Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?

I'm struggling to think of a top three list from audiobooks alone in terms of memorability and enjoyment, but I can list a few that had a measurable impact on my life.

1. "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami, narrated by Ray Porter (coincidentally, also the narrator for the Bobiverse book you mentioned). This was a major influence of increasing my running volume and moving on to a more intense intermediate middle-distance program, and his experiences also gave me the motivation to push through discomfort in running and certain parts of life when necessary (with the ideas that "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional," and that even world-class elite runners have days when they don't feel like training, but they go out and do so anyway).

2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, narrated by Sissy Spacek. This reading wasn't required by my school growing up, but I've wanted to read this book for several years due to its great reputation. The audiobook version helped me finally enjoy the book over a month or so. I still remember Atticus Finch's quote that "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view [...] until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it," and the idea helped navigate through some complicated negotiations and social situations at various times.

3. Various other classics (sneaking a bit around the limit of a top three). The audiobook version of Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" was an influence that led to an increased interest with space exploration and astronomy, and readings of Huxley's "Brave New World" and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" helped me better appreciate the damaging effects of excessive escapism with entertainment, versus choosing efforts that require more struggle and difficulty.

I've also become more informed through listenings to Carreyrou's "Bad Blood" about the fall of Theranos, and Quinones's "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic," though classic literature has interestingly been typically more relevant to my day-to-day life than non-fiction books so far, with the exception of certain memoirs such as Murakami's.

I think the most surprising thing for me is that I see/imagine the same images and have the same feelings when reading a book and when listening to that same book.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, but quality and the amount of focus required varies a lot. Sometimes I put on some lightweight audiobook or podcast while playing games or doing chores. For most lightweight content I crank it up to somewhere between 2x and 3x playback speed and still follow along just fine.

Other times I'm dialed-in with an audiobook playing as I read along with the book. Most recently I've been doing this with Unsong, by Scott Alexander. The book is very engaging and detailed, so I'm fully immersed. For this book in particular it's useful to have an audiobook because I don't know how many of the references would be pronounced.

Anything more challenging or technically-focused usually requires me to physically read it in order to fully process the content.