How audiobooks can sharpen your hearing

I love reading, but until recently, I never considered audiobooks. I was born with hearing loss and muddled along without hearing aids until my thirties—the written word was my friend. I avoided depending on my ears. But practice is better than avoidance.

And when it comes to practice, audiobooks are a great way to hone your hearing. They can even considered part of auditory training therapy.

Hearing isn’t just about recognizing sounds. We need to interpret them. Audiobooks can help us exercise “those linguistic areas of your brain that are crucial for comprehension” explains Nancy Tye-Murray, PhD, and professor at Washington University School of Medicine.

How to get started

Make this project a way to enjoy books you’ve had on your list but didn’t get to, books that feel like guilty pleasures, and books that pleasurably stretch your listening skills.

• Start with an audiobook and a copy of the same book in print—it's a bit like reading subtitles on the screen. You'll initially use the two together.  
• Listen in a quiet room with a book narrated by a male voice Lower pitches are usually easier to hear. An accomplished actor is your best bet. Find a voice you enjoy—you have lots of options.
• Play your first audiobook at a slower than normal speed while following the text. Over time you can change the speed to the normal setting.
• Next try listening without reading along at the slower speed “until you’re comfortable with changing to normal speed.”
• You might want to listen only for 20 minutes to a half hour at first. Listening can be tiring.

“Start really paying attention to how much you comprehend,” Tye-Murray said. “After you finish listening to a chapter, you might jot down a few sentences that capture the essence of the chapter (for example, ‘Janey Smith caught the bus and ended up sitting next to a tall, dark stranger.’)” This will reinforce your brain’s comprehension muscles.

For your second book, you might choose one narrated by a woman and repeat the steps above.

Top audiobooks for auditory rehab

For beginners, Lynn A. Wood, an audiologist in Wheaton, Illinois recommends the children’s book, Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss, read by actor John Lithgow.

For a step up in difficulty, try a young-adult story about a girl and her beloved dog, Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, read by Cherry Jones, who you might recognize from “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

If you’d prefer a classic, consider Little Dorrit, her Dickens collection. She also narrates much-beloved books by Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. For a recent book with a bit of a meta-fiction twist, try Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.

You can catch up on classics with sentences and paragraphs that might seem too long on the page. BBC offers 20 unabridged classics online, including Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. 

New audiobooks draw top talent–you can hear Meryl Streep narrating Charlotte’s Web or Michelle Obama reading all 19 hours of her own memoir, Becoming.

Listening to authors narrate their own books can be especially intimate, Jennifer Reese, who reviews audiobooks for The New York Times, told me. She has listened to Patti Smith’s memoirs “multiple times,” she said, “I particularly love her narration of M train.”

If you’re feeling really ambitious

Try George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo (it made me cry at the end), with 166 narrators. Another book with multiple narrators is The Only Plane in The Sky, Garrett Graff’s oral history of 9/11. You’ll hear raw audio footage from that day and some of the real people who describe their experiences.

A few books have special effects. The Lost Words, a collection of poems about words that have disappeared from dictionaries, includes a soundtrack drawn from the British countryside beneath each poem. Poetry should always be read out loud, though I need a written version in front of me as well.

More on books and hearing health

• New book helps people improve mindset about hearing loss
• Our top recommended children's books about hearing loss