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Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
11–20 of 92 posts
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#12Depends on the type of book. Airport thrillers, supermarket romance novels, pulp horror, Agatha Christie mysteries, and so on along such lines -- these don't really require any reader participation. They're the print equivalent of film and TV; they pull you along a narrative, and you're a passenger for the duration. These sorts of books work very well as audiobooks. Anything that requires thought or reflection -- and…
I treat technical audiobooks as pre-recorded lectures. I put them on and sit with a piece of paper and a pencil and take notes.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#13Depends on the type of book. Airport thrillers, supermarket romance novels, pulp horror, Agatha Christie mysteries, and so on along such lines -- these don't really require any reader participation. They're the print equivalent of film and TV; they pull you along a narrative, and you're a passenger for the duration. These sorts of books work very well as audiobooks. Anything that requires thought or reflection -- and…
A very long time ago I used a cassettes by mail rental service for my commute. It was great for fiction--especially shorter more easily digestible fiction. It really wasn't good for military history or anything that really benefited from maps or other graphics. As I recall, I mostly just defaulted to fiction after a few attempts.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#14Treating all audiobooks equally is a mistake. Audio books are a transformation function applied to physical books. Asking whether they count as books is asking the wrong question. The more important question is: "what am I trying to get out of reading this book? And will an audiobook help me to do this better?" The answer to this question will be unique to every person and every book. I read quite a few books for the…
It's for a similar reason that I find eReaders to be so disappointing. I have no interest in color or other aesthetic innovations, but I'm very interested in speed. I feel they have yet to reach some threshold such that I can confidently navigate backwards and forwards any number of pages at a time without losing focus.
I'm they're current implementation none of them come close to physical books for that, but I feel like they could if that were the goal.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#15Depends on the type of book. Airport thrillers, supermarket romance novels, pulp horror, Agatha Christie mysteries, and so on along such lines -- these don't really require any reader participation. They're the print equivalent of film and TV; they pull you along a narrative, and you're a passenger for the duration. These sorts of books work very well as audiobooks. Anything that requires thought or reflection -- and…
I treat technical audiobooks as pre-recorded lectures. I put them on and sit with a piece of paper and a pencil and take notes.
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Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#16> In terms of dollars, ebooks represent less than 7 percent of the entire U.S. book trade. This is surprising to me given the quality of e-readers out there now. The experience is quite nice, and you don't end up taking up a bunch of space or making a mess with physical books lying around.
Ebooks aren't good for everything--especially on a smaller format eink reader. But I still find it a bit surprising, and I'm sure this is true of others as well, that ebooks didn't become more dominant--especially for fiction.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#17Sidenote: Book publishers seem to refuse to embrace digital. I just love going to my local library to "rent" a digital book on my Kindle only to be told that there's no availabile "copies" Is love to read more on Kindle or other book readers if there was an actual good platform that was embraced by both national and international authors. Same with audio books for that matter. It's even worse than streaming somehow
Whenever I've looked at my library's digital offerings, I've been pretty underwhelmed. Still, I buy most of my books in digital form.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#18I can’t listen to fiction as audiobooks. I get very easily distracted in my own thoughts and, in most of fiction, if you miss anything you miss everything. While reading, that one line saying which character entered the room is enough context to understand the dialog of the next few pages. On audiobook, it’s very easy, for me, to miss that line. So I am all the time thinking of something else, miss those lines, and realize I am completely lost. If I were to listen a fiction audiobook I would have to rewind 15 or 30 seconds every two or three minutes of book.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, but interviews, journalistic storytelling, humor. Those are either very redundant, a lot of the context is being reminded in a conversation, or it’s just doesn’t matter all that much if you listen to every single thing is said in the podcast.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#19Depends on the type of book. Airport thrillers, supermarket romance novels, pulp horror, Agatha Christie mysteries, and so on along such lines -- these don't really require any reader participation. They're the print equivalent of film and TV; they pull you along a narrative, and you're a passenger for the duration. These sorts of books work very well as audiobooks. Anything that requires thought or reflection -- and…
One example that I enjoyed listening was The Count ot Mount Cristo. The story is long, it boring a lot of times, but a good narrator with good French pronunciation makes it more enjoyable. And being able to phase out during the boring parts is a good feature.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#20Treating all audiobooks equally is a mistake. Audio books are a transformation function applied to physical books. Asking whether they count as books is asking the wrong question. The more important question is: "what am I trying to get out of reading this book? And will an audiobook help me to do this better?" The answer to this question will be unique to every person and every book. I read quite a few books for the…
I tried podcasts and the majority of them are not different from tv shows or news cast, maybe not raw entertainment but it's in that bag. Sometimes you end up with someone presenting a new idea just right, but it's not common.
I find that the podcasts I listen to reveal a strikingly different thing when people can talk for 1-3 hours about something. It’s between what we were used to on television and a book. But as a dialogue.
Less true for Joe Rogan but more true for Rich Roll.