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We can't get enough of audiobooks
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ghevshoo 7y agoBlinkist sounds interesting, even if it feels more like cheating than regular audio books. I already feel a bit guilty saying I read book X, when I really listened to it. Their website doesn’t explain much and the reviews are vague as usual. Does anyone have a personal reference for it, or know how it works? Is it real people reading or a computer voice? I presume the shortened texts are using something like https://smmry.com/ https://smmry.com/
- shadeless 7y agoI have been using Blinkist on a daily basis for the past few months. I'm pretty satisfied with the subscription as it's a great time-saver, in 15mins I either find out that: - the book is not worth spending hours of actual reading - I enjoy the summary and it makes me want to read the whole book - or I like the summary, copy the highlights into personal notes, and carry on Real people are both reading and summarizing the books, so it's much higher quality than the automatic shorteners.
- ganesh7 7y agoThat. And even without trendy 'blinkist' I used to take a similar approach by first reading some prepatory materials before investing time to read the book. Listening to an audiobook is just another way for me to complement but no replacement. I would not say this is fool proof. You will never be able to get the "key takeaways" of every book by reading some summary. Sometimes the key takeway might be the way a book is written, how something is repeated while other things are left out that are most valuable. Likewise quotes that once meant nothing to you, you will only understand after studying material by the other in depth, etc. just some thoughts.
- itsrajju 7y agoExactly. Whenever I want to start another book, I look for it in Blinkist and read a summary if available. Many a times reading a summary ahead of time whets my appetite when I actually read the book.
- helloindia 7y agoMy company gives us free subscription to GetAbstract.com, on which you get summary of books(the app has audio feature, narrated by real person).
- msluyter 7y agoI signed up for the free trial last week. To answer your questions... a) Is it real people/computer voice? It's real people (seems like pretty good speakers thus far.) b) The shortened texts are well written. They don't appear to be computer generated. I'm still not sure I'll get a paid subscription. I find it a good way to ingest certain types of information -- psychology & personal development books always seem bloated with case stores like "When Bob first visited my office he seemed anxious and depressed...." that I'm generally impatient with (just get to the point!). But after listening to several in a row, my mind starts to wander. Not sure why. And in some cases, I find the resulting summarizations vacuous. I don't know whether that's because the underlying material was equally vacuous or whether something was lost in translation. (Obligatory reference to Monty Python's Summarize Proust Competition: http://www.montypython.net/scripts/proust.php http://www.montypython.net/scripts/proust.php)
- Simulacra 7y agoI am hopelessly addicted to audiobooks. I’m much too hyper active an attention deficit to read these days, Unmedicated by the way, seems like an interesting idea worth pursuing
- hi5eyes 7y agographic audio presents the stormlight archives greatest listening experience.ever. epic fantasy on another level
- abryzak 7y agoIf you enjoy the Stormlight Archives I would also highly recommend the Lightbringer series of books by Brent Weeks. I won't spoil anything besides saying that the series has a number of really memorable plot twists and a very interesting magic system. Simon Vance does a fantastic job narrating the audiobooks and I'm eagerly anticipating the fifth and final book of the series which is due for release in October.
- durnygbur 7y agoNot only audiobooks. Do you have „radio theatre”? In my country we have it - it’s an awesome form.
- simcop2387 7y agoIt's one thing that I love to get a hold of from the BBC, things like the HHGTTG radio play and others are just fantastic. I'm not fully aware of a lot of others but there's some podcasts like Welcome to Nightvale and the other productions that the group does that are also wonderful. I think that's where a lot of those kinds of things have ended up because it can reach a much larger audience and is easier to fund because of that (from ads and from sales and donations depending on how they do it).
- durnygbur 7y agoIn Poland there is a special division of the public radio (Teatr Polskiego Radia) producing the auditions. Hard to find a weak or uninteresting production. Unfortunately not many new are appearing recently. Some commercial radios tried to copy the form and produce something similar but it was nowhere near the artistic and quality level of PR’s (ended up with something loud and vulgar).
- DanBC 7y agoBBC Sounds has a load. It's hard to sort out the "full cast audio" from the other audiobooks with a single reader. Here's Terry Pratchett's "Good Omens": https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04knthd https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04knthd Here's a list ordered by date: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/categories/drama?sort=-available_from_date https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/categories/drama?sort=-availabl... I don't know if these are geo-blocked.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kd5bjo 7y agoThere’s lots of recordings around from decades ago, but not much is produced for broadcast now. Sometimes, you find a “full cast” audiobook, where every character has a different reader; That was my first introduction to both Dune and Game of Thrones
- reallydontask 7y agoAudiobook paired with a good set of noise cancelling headphones on an early train is as good as a commute gets. Your 20 second trip to the (home) office is not a commute. I do those too sometimes :)
- copperx 7y agoHow do you deal with the excruciating slow speed of audiobooks? Even on 2x speed I feel I can do twice as fast by reading with my eyes and get better retention. Anything faster that 2x makes the speech unintelligible, but reading fast feels like things get more coherent.
- angel_j 7y agountested hypothesis: binaural speech, overlap spoken words in time, but space them out over both ears
- xyzzyz 7y agoJust don't rush it, and enjoy the experience. You won't be able to read every book in existence anyway.
- luag 7y agoI personally just learn to enjoy it. Listening at 1.3x max.
- chrisseaton 7y agoWhy are you in such a rush? Relax and enjoy the experience. Would you go to an opera or play and then ask them to rattle through it as quickly as possible so you can get out again?
- zxcb1 7y agoThe trend reminds me of McLuhans literate and tribal man https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan/ https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-mar...
- olodus 7y agoSince they mention education but only seem to have mostly bad things to say about audiobooks in that context (unless I missed something, I skimmed that part) I would like to add how this has changed dyslexics relationship with education and with books in general. My brother is dyslexic and before I think he never read a book ever. This year he got a audio book he wanted as a Christmas gift and he was super happy. That the library of Audio books is expanding is a great thing. I do however agree with the article that the prevelent use of closed formats could be very bad in the long run though. I do think audible is a good deal but I don't like that they use closed formats. There are however still libraries and the increase in audio books can luckily be seen in their available stock as well.
- ddebernardy 7y agoWhat surprises me with respect to dyslexia is how poor accessibility options are in modern operating systems. If I understood the research correctly, dyslexia researchers get material improvements in reading speed when they increase the amount of space between words and lines. The gist of the explanation given was that dyslexics basically struggle to separate out the word they're trying to focus on from the surrounding wall of text. Put another way, while this is fine for normal readers: quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Changing it to this makes it easier to read by dyslexic readers: quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Perhaps OS designers aren't unaware of it (hint hint if you work on an OS); or perhaps the research isn't as conclusive as I recollect. If the former, it seems like a no brainer to throw in an accessibility option to enable this OS-wide.
- wrnr 7y agoI use the build in speech synthesizer on my mac to listen to most long form articles even shorter texts like hn comments. There are the options to configure a keyboard shortcut to read the highlighted text and increase the reading speed. I've also installed a program to switch languages from the command line.
- tylergetsay 7y agoThere is https://www.beelinereader.com/ https://www.beelinereader.com/ (unaffiliated, but am a a fan).
- Causality1 7y agoMany people decide they don't like audiobooks because they don't approach them correctly. For example, pair your audio with your expectations of how you'll listen. If you intend to listen while doing a cognitive task like working or driving in dense traffic, leaping headlong into a brand-new series is likely to make you lose track because you can't keep your focus on the words 100% of the time. For those scenarios sticking with a lighthearted podcast or a book you've read/listened to before is best, and save the new stuff for mowing the lawn or riding public transportation. If you have a hard time getting through the beginning of some audiobooks as I have, I've found it useful to "prime the pump" by reading the first few chapters of a book and then switching to the audio version once I'm familiar with the names and setting.
- Krasnol 7y agoExactly. I use audiobooks mostly on tedious tasks daily. Like washing dishes, feeding the washing machine, dryer, ironing, etc. Often I tend to bundle those tasks together for a longer listening experience. Other then that it's great for commute on trains, planes, taxis, or bike or if you go somewhere where waiting is expected. It takes some time to get into though. I have struggled with it in the beginning so I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a big deal if I miss something. Now it became almost the only way I consume books for entertainment.
- itsrajju 7y agoI moved on to audiobooks from podcasts. I had a hard time developing a podcast habit (mostly around comprehension), but once I got a hang of it and started enjoying the experience, audiobooks were a logical next step.
- kd5bjo 7y ago>I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a big deal if I miss something. This is where I’m at in learning a second language. The audiobook will keep marching onwards, so I won’t get road blocked by things I don’t know yet. Because I already know the story, it’s never longer than a minute or so before I manage to catch the plot thread again. It’s also been helpful to read along with the printed book as the audiobook is running.
- mlang23 7y agoI read a lot of audiobooks on YouTube recently. Fascinating how a service so public can be so full of copyright violations. I guess I know now why upload filters are the new big thing.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoThough, sheepishly, trying to listen to audiobooks on Youtube is why I ended up paying for Youtube at one point: so I could turn my phone screen off while listening. Maybe Youtube knows this. ;)
- mlang23 7y agoYes, listeing to stuff while screen is locked seems to be one of the motivations for teople to pay for a youtube subscription (apart from getting rid of Ads of course). As a VoiceOver user, I dont care so much. Tripple-tapping with three fingers will turn the screen off/on (screen curtain). This at least saves a bit of battery. Interestingly, ads dont really bother me as most audiobook providers haven't enabled ads anyway. You can easily listen to 10 hours of pratchett or dick without a single second of advertisment on yt. If ads are enabled, they can lead to pretty hilarious situations. When I was listening to an audiobook of GoT on YT recently, it contained quite a bit of ads. Funnily, one of the ads regularily heard was an audible ad. And the book was clearly stolen from audible. So in the end, YT was passing money from audible to the ebook thiefs. How ironic. Oh yeah, but hacking videos are apparently illegal now on YT. Go figure. Looks to me like yt is creating its own pretty arbitrary law.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y agoFor me audiobooks are a way more relaxing alternative to podcasts in that they strip away the need to choose what to listen to for several times as long and, usually, once I'm in the mood to listen to one I can stay in that mood for a long time. Listening to Robert Caro's gigantic history books a couple of years ago war an extremely pleasant experience. Literally a month or two of no podcasts at all and just this pair of extremely deep well written biographies.
- icebraining 7y agoI just listen to podcasts in the order they get published. Alternatively, you can pick a podcast that started long ago, and just binge on the archive - Mike Duncan's work alone is enough to fill probably three or four months. That said, I listened to the Power Broker, and fully recommend it.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y agobut a podcast has a flow that makes you inherently aware of how much time is passing unless it has absurdly long and flexible runtimes (and I do listen to some 4+ hour podcasts weekly). Something like 99% Invisible is amazing but the condensed 15 minute episodes and you constantly listening to a loop of intros and closers can wear after a while. iirc the History of Rome was really good at keeping the intros, exits, sponsored content and all that stuff as minimal as possible though, I definitely binged it but even then the fact that it was originally presented in these 15 minute chunks made it kind of exhausting at points. You need to get onto the LBJ ones! Not quite as good but it's pretty damn good.
- oo0shiny 7y agoCertain podcast apps (I use Pocket Casts) will let you start a podcast at a certain timestamp. I've found that really helpful to skip the intros of the podcasts I listen to regularly.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoI highly recommend binging the back catalog of Hardcore History[1] if you haven't already. Yes, you have to pay for the older episodes, but it's a tremendous amount of really great content. My favorite individual episode is "Prophets of Doom": https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophets-of-doom/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophe... [1] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-compilation-episodes-1-49/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-compilati...
- kilroy123 7y agoI feel like I'm the only one who doesn't like audio books. I also feel it's faster to just read a real book, and I retain a lot more information when I read.
- Ronsenshi 7y agoYou're not the only one. I don't dislike audio books, but compared to text it's just not as immersive. When reading a a good text book I get transported into it. I visualize whatever author wrote and eventually it's not even reading - it's more like a flow of information. With audio books I don't get that - which is OK for some types of books, but definitely not something I'd pick for fiction.
- arethuza 7y agoI listen to audiobooks a lot and I generally love them but sometimes I do miss the ability to easily skip back and re-listen to a particular short section again - yes you can skip back a fixed amount easily but that takes you to a random point in the text. Local, sentence/paragraph level, navigation in audiobooks is really bad.
- ccozan 7y ago"Stop Listening" "Stopped" "Go back to where Lisa enters the cave" "Rewinding" "....."
- arethuza 7y agoWhich sounds great apart from the fact I have an accent that makes voice control work about 50% of the time, so any attempt by me to use it rapidly descends into a comedy scene with me doing a Malcolm Tucker impersonation.
- stordoff 7y agoYou may enjoy this sketch from Burnistoun, a Scottish TV programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
- raehik 7y agoI love audiobooks (and anything media that comes with audio too) for learning languages. Inflection and hearing what's written is hugely beneficial to understanding, and it's much more memorable for me.
- ibudiallo 7y agoI recently started recording some articles I wrote as audio. For the few I have tested, it made a significant difference. Some readers went out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed the audio version. Most people get distracted too quickly to finish reading an article. But with audio, the story becomes the distraction that keeps them listening to the end.
- ccozan 7y agoThat is a very interesting observation. It seems that some neural pathways are way shorter over audio ( i guess because we have perfect hearing from birth , unlike vision ), so that the "effort" to read, comprehend and store !text! information is much less. I guess that's the reason we still have classes in schools. Orally teaching is very very old.
- philipkiely 7y agoOn my blog, I auto-generate a narrated version of each article using Amazon Polly. It doesn't sound nearly as good as listening to a person talk (the computerized voice is of about the same quality as Siri or Alexa) but I think its a good middle ground between doing nothing and the investment of time and equipment needed to record and edit my own narrations.
- petercooper 7y agoI would also prefer to hear your tone of voice because it will tell me a lot that your writing can't. For example, if you're saying something slightly contentious (as is common in tech nowadays!) I would be able to tell if you're joking, trying to provoke me, or are playing devil's advocate solely by your tone and the framing.. whereas in the written form, it could be hard to tell.
- tus88 7y agoI am really surprised at how popular they are. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but when I want to read, I read. Listening to someone else read a book....doesn't feel right to me.
- rorykoehler 7y agoReading is tiring. I spend all day looking at text at work. Audio books are an escape from that. They free me to do something else too. I use them in the following scenarios: strapped into the decompression machine at the chiro, stretching at home and winding down for bed with the lights off to stimulate melatonin. I couldn't read a book in any of those situations and they cover 100% of my book consumption. I didn't read books at all before audio books (at least not since I was a child, except for studying purposes). I agree that a good narrator makes a huge difference.
- Ensorceled 7y agoI have two books on the go, one paper beside my bedstand and one on audible. I listen in the car, while running, while cooking, etc. I read when I have time to sit down and read or before bed.
- alltakendamned 7y agoAudiobooks just don't work for me, I would continuously zone out. I'm curious if people listening to them a lot simply have the same thing going but accept it, or if they are able to maintain focus on the spoken words better ? Another issue I have with them is that I can't quite skim to a paragraph of interest.
- dabbledash 7y agoThis was a huge issue for me at first, but I seem to have naturally gotten better with practice. But I still have to stop listening semi-regularly when I realize my environment has become too distracting and I’m losing focus. Early on I did more light non-fiction and self-helpy things because I didn’t mind as much if I missed a line or two.
- Ensorceled 7y agoTry cranking up the replay speed. I usually listen at 1.5x - 2x. Every now and then I'll hit a great book with a good narrator and slow down to listen. A recent favourite was The Calculating Stars written and narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal, a former puppeteer and long-time podcaster. Her performance was enthralling and fast-paced, so I listed at 1.0x.
- gupe 7y agoI do the same, and listen to most audio books or podcasts at at least 1.33x (this four-thirds factor reduces the listening time by a quarter). A contributing element to determining what speed factor is suitable is what I think of as "information density" in the writing style. With content that requires more digestion, such as The Economist (particularly their more technical articles), I do best processing their excellent audio edition at a simple 1.0x.
- Ensorceled 7y agoExactly, this is a good point! There are two factors, the baseline speed of the narrator and the complexity of the topic. Years ago, I attended a Pragmatic Marketing course and the speaker started off by saying he spoke really fast but once you got used to it, you would never be bored or find your mind wandering. I remember that to this day and when I'm speaking in public, I try to keep my pace up. The problem is that the speed up "breaks" you. Once I started listening to podcasts at higher speeds, I stopped being able to listen to slower-paced podcasts at 1.0x without losing focus.
- Ensorceled 7y agoI've been reading for more than 50 years and listening to audiobooks for the last 30 or so. I find I get different things out of the two formats. When I listened to Lord of the Rings (by the excellent Rob Inglis), there were all sorts of turns of phrase and whole sections that I didn't remember from my previous readings (multiple). But this article is spot on for me, I can't listen to audio books where I'm trying to learn something while doing anything other than driving. Some non-fiction is also simply too dense to effectively learn from while listening, I want to stop and reflect, re-read and make notes. I started listening to "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" on Audible and quickly abandoned it for the hard back. My dead tree copy has numerous notes and a few dozen stickies as bookmarks.
- agotterer 7y agoSince the beginning of this year I’ve listened to 9 audio books. That is 9 more books then I read in the past 5 years. I like the idea of reading but prioritizing time for it meant that it took months to complete a book, if I completed it at all. Now I listen while I walk to work, do the dishes, drive, etc.
- drainyard 7y agoI know how you feel! I listened to "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep" in less than a week and finished "Game of Thrones" in 3 weeks because of audio books. Before that I could barely finish a short book in a month, and a large one like "Game of Thrones" would take me most of a year to be honest.
- Pandabob 7y agoI've been a fairly heavy user of Audible until this spring when I started to go back to regular, physical books. If you're reading books with lot's of graphs or pictures in them, the Audible experience is kind of subpar. Also, the experience of "browsing" audiobooks is kind of clunky and there's effectively no way to search the book. I will say that the audio version of The Economist is pretty great. If an article has pictures or graphs in them, I can just open the article from the app and listen to it simultaneously. I hope more magazines/newspapers would add similar functionality to their offering.
- DanTheManPR 7y agoI'm always reading/listening to two books at once, one audio-book, and one in a visual format. A lot of technical or older books aren't available in any electronic or audio format, and so I want to always be in the habit of reading visually so that I can accommodate those.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoI'm not usually an 'audiobook' guy, but, currently listening to How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, which is read by him. He's an excellent speaker/reader and it's nice to hear him read it exactly how he meant it to be read.
- damontal 7y agoOne problem I have with audible is that because I'm paying around $15/month I feel the need to use my credits on books that cost more than this. So I miss out on shorter books, plays, etc I'd like to read. I have a bunch of books in my wishlist that are around $9 and I won't burn a credit on them. I guess that's part of their business model... get you to spend money in addition to your subscription.
- kss238 7y agoI wish someone would make a netflix for audiobooks. I'm guessing licensing is an issue.
- inanutshellus 7y agoDepending on where you are, this may be freely available to you right now through your local library. Talk to your local library about whether they're on Overdrive / Libby. If so, you can listen to unlimited audiobooks, ebooks, magazines, and comic books 24/7. It's fantastic. It's free. Yay public libraries.
- pahool 7y agoAlso, keep in mind that, depending on where you live, you may be able to carry cards for multiple libraries. In California, for instance, many major public libraries only require state residency. So, while traveling within the state, pick up library cards for as many libraries as you can. When I was living in California, I had library cards for Los Angeles County, Los Angeles City, Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland, and I could use the e-resources of any of these libraries. Additionally, there is a plugin for Firefox called "Available Reads" that allows you to enter your Overdrive account information for your various library cards. Then, when browsing goodreads, the plugin will show you the Overdrive availability of the books you are browsing at all of the libraries at which you are a member, and provide links out to the catalog entry for those libraries' copies of the ebooks/e-audiobooks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- theseadroid 7y agoAn anecdote from me: Before I discovered audiobooks I rarely read non technical books, especially fictions. I just couldn't find enough time to finish books at a satisfactory pace. What's more, I couldn't enjoy many types of exercises and because of that I just didn't exercise enough. I find the activity of doing those types of exercises by themselves or even with music is too low in information density, that I just became bored after a while. Now with audiobooks I read many non technical books while I do those types of exercises I couldn't enjoy before. If a book is not great I dont find it a waste of time. The combination of audiobooks and exercising is the right amount of information density for me to enjoy the moment. The result? I exercise much much more now. Also I started to use the local library for audiobooks. Comparing to the effort of borrowing paper books or device restriction of borrowing ebooks, borrowing audiobooks is just a much better overall experience.
- overthemoon 7y agoIf I may, what kind of exercises paired well with audiobooks? I need a routine, any kind of routine, but like you I find a lot of exercising dull.
- theseadroid 7y agoMy routine with audiobooks: Cardio: stationary bike, jumping rope, stair climbing. Body weight: some for abs some for lower back. I learned and picked a few from the youtube channel Athlean X. I personally feel we need those exercises to combat the long hours we sit everyday. And stretching! It was so boring before audiobooks I never stretch, now I stretch before and after. Feel free to experiment to find your own optimal routine, since we have different schedules and access to equipments. I guess the idea is with audiobooks experimenting can be fun too. Even cleaning the house is fun now with audiobooks :D
- jm547ster 7y agoMention of AthleanX and no mention of face pulls. I think aside the low back and ab exercises you mention it’s the single best antidote to the rounded-shoulders computer posture. He recommends them after ever single workout and from doing this the last couple of months has done wonders from my experience.
- ivan_ah 7y agoDid y'all know macOS has a built-in text-to-speech system that is pretty decent? Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech and set a keyboard shortcut, then you can turn any piece of text into an audio book by simply selecting it and pressing the text-to-speech keyboard shortcut. You'll need to set the Speaking Rate pretty high for this to be useful. It works great for news, blog posts, HN discussions, and amazingly powerful proofreading tool for writers. More info with screenshots here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...
- vel0city 7y agoThe Mac line has had text to speech functionality since the very beginning, even being somewhat showcased at the first reveal of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs. https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208 https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208 Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since 1984.
- ivan_ah 7y ago> Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since 1984. Exactly. I've tries a number of text-to-speech options before and found the voicing to be almost unusable, but the Alex voice in macOS (at least since 10.5) is pretty good. It even does the right context-dependent thing for polysemy cases, e.g. "I live in the mountains" vs. "I went to a live concert".
- catacombs 7y agoWhile this seems like a good idea, you lose the varying character voices some narrators put into their readings, which helps with immersion.
- dingus 7y agoThere's also a terminal incantation to input a text file and output a multi-hour long sound file of the entire document processed with text-to-speech. It's about what you'd expect it to sound like... almost unbearable. But maybe the updated Siri voices are better, I haven't tried it for a few years.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoThey have to be done the right way. There’s a known talk radio show host who also writes books. I tried one of his audio books and it was not read by him, but by someone else. I couldn’t continue with it and got the print version.
- AlchemistCamp 7y agoListening to books is just too slow. For the right kind of book with a slower narrator, I might be able to listen at 2x or 2.5x and still understand it. But why not just devote my full attention, read it at 8x and probably have better recollection than from passive listening? Other books require more work and I probably read at 1x speed with frequent pauses and re-readings. I'd never understand those if they were audio. The one time I might go for an audio book is when outside exercising or commuting, but that's when I listen to music or podcasts.
- KUcxrAVrtI 7y agoHave a try to synthetic speech books, I use espeak to create my audiobooks at 1000wpm for non-technical books.
- mistercow 7y ago> Since the 1980s, cognitive psychology has consistently established that recall is indeed better after reading (printed) text instead of listening to it, a conclusion bolstered by a 2010 study (David B Daniel and William Douglas Woody), which found that students did worse on a test if they had listened to a podcast of a scientific article on child cognition rather than reading it. I wonder if any of these studies allowed the subjects to rewind. I skip back constantly when listening to audiobooks, because I zone out or get distracted. If you were to study my comprehension while taking away that feature, I'm sure I'd score lower than reading with my eyes. Conversely, if you had me read with one of those apps that shows you one word at a time, and didn't let me rewind, I'm sure I would score lower on that than on audio.
- suzzer99 7y agoSame here. The 30 second rewind is key. My 1-hour commute each way is mostly sitting in slow or stop & go traffic on the same freeway. So 95% of my brain is available for comprehension. And I can always rewind if I get distracted by actual driving. I can honestly say that audiobooks on my commute have changed my life. For whatever reason I just can't find a comfortable enough spot to read an actual book for more than 30 minutes at a time - and even that feels like a chore. It bothered me for 2 decades that I didn't read enough. Now I get 2 hours a day where I am transported into another headspace, inspired, engaged. I actually look forward to my commute. The only downside is when I come down off Mt. Everest and show up at work - my motivation to do my job is pretty low. :)
- ajairaj 7y agoFor me audio books are great when I listen to a book which I have read long time ago. This way I can revise my favorite books, and I wont worry if I miss some sentences.
- djohnston 7y agoI didn't start using audiobooks until this year, but they've markedly improved my ability to fall asleep quickly. It used to take at least an hour, and now I'm usually out within 30. Except when I get to the climax :p
- BooneJS 7y agoI started buying audiobooks during my time in the Bay Area with round trip daily commutes of 2.5 hours. Now I’m in a car for just over 3 hours a week and I’d rather lounge around with my e-ink Kindle.
- malhotra_chetan 7y agoTotally relatable. Plus somehow I have noticed that I work out for more time while listening to audiobooks when compared to working out with blasting music. I use this service called auditus.cc to convert all my epubs. And the fun thing is the reading voices available are pretty varied so if I start getting bored from one voice, I make sure I use another one next time.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI was very disappointed to see this article complain about Audible DRM without mentioning the variety of DRM-Free audiobook providers. • downpour.com • libro.fm • audiobooksnow.com (The last of these has a handful of DRM'd books, so you need to check the listing first, but the vast majority are DRM-free.) While none of these retailers have as large a library as Audible, their offerings are more than decent, particularly if you don't mind hopping between sites sometimes. This isn't vodo.net, or even gog.com. Note that like Audible, Downpour and Libro.fm have subscription plans, which are all-but required if you want books at a reasonable price. Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and quickly unsubscribing. I know that Audible DRM is currently easy to remove, and that's great, but we should support the true DRM-Free providers where we can, or they might disappear. And if that happens, who knows what Audible will do. –––––––––– Honorable mentions: • audiobookstore.com sells DRM Free audiobooks, but they always seem to cost much more than on other sites, even with a subscription plan. I've also never found a book that was available here but not on one of the cheaper DRM-Free stores. • Graphicaudio.net offers DRM Free downloads if you don't mind paying a couple dollars extra per title. But these are very much not normal audiobooks.
- pixelperfect 7y ago> Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and quickly unsubscribing. You can do this on Audible without problems. I have an Audible library of 15 books that I accumulated over a few years through various promotions, never paying more than 33% the normal cost of a subscription.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI have a few issues with how Audible subscriptions work: • The cancellation process requires many more clicks. If your process is to subscribe → buy → cancel each time, this gets very annoying. • You can't buy additional credits without outright changing your overall subscription plan. • If you cancel your plan, you immediately forfeit any unused credits.
- 7y ago
- timwaagh 7y agoi personally dont like them very much as they tend to force the pace and you might miss quite a bit. im a slow reader who tends to process everything. unless its boring then i just skim. you can't really do that with audiobooks. plus they are quite expensive.