere. Some of them are older than my now-adult kids. They live in my storage space (the books, not the kids), waiting patiently for the day I finally get that floor-to-ceiling bookwall I've been dreaming about.

I mention the boxes because I want you to understand something: my relationship with books is not casual. It never has been. Books were, and still are, deeply personal to me. A book in my hand felt like proof that I was present, engaged, reading. The idea of not having one nearby was genuinely uncomfortable.

So it is not lost on me that I now make my living narrating audiobooks.

The Weight Allowance Problem

For over 20 years, I served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, which is a wonderful way of saying I moved. A lot. To places you don't always choose, on timelines you don't always control, with weight allowances that do not care about your personal library. If you've never had to decide between your winter coat and your favorite novel, consider yourself fortunate.

Every posting brought the same impossible math. Clothes. Furniture. Kids' toys. Kitchen essentials. And then, somewhere at the bottom of the pile, the books. I'd pack as many as I could justify, ship a few ahead, and quietly grieve the ones that had to wait in storage.

I loved those books. But they were heavy, and the world kept moving.

Enter the Kindle

I don't remember exactly when I gave in. I do remember the resistance — the feeling that reading on a screen was somehow less than. That the experience would be hollow without the weight of the pages, the smell of the paper, the physical proof of progress as the bookmark inched forward.

I was wrong.

The Kindle didn't replace my love of books. It removed the friction. Suddenly, I could carry an entire library in my bag, board a plane to another continent, and never once worry about the weight. I was still reading. I was just doing it differently.

The rest, as they say, is history.

And Then Came Audio

The shift to audiobooks was slower — and honestly, a little reluctant for many of the same reasons. I had already made peace with ebooks, but listening to a book still felt different. Was it really the same experience if I wasn't turning the pages myself?

My gateway was my romance novels.

I started listening to audiobook versions of books I had already read and loved. Because I knew the stories so well, there was no risk. If I got distracted, I already knew what happened. If I wasn't sure about the narrator, I already had a connection to the characters and the story.

What surprised me was how much a skilled narrator could add to the experience. The books hadn't changed, but the stories felt different when brought to life through performance. Characters developed distinct personalities. Dialogue took on new energy. Familiar scenes landed in new ways.

Without realizing it, I was learning something important about audiobooks. They weren't replacing the reading experience. They were creating a different way to experience the same story.

Before long, I found myself reaching for audiobooks not just for books I'd already read, but for entirely new ones.

What changed it for me was the multitasking.

I am, by nature and by 22 years of professional conditioning, someone who does not sit still well. Audiobooks meant I could feed my reading habit and everything else at the same time. The story came with me... into the kitchen, on long road trips (two cross-country trips so far and hoping for a third).

It wasn't cheating. It was efficiency. And for someone who had spent two decades navigating the world on a schedule she didn't always set, efficiency felt like freedom.

The Full Circle

And now, I narrate audiobooks. Professionally. In a recording booth, or what many voice actors would honestly call a closet, in Baltimore, with a microphone and a manuscript and the responsibility of bringing someone else's words to life for a listener I'll probably never meet.

What surprises me now is that audiobooks solve the same problem that drew me to diplomacy and communication work in the first place. They help people connect with ideas. They make information and stories accessible to people who might not otherwise have the time or opportunity to engage with them. The medium changed. The goal didn't.

I think about that listener a lot — the one who's folding laundry, or commuting, or walking the dog, or lying in the dark because sleep won't come. The one who needs a story but can't carve out the time to sit still and hold a book.

Oh, wait, that's me.

The books in the boxes? They're not going anywhere. Neither is the addiction. It just found a new format.