David O'Mahony: Audiobooks retain the nostalgia of having a story read to you

An illustration from Horrible Histories — Pirates.

When is a book not a book? According to a persistent chunk of the reading world, when it’s an audiobook apparently.

There is a certain snobbishness toward audiobooks and reading from some camps, which makes no sense given that the oldest form of storytelling is the oral tradition. The storytellers of old weren’t always improvising the whole thing on the spot; they were reciting things they had learned.