so I'm a couple comments up; I do think that audiobooks can be better for some things... but even when the recording is so good you might be able to call it be

so I'm a couple comments up; I do think that audiobooks can be better for some things... but even when the recording is so good you might be able to call it better than the book, it's just... a really different experience from reading a book. As to early literature, I just got done reading Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey. she goes into that a little in the introduction, about the difference between something you recite and something you read, and about how the odyssey is sort of in-between those two things; clearly it wasn't just homer taking dictation, but it also clearly does contain some artifacts unique to an oral storytelling tradition.