Probably frequent question here but what do you bookfags think about audiobooks?
>>25270404It really depends a lot on the book. Perfect for light reading like some simple novels but not good for complicated philosophical texts.
I don't like them. Reading is active: you have to move your eyeballs across the page at your own pace. With audio books it's a much more passive form of reception, which discourages contemplation and complex visualization / feeling as your mind needs to keep up with the audio narration. I suppose you could pause the audio, but that is a rather jarring discontinuity. Also the emotional inflections in the narrator's voice influence how you interpret and receive the content.TL;DR there's no replacement for actual reading. Audio books are always going to be an inferior experience.
I love them.
>>25270404Most people will tell you you should read with your eyes rather than your ears. I'm here to tell you you should be reading aloud while you read with your eyes.
I have to sometimes switch between the two. I like to physically read and do it as much as possible, but when I'm at work and I want to progress on a story, I listen to the audiobook.
>>25270445You can move around and do things while listening to audiobooks so you don't become a weak gay nerd with no life skills
It's absolutely retarded if you're reading any author with intricate prose, specially the modernists or realists. Often times nuances that would be picked up by reading are entirely lost if you are listening to something while doing the dishesOn the other hand it's absolutely perfect for some more light hearted entertainment focused reading like YA novels or genre fiction which dont tend to typically give a lot of weight to prose in any meaningful way, sometimes even to dialogue. I listen to a lot of 40k books like this while driving and it's quite a joy but I wouldn't read anything serious like this
Gay & retarded
>>25270404not real books, let me know when they find a way to handle footnotes that isn't retarded>inb4 book XYZ doesn't have footnotesand it's not worth reading
>>25270404too slow. also, whoever recorded Frank Herbert's Dosadi Experiment mispronounced the protagonist's name
>>25270404Good for some books, less good for others.Minor things can be very annoying (even professional actors often stress the wrong words showing they just don't understand the sentence, etc). Also you often tend to just "zone out" and realize you haven't heard anything for the last ten minutes. That can happen with reading too but with audiobooks it's a lot worse since they are more passive.Better for lighter stuff since it forces you to keep up at a certain pace. But on the other hand lots of good stuff works well.STUFF THAT WORKS— Under Milk Wood (was originally a radio play so duh, this is how you're meant to ingest it)— Moby-Dick, if you have a good reader— Terry Pratchett, if you have a good readerSTUFF THAT DOESN’T WORK— e. e. cummings, haha— maths textbooks (a bit off-topic)— Faulkner (you need to take your time with him and constantly scan forward-and-backward with the complex sentences. they just don't work as a linear audio stream. On the other hand, it helps a lot to hear them spoken with a Southern accent. when you read them yourself you really want to subvocalize in that accent)NEED BOTH— Finnegans Wake works best to listen to an audiobook with a good reader with an Irish accent BUT you have the text there in front of you as well. It's all puns and half of them you only get with the accent
>>25270404Good for some books, less good for others.Minor things can be very annoying (even professional actors often stress the wrong words showing they just don't understand the sentence, etc). Also you often tend to just "zone out" and realize you haven't heard anything for the last ten minutes. That can happen with reading too but with audiobooks it's a lot worse since they are more passive.Better in general for lighter stuff since it forces you to keep up at a certain pace. But on the other hand lots of good stuff works well.STUFF THAT WORKS— Under Milk Wood (was originally a radio play so duh, this is how you're meant to ingest it)— Moby-Dick, if you have a good reader— Terry Pratchett, if you have a good readerSTUFF THAT DOESN’T WORK— e. e. cummings, haha— maths textbooks (a bit off-topic)— Faulkner (you need to take your time with him and constantly scan forward-and-backward with the complex sentences. they just don't work as a linear audio stream. On the other hand, it helps a lot to hear them spoken with a Southern accent. When you read them yourself you really want to subvocalize in that accent.)NEED BOTH— Finnegans Wake works best to listen to an audiobook with a good reader with an Irish accent BUT you have the text there in front of you as well. It's all puns and half of them you only get with the accent.
>>25270404I think the main audience for them are retards who either can't sit down and read at all or are too lazy to, but there are exceptions, I'm sure.
I DO NOT THINK ABOUT THEM.
>>25270404You can’t really study them the way when you’re reading you can come across something and then pause in contemplation go make some tea and take 15 minutes just thinking about something. In that sense that listening is not reading but you’re still getting the story, like how there’s a difference between watching the game live or on tv or listening on the radio, there’s a difference between playing and watching or coaching. You drink water you breathe steam you can swallow ice but you shouldn’t it’s really bad for your stomach
>>25271314uhh you can pause an audiobook too, buddy.
>>25271326Sure but you’d have to rewind it too. With a book you can read a paragraph over and over again without any effort, with an audiobook you have to make a command. It’s fine, some people prefer that, I don’t
>>25271602>Sure but you’d have to rewind it too.that's not how pausing works, grandpa.
>>25270404Tried them several times but hate them. It's ridiculously hard to keep track of what's going on without visual focus on words and with my vision distracted by other things.
>>25270404Good for history and novels but difficult to parse for more theoretical stuff.
Why do yall post this every other day.
