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Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
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Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#62Listening to audiobooks is reading, end of story. Quit gatekeeping, free time to sit with a book & do nothing else concurrently is a huge luxury. FWIW, recently I've started listening to audiobooks of nonfiction books while also reading along with the physical copy. Sometimes I pause the audiobook to jot notes down in the margins. I listen at about 3x speed so this helps me go a LOT faster than I could read myself an…
Agreed. I notice daily fluctuation in my relative aptitudes for visually vs aurally ingesting media. On days when vision feels tough, I'll use osx screen reader at ~3x speed while looking at the document. Seeing the document helps me navigate, but I stumble when trying to parse sentences w/o the reader. Other days, I appreciate flitting around visually, parsing sentences nonlinearly and glancing back and ahead.
> I notice daily fluctuation in my relative aptitudes for visually vs aurally ingesting media.
Yes, same! I think ability to concentrate on written print & ability to concentrate on read-out-loud texts are pretty unrelated but both very trainable skills and you slowly lose acuity in each as you don't use the skills. If I'm reading an ebook for the first time in a while, my attention span is abysmal, and same with audiobooks.
When I first started listening to audiobooks the only way I could pay attention was if I was also doing something visual at the same time (jigsaw puzzles usually) and my mind wandered constantly. I thought audiobooks just weren't for me, but after months of listening now I can stare into space for several hours straight, completely immersed in the book.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#63I appreciate how the author brought up scripta continua as a response to those who dismiss listening to audiobooks as not reading. If you're not struggling to parse out the words like the ancient greeks and romans did, are you really doing all the work that could be done and getting the full experience?
I "read" a lot of non-fiction via audiobooks. Sure, it's not the same thing as visually parsing a line of poetry and figuring out how to say it, and then how to say it again with a totally different meaning. That's not the point of most non-fiction. You're learning about stuff. You are being informed. To "listen" to an entire book on a subject you're interested in, to learn many things about it, and then claim you "haven't read the book" is nonsense.
I would agree that, sometimes, you can tune boring passages out, but you can do that when reading a dead-tree book too. How many students have stayed up late, reading their course textbooks only to re-read the same page again and again because their mind is past its ability to absorb? Just as realizing you've tuned out and turning back a couple pages is a thing with books, so too is hitting the rewind button with an audiobook. Just as sometimes you have to put a dead-tree book down and think for a moment, so to does it pay dividends to hit pause on your audiobook.
I'd argue that there's a bigger difference between being an active vs passive listener/reader than there is between listening and reading.
The one thing I would concede is that there is some information audio just isn't up to conveying. Any book that is heavy on pictures, diagrams, or equations is not going to be possible to convey via pure audio.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#64Listening to audiobooks is reading, end of story. Quit gatekeeping, free time to sit with a book & do nothing else concurrently is a huge luxury. FWIW, recently I've started listening to audiobooks of nonfiction books while also reading along with the physical copy. Sometimes I pause the audiobook to jot notes down in the margins. I listen at about 3x speed so this helps me go a LOT faster than I could read myself an…
I’ll gate keep a step further. Only writing the book counts. Everyone reading is only getting a fraction of the value. /s
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#65Shakespeare on tape really rocked my world. I read the texts only here and there, seen the plays, but hearing them, a multiple times each, is amazing and lets you really get why the Bard is the best, and really get the rhythm and rich poetry of the language, and the wisdom. Probably seeing the plays multiple times would amount to the same or better but isn’t as practical. Also, you get a healthy dose of director mixed in.
Other books on tape also fine. Some better than others depending on the person who is reading them. Some are amazingly good. But for the most part, to really grok a boom on tape (or other medium), you have to listen multiple times. Reading is often better quicker. But like I said, shakes on tape is amazing.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#66This article is long, is there an audiobook version?
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#67Listening to audiobooks is reading, end of story. Quit gatekeeping, free time to sit with a book & do nothing else concurrently is a huge luxury. FWIW, recently I've started listening to audiobooks of nonfiction books while also reading along with the physical copy. Sometimes I pause the audiobook to jot notes down in the margins. I listen at about 3x speed so this helps me go a LOT faster than I could read myself an…
I’ll gate keep a step further. Only writing the book counts. Everyone reading is only getting a fraction of the value. /s
Yep, this is basically what the "you wouldn't call watching somebody play a game playing" argument, which was mentioned in the article, boils down to.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#68Reading or listening isn't a very important distinction outside of personal preference, with the exception of illustrative figures and diagrams which just don't come across that well on audio.
What really matters is whether or not one absorbs the material. Inattentive reading is perhaps less likely than inattentive listening, and it's easier to reread a difficult paragraph visually instead of stopping the audio player, going back and finding the beginning of the relevant section, and listening to it again.
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#69Conversely, does it even count if you merely read Shakespeare, rather than experiencing a performance, as intended?
As long as you enjoyed the work, I would say yes. While it's true that live performances give you the acting, set design, and costume design for the work, a close examination of the writing helps with appreciating the wordplay and usage of language more—as some of the elegance might be missed with seeing a performance just once (though you could pick up more if you see multiple performances of the same script).
Re: Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?
#70This article is long, is there an audiobook version?
Major newspapers and magazines have actually seriously considered this question, and put the money in for solving this. Some publications such as The Washington Post have added AI-generated readings to their articles, but I've personally found the readings slightly too unnatural (though they are fairly close to a human narrator) to read for longer articles. However, this might improve in the near future.
Other publications (such as The New Yorker) hire human narrators to read a selection of their articles. I appreciate this as the narration helped me enjoy certain lengthier articles that I would've skipped on reading otherwise. The Economist in particular repeatedly mentions that a small but significant portion of its subscriber base primarily listens to instead of reads their articles [1].
[1] https://niemanreports.org/articles/audio-articles-are-helpin...