Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Books
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“A quick listen/read for anyone looking to learn more about our attitudes towards books and reading throughout history. For example, did you know that there was a time that doctors would write prescriptions for library books??? You would take your prescription to your local librarian who would hand you a self-help book to support you through treatment or recovery. Also, there was a time not so long ago that reading was considered just as bad a habit for kids and attention spans as social media is today. Truly wild.”
— Olivia • 5 to 9 Books
Bookseller recommendation
“ What We Talk About When We Talk About Books healed some real cracks in my relationship with reading, and reinforced my love and optimism for the written word. Book historian Leah Price guides you through all the myths, melodrama, and baggage modern culture is carrying around about books. Through a humorous and curiosity-filled tour of book history, she unpacks why so many of us feel so much pressure to read the right things in the right way, and why we've come to feel like doing so would whip our brains into shape and make us into zen, hyper-focused superhumans. Price's measured take on things made me feel like it's all going to be okay. Elisabeth Rodgers' cool, clear voice was the perfect narration.”
— Tova • Busboys and Poets Books
Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike.
Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020
Leah Price has taught English at Cambridge University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University, where from fall 2019 onward she will be founding director of the Rutgers Book Initiative. She is the author How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain and the editor of Unpacking My Library.