I’ve loved books for as far back as I can remember, and my early childhood simmers with memories of stories and storytelling, from listening to the radio and audiobook recordings to my parents or older sister reading aloud to me while I tried to read along. I had so many beautiful, immersive reading experiences.
Fast forward to today: I’m sitting in an airport writing about books, carrying a heavy print book in my bag, with an e-book and an audiobook ready to go on my devices. What about you? Maybe you devour print novels, catch yourself squinting at e-books in the darkness of night, space out listening to audiobooks somewhere—or end up doing all three, like me. However you like to approach it, I like to think there is a path to books for everyone.
But even the most ardent book lovers know that we have those moments where our book stack is hitting the ceiling while we’re crashing out on the floor. I know that feeling well, and that’s why I’m excited to ask today: Have you ever tried immersive reading? That’s when you read a book while listening to the audiobook at the same time, and it’s a huge trend on Booktok and Bookstagram. If you haven’t yet, it may just be the key you’ve been searching for.
Ahead, I talked with three reading educators and an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer to learn more about immersive reading and all its benefits. I’ve loved immersive reading long before it trended on social media (and I still do), so if you’re ready for a new way to lose yourself in a book, I’ve got you!
Get Reader’s Digest’s Read Up newsletter for more books, cleaning, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long.
What is immersive reading?
You could say that immersive reading is reading, leveled up. It’s certainly a multimodal experience. Immersive reading occurs when you combine reading a printed book, e-book or digital text with listening to that same text played in tandem. It’s an audio-visual bookish feast. All you have to do is read a passage on the page (or screen) at the same time as you listen to it being read aloud by someone else (recorded or live).
Immersive reading emerged as a trend in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but variations of it have been around much, much longer. So long, in fact, that my fellow vinyl fans can find books on record from the early 1970s that came with accompanying illustrated storybooks. Just one example: a Flintstones album released by Peter Pan Records, where a recorded storyteller “reads the book to the child word for word, with music and sound effects,” which “creates the desire to read as it entertains the child.”
Is immersive reading a “real” reading experience?
“Of course it is real!” says Tavia Gilbert, an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer who is the CEO of audio consultancy Talkbox Productions. “And it’s not just my opinion,” she says. “There’s a wealth of evidence that reading and listening activate the same processing centers of the brain.” Significant research out there backs this up, with places like the Gaab Lab at Harvard diving deep into the neuroscience behind reading and language.
Erin Bailey, an educator and vice president of Reading Is Fundamental’s Literacy Programs and Research, says it “depends on how you define reading and what your objective is.” Immersive reading can be a “fantastic method” for teaching language fluency, but for phonics it’s better as a supportive tool only. (We’ll get to more benefits ahead.)
But, she adds, “Most people would agree that the end goal of reading is to make meaning with the text, think critically and engage with what you’re reading,” Bailey says. “Certainly, immersive reading accomplishes all these things.”
What are the benefits of immersive reading?
“Whatever connects people with literature and ideas and inspires more attention to them is excellent,” Gilbert says, and I agree. The more people who enjoy books, the better, and if immersive reading is the new pathway to falling in love with books and reading, then it’s already golden.
BookTok and Bookstagram are full of bookish types readily testing the trend and assessing the benefits of immersive reading. Most come as no surprise to me, and all of them made me smile. Here’s how immersive reading can help you, according to social media, the experts and yours truly:
It helps you lock in and focus
We are so used to the short sound bites and quick reels of social media that sitting down with a single analog input, such as a book, can feel excruciating sometimes. That’s one reason I love audiobooks: I can listen while walking, driving, doing chores or even making art. It’s a hands-free activity that brings out my inner multitasking monster.
But with immersive reading, you’ll quickly discover that … there is no multitasking possible. You have to simply be present, in the moment, with the book in your hands, the text in your vision and the sound in your ear. Personally, I find this to be one of the biggest challenges. But I also think it has a great benefit for improving focus. I’m not the only one, either.
“I get distracted so freaking easily,” says Bookstagrammer @klub.kaylah, who has ADHD and says immersive reading helps her concentrate and also retain more of the book. “It just creates such a better overall experience,” she says. “I feel I’m in the movie. I’m in the scene.”
It encourages “unplugged” bedtime rituals
Immersive reading is a wonderful alternative to nighttime doomscrolling. Retired Baltimore public schools librarian Lauren Magnusen says she struggles with sleep issues and reads until “my eyes are so heavy I almost drop the book,” but if you’re not ready to ditch the digital input just yet, that’s OK. Now you can settle into bed, switch on an audiobook and crack open a book or e-reader to enjoy a relaxing, immersive reading experience until you’re ready to slip into dreamland.
Magnusen says the immersive reading trend makes her heart happy because kids are realizing “that doom-scrolling, playing endless games, all of that, does not enrich their lives and that there’s more to life than just that.” Even better to her is the idea that young people are pairing reading with “something that works for them” and adding a new modality for reading. “I think that’s fabulous,” she says.
Now, if you have a hyper imagination and vivid dreams like me, maybe skip the horror in your nighttime immersive reading ritual—but see what works for you! Either way, immersive reading can help you spend an evening mostly unplugged, bluescreen-free and immersed in a story instead of zombie-scrolling. You might still drop a book on your face, but consider it a well-won bruise.
It can actually help you write better
You may worry that immersive reading negatively affects basic writing skills, like spelling. But “the spelling one in particular is a misconception,” Bailey says, especially when it comes to irregularly spelled words. “When you hear the word pronounced and see the spelling at the same time, you are mapping the sound-spelling connection in your brain,” she says. “This is a good thing.”
Magnusen agrees, saying that “when you are reading print, you are absorbing grammatical structures and sentences and things that you don’t get when you’re only listening to an audiobook.” The former teacher and librarian says immersive reading can really help with writing and grammar, two skills that are so necessary to be successful, “and it’s sort of on steroids, because you’re getting that advantage of hearing it and also seeing it.”
It’s a new “exam cram” method
Got an exam coming up? Perhaps the most unexpected benefit of immersive reading is when it’s applied to academic content. I can listen to a research paper on three times the normal speed while following along in the text. Yes, really.
According to Gilbert, who has recorded more than 1,000 audiobooks in addition to producing them, listening to anything over 1.2 or 1.3 times normal speed “really loses the nuance of the performance and becomes just information dissemination,” which can feel stressful instead of enjoyable. But if you’re a student or researcher just trying to get information into your head, listening at very high speed while simultaneously speed-reading the text in front of you can prove quite beneficial.
Speed reading while listening your way through a book can also help you get through a less-interesting chapter or read when your schedule is crazy tight. Use it to hit your reading goals or show up to book club with the chapters already read.
It helps you avoid those embarrassing pronunciation faux pas
I don’t know about you, but I am all too familiar with the painful awkwardness of saying a word aloud that I’d only ever seen written in text (hello, respite) and managing to pronounce it wrong. Magnusen has seen this in action.
In her career, she found that kids sometimes “had no clue” what a word was when they first read it. “But if I said it out loud, they were like, ‘Oh, I know that word, I know what that means.’ So it helps a lot with vocabulary development.” I have to agree, and speaking from personal experience, it’s such a relief to both see a word and hear how it should be pronounced at the same time.
It’s a great way to learn a new language, or level up an existing one
As a Caribbean-born girl on an island that constantly code-switched between four languages, I think immersive reading is one of the best ways to learn a new language or improve your skills in one. It’s certainly helped me over the years.
Sarah Ellis, who teaches English as a foreign language (EFL) in Europe and Asia, says she learned about immersive reading “ages ago” when she was in training at university. It turns out some languages are easier to learn because the pronunciation has a clear pattern, but English? Not so much. “It depends on, for example, which word you want to stress, and that can change the meaning of a sentence: It was him. It was him. That kind of thing,” she says.
That’s where immersive reading really helps, because “when you’re listening and reading books, you can hear emotion,” Ellis says. “So you know if somebody’s angry, happy or sad.” Immersive reading can also help with comprehension and vocabulary, since “you hear it right and remember it, and it sticks in your head a little bit more,” she says.
Bailey, who previously taught English as a second language (ESL), confirmed that immersive reading is an excellent strategy for multilingual or ESL learners. It’s great for learning idioms, and “the fluency and expression of the reader helps support understanding, particularly when meanings are not literal,” Ellis says. “Finally, it’s great for building confidence and enjoyment!”
You get a deeper connection to the book
If you happen to get your hands on an audiobook that the author narrates, there’s an additional benefit: “It creates a deeper sense of connection with the author and, therefore, the text itself,” Bailey says.
I agree. There’s just something about reading along with what the authors themselves created, or hearing a cast member or team and production crew who have worked so hard to break down the language, the context, the feelings and the meaning for you—and are performing with so much heart.
Gilbert fell in love with audiobooks while studying theater, when she realized that “it was a beautiful combination of elements I loved: reading, literature, storytelling, musicality, acting and emotion.” With immersive reading, you might be alone doing your reading, but you are in such beautiful company.
Can immersive reading work for people who are neurodivergent?
Yes. As a member of the “neurospicy” club, I absolutely think that immersive reading can be a wonderful gift, no matter what kind of brain you live your life with.
“Not everyone can see pictures in their head and visualize scenes (something called aphantasia) or hear the voices of characters,” Magnusen says of the diverse body of students she’s taught over 40 years. “That audio part often really helps with that.” She herself doesn’t get strong visuals, “so hearing character voices from an audiobook as I read has made for a richer reading experience, because they feel like more well-rounded characters than I might have imagined in my head.”
Bailey says she first noticed immersive reading becoming more common in children’s literacy and education spaces around 2016, when the school she was teaching at adopted the Learning Ally app, which offers human-narrated audiobooks so students identified with disabilities can access in-class reading materials. This helped them participate in class discussions and comprehension activities.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, of course. My neurodivergent sister found immersive reading frustrating, since she was locked into the narrator’s pace, and hearing someone else read while reading along herself felt too loud, scratchy and painful in her brain. “There’s so much we don’t know about brains, and the older I get, the more I realize how different all our brains are,” Magnusen says. “Reading is so different for different people.”
How do you read immersively?
There’s not really a right or wrong way to read immersively, though you do need to buy or check out a book and also get the audio version in order to try it. It can be as basic as:
- Play an audiobook
- Read along with the print version
Here are a few more tips to get set up:
- The easiest option is to use Audible’s new Immersion Reading feature. As long as you already have both an audio and a Kindle version of the book, you can read and listen to them at the same time. (You do need both an Audible and Kindle account.)
- No Audible or Kindle? No problem! Besides buying from a local bookshop, you can also use your library card to check out an audiobook and a text-based version of the same book, in person or through the Libby app. Then you can easily read and play it from your device at the same time, no matter where you are.
- Check out children’s book publishers for immersive reading options. Penguin Random House, for example, has a library of YouTube videos featuring the book being read aloud as the pages are turned on screen.
- Struggling readers of any age can use the Learning Ally reading app. It has more than 80,000 e-books with audio, and setting up an account takes only a few minutes. You can opt to pay for a family membership, apply for a special-needs fee waiver or, if you’re a student, see if Learning Ally is already available through your local school.
- If you are having trouble finding both versions of a book you want to read at the library, you can find free audiobooks at Spotify and other places around the web.
So what was my immersive reading experience like?
In some ways, it feels like immersive reading was literally designed for someone like me, and I’ve been doing a version of it for years—even before it became today’s trend. Here’s what my experiences have looked like.
As a Millennial, the OG books-to-records predate me, but I had books on cassette. In the one-room library on my island homeland, I vividly recall zipper bags on hooks containing picture books with narrating cassette tapes. Even when I was home in bed sick, I remember feeling happy listening to an adaptation of Swiss Family Robinson as I read along in the accompanying book.
Later, while working in New York in the 2010s, I checked out all seven Harry Potter books and audiobooks from my local library, curled up in my cozy little nook on my second-floor enclosed balcony-turned-bedroom strung with multi-colored fairy lights and reread each book while listening to Jim Dale narrate them. I think this may have been my first time doing immersive reading as an adult, and I loved every second of it.
And during my Girlboss era in Washington, DC, recovering from my own ambitions and degree-driven “book burnout,” I set one goal for 2019: read a book per week. (Mission accomplished—and then some!) I achieved my goal with a combination of text-based reading, audio reading and what we now call immersive reading.
Even today, I still enjoy sitting down for an occasional immersive reading experience. Now that I’m learning another language and using an immersive reading approach daily to build a completely different vocabulary and grammatical world, I mostly stick to enjoying lighter audiobooks on their own. But on my next holiday, I’ll probably settle in for a cozy immersive reading experience with a novel or two in hand (and ear) again.
Is immersive reading actually worth it?
There is no question in my mind that immersive reading is worth trying. Whether you love it will depend on the type of reader you are, but for many it may open new avenues to enjoying reading again—especially for anyone facing burnout or dealing with capacity limits. “It is different from independent reading because you are reducing the cognitive load of decoding the words but still have the ability to think critically and comprehend,” Bailey says.
I think that’s really significant. When cracking a book open feels physically exhausting, or the words of the book just won’t register correctly in our mind’s eye, or the language itself seems to make the whole story inaccessible somehow, immersive reading works wonders. It gives me a way to still enjoy the weight of the pages, the feel of the paper and that classic book scent without feeling overwhelmed by having to do all the mental decoding work alone.
Immersive reading is such a unique experience. As long as you read the text yourself while hearing someone read it aloud to you, the story turns multi-sensory and unfolds wherever you are, right in your eye, washing in gentle sound waves around you.
How epic is that? Definitely enough to try at least once.
Audible Free Trial
About the experts
|
Why trust us
At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Erin Bailey, Ed.D., vice president of literacy programs and research at Reading Is Fundamental; email interview, May 20, 2026
- Lauren Magnusen, retired educator; phone interview, May 20, 2026
- Sarah Ellis, literature and academic English lecturer at CamEd Business School in Cambodia; in-person interview, May 19, 2026
- Tavia Gilbert, founder and CEO of Talkbox Productions; email interview, May 20, 2026
- Audible: “Audible Launches Immersion Reading for Deeper Engagement with Books”
- University of Michigan Dyslexia Help: “Audio Books vs. Reading”
- Medium: “Struggling Readers, Dyslexia and The Power of Immersion Reading Technology”
- Time: “Are Audiobooks As Good For You As Reading? Here’s What Experts Say”
- Harvard Gazette: “Audiobooks don’t really count as reading? Think again.”
- Cleveland Clinic: “Aphantasia”
- @klub.kaylah on Instagram
- When It Was Cool: “Online Entertainment-When It Was Cool: Part 1: Book and Record Sets”
The post Immersive Reading Is the Genius Hack That Helped Me Connect with Books on a Deeper Level appeared first on Reader's Digest.
from Reader's Digest https://ift.tt/wpCkHLK
Comments
Post a Comment