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Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This
by jppope 3mo ago
Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either.
For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.
- nephihaha 3mo agoAudiobooks are heavily dependent on the reader. In one case, I had an audiobook where the translator was the reader. She is an excellent translator but a poor reader. Many authors are poor readers of their own work. They are certainly good while you are on a long drive etc, because they entertain you while doing some another task which you wouldn't be able to do while reading. During lockdown, I could not read due to the constant stress and fear mongering, but I had to walk a lot every day and the audiobooks were a good way to accompany that.
- estetlinus 3mo ago+1 The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Stephen Kings On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, read by the author. One of our times best storytellers, both when it comes to writing them and telling them.
- nephihaha 3mo agoI've a soft spot for that book because it saved me from two days of very long and dreary jury service. (They kept us sitting around all that time.) I think I read at least a third of it in there. The only court stuff I heard was for about ten minutes and incredibly unexciting.
- boznz 3mo agoWhen I write a character, I picture not just the character but the voice, same with reading, and going from a paper or eBook to an audio book usually breaks both. Books I write rarely include characters from Manchester (UK), so reading voices with my strong accent would definitely break a lot of my books. It is also the reason I sometimes don't enjoy movies if I have read the book. It is not a one way street though, some really good narrators can improve the experience a lot, same with good directors.
- arach 3mo agoI've been building a little app on the side that allows me to primarily read my books in epub, mobi or pdf -> text format but generate readouts on demand for only the bits I want (highlight, paragraph, page, chapter) so that I can continue while I'm on the go, without having to bifurcate between apps - this might already exist but I made mine Naturally, I also added the ability to highlight, leave notes and ... ask questions (via API) Even with incredible models, it's a decent amount of work to get this to work nicely
- PsylentKnight 3mo agoI agree that it’s a pretty different experience for fiction, where the subjective experience is everything and the narrator can color your experience a lot. For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal
- swed420 3mo agoPersonally I like to highlight certain passages (non-fiction) for future reference, and this only works on ebooks.
- loughnane 3mo agoWorks on print too, no?
- swed420 3mo agoIn a limited fashion, yes. But ebooks mean you can search highlights, categorize them, see summaries of them, etc if using calibre, zotero, or similar.
- dredmorbius 3mo agoZettelkasten.
- swed420 3mo agoI love Zettlr for this!
- officeplant 3mo agoYou can also bookmark audiobooks depending on the platform/playback application.
- 3mo ago
- colechristensen 3mo ago>I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. Is this attitude a holdover from encouraging small children to read for themselves? I don't know if this is quite the right framing but are you... hearing-illterate to some degree? Some voice actors definitely add a layer of interpretation, and some are distractingly bad, but otherwise it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears. Unless there was a need to physically interact with the book, quickly flipping between sections or keeping notes in the margin, which I rarely do. "I didn't really get the full experience until I read it on the page instead of listening" is an absurd statement to me, but maybe people's brains work differently. There are things missing from text that can be conveyed over audio or with body language in person certainly so those experiences can't be directly translated from real life to the page.
- dqv 3mo agoIt's not a maybe. People's brains work differently. For one thing, in the written version, it's way easier to scan backwards precisely to a point in the text to clarify missed details. Sometimes I like to stop reading for a moment and take in the scenery. With an audiobook, the narrator has already decided to blurt out the next line. Or I'd have to quickly pause it and lose my train of thought. With reading I'm fully in control of when the next bit of information will be introduced. Audiobooks are great for dialog-heavy stories, but sometimes I want to spend a little bit longer on a particular page when the author is building imagery... what's the equivalent of that in an audiobook, slowing the speech down? Except it's not about speed, it's about soaking in the particular meaning of a word (or string of words) before going onto the next. I don't think this even scratches the surface of how different they are as mediums of storytelling.
- kriro 3mo agoFair enough, I understand the UX/interacting with the medium argument. Regarding the processing in the brain, there's claims that "The Representation of Semantic Information Across Human Cerebral Cortex During Listening Versus Reading Is Invariant to Stimulus Modality", see: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/39/7722 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/39/7722 The study has issues but at least the hypothesis of representing information independent of the modality you consumed it in seems like a decent default to me.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- matwood 3mo agoAgree. I'll listen to nonfiction because it just feels like a long podcast. Fiction I always read. But in general I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks.
- hahahaa 3mo agoA good non fiction book should take a year to "read" though. Because you'll need to stop, reread, scribble, look up online for other help. It should be a challenge!
- picklesman 3mo agoDepends highly on the subject matter
- throwup238 3mo agoI also don’t think people realize how often they zone out while listening to audiobooks and miss important details. You can zone out while reading books too but with audiobooks there usually another stimulus by design.
- zanellato19 3mo agoThe fact that people say "I've read 30 books last year" when they heard the book is absurd to me. It is a completely (and honestly quite interesting) medium. I've heard and then read a few books and the experiences are completely different. Also, one of mine biggest things for reading is to completely focus on the text, and the audio book is almost the antithesis of this, because most people like them so they can do chores/driving _and_ listen. Two completely different ways of experiencing the text.
- microflash 3mo ago> Audiobooks are just a different medium. When I read I build internal voices of the characters or narrators through the pages as a part of my imagination engaging with the words of the book. With audiobooks this never happens.