Do you hate audiobooks as much as I do? I detest them with a burning passion that is only equalled by my love of regular books.
I had no idea why I hated them so much but finally there is an explanation. They are too slow and linear for my brain to process them without experiencing pain.
Oh my goodness. I hate audio books too! I love knowing I’m not alone! And I detest being read to. Which is strange because when I was little, I adored being read to.
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Yes! I’ve heard a total of ONE audiobook in my life and have vowed to never do it again. The speed argument makes sense, but in my case, the droning voice in which most audiobooks are recorded makes me depressed.
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I’m not a extremely fast reader but I find audio books too slow as well. Most apps allow you to speed up the text to 3x and that has made it much more enjoyable, and very much improved my life as I really enjoy listening to them while going for walks or while cleaning. Some apps allow you to speed it up even more I’ve heard. I never could stand podcasts or youtube videos until I learned how to speed them up, too.
Another thing that is critically important is the skill of the narrator. I always listen to the sample – it’s immediately apparent if the book is read by an excellent (almost always British) actor or some hack. Even a trashy book requires excellent narration.
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I couple of years ago listened to a couple scifi books from librivox while doing basic household chores (so not that long at any one time and usually while doing something else). I also started to listen to Dracula (original bram stoker) but only got through the first 20 or so chapters.
I can stand them if they’re background to doing something else but that’s about it.
OTOH I find audiobooks in some language I’m interested in to be very useful. Again, mostly as background noise but you (or at least I) need to listen to several hundred hours of a language as background noise before being able to make much sense of it and audiobooks are great for that, just about as good as talk radio.
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I hate audiobooks, and I don’t like it when people read aloud while I have the text right in front of me. It’s all much too painfully slow, and the narrator is almost always guaranteed to ruin the voices. The only exception was the one audiobook I listened to with my cousin when we drove to NYC. That was decent background, but I didn’t have the text in front of me and I was free to fall asleep as I liked.
However, I love reading aloud–it helps me picture and process things more quickly and clearly. And apparently (according to my family and friends) I do that extremely fast, and while processing extra details on and off the page. Maybe just listening isn’t the same as actively reading aloud?
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According to this theory, I should really hate audio books. I actually tried a couple of audio books but I don’t get them because 1) they’re expensive relics before pre-mp3 players and 2)I’m not an auditory learner. I wish it worked because it would save me an increase in eyeglass prescription power. I tried tutoring e-books when I was commuting a long time ago because the commute to the university was stressing me out but it didn’t increase my retention. Audio books are excellent soporifics and ok background noise but the minute I have to pay attention they irk me.
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I’m not an auditory learner either. I just can’t keep my attention concentrated on sounds for more than 10 minutes.
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I’m not an auditory learner either. I just can’t keep my attention concentrated on sounds for more than 10 minutes.
This would seem to suggest that you do not like music. However, as I recall, you do…
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No, I never listen to music of my own free will. I only like opera, and even that, rarely.
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I suppose I’m extreme in the other direction — I’m a bit like Maurice G Dantec, in that I need music in order to help structure the things I’m working on.
Of course, that’s also why I was ignoring the actual television and paying attention to the music a few days ago …
[your remaining day will now be under the Starsky & Hutch-esque influence of Alcohol Jazz …] 🙂
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The only audio books I found entertaining were Bill Bryson’s earlier audio books, and that’s because it’s entertaining to hear Bill Bryson still with considerable remnants of his original accent from Iowa …
Now that he refers to Britain as “my people” and that he has to be told that “spackle” is the same as Polyfilla, it’s even more entertaining to hear him with his new Yorkshire-ish accent.
Otherwise, audio books are too slow — in fact, regular books are too slow, and I’d rather have a direct cortex upload that I can digest over a few days … 🙂
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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