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When Briggitte Suastegui heard about Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey, she wanted to go back to its source material. She decided to start reading The Iliad first but had trouble getting through it. Suastegui's friend had a suggestion for her: Why not try the audiobook? "He was like, 'Well, you know the oral tradition of epic poems, right?'" Suastegui remembered. "'Originally these things were shared down and passed down orally.'" But Suastegui, 29, said she often lost her place while listening. So she took it a step further: She tried reading a physical copy of The Iliad and listening to the audiobook version at the same time.
"And that got me through the book," she said. "I was super engrossed in it." Suastegui, who lives in LA, had stumbled on immersive reading. The idea is as old as audiobooks themselves, according to The Washington Post. Several educators told NPR they use the strategy in their classrooms to support students with dyslexia and ADHD. But simultaneous listening and reading is picking up steam among online book communities. Searches for "immersive reading" on TikTok increased nearly 10 times between January and May of 2026, compared to the four months prior — and are up 13 times year over year, according to the company.
