Why I've given up on Audiobooks (for serious reading)

[Anonymous]

Hamlet was populist drivel for the masses. I read it in 8th grade. I don't know how anybody over 30 can think it's a great literary work. <s>

[Anonymous]

Dickens indeed wrote for the masses. But the literary standard has declined enormously. It's absurd to say Dickens and JK Rowling are at the same standard.

[Anonymous]

I love audiobooks but I agree with you, OP, that I (can’t speak for others) retain best with written word. If I’m trying to really learn or savor something, print works best. But most of what I read is for pleasure and entertainment, so mostly audiobooks for me!

[Anonymous]

Your ableism is showing, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love that the “serious literature” you had not yet read as a, what, 30something or 40something are books I read in middle school, high school and college. It is hilarious to me that you are trying to lecture and look down on people. Most of us read “serious literature” in or before college. You’re just now catching up, and this is your attitude?

Not only did I read “Anna Karenina” in high school, but my mom, sister and I recreated dishes from it. My reading list for my graduate exam had 200 works, and I had no idea ahead of time which works would be on the essay exam. But sure, sneer at audiobooks. I enjoy them frequently, along with hardbacks and paperbacks.

Geez, she was just trying to make an observation.

Well OP claims that listening to an audio book is not “real” reading, and it’s a snobby attitude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I realized that they take more time and the level of comprehension is actually lower. I had fallen out of the habit of reading literature - hadn't read that much great fiction since college. I decided I wanted to read serious literature - books like Bleak House, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina. I was a bit rusty and intimidated, so I decided to use Audiobooks (and read along with the text) as a "crutch" of sorts.

I realized it's ultimately a passive experience. Every line is delivered with equal weight, so a particularly profound passage that you want to think about passes you by. The voice of the narrator and the emotions of the scene are set by how the reader says them. You're not having your own dialogue with the text.

So Audiobooks are fine if you're cleaning or on a long plane ride, for something that's not going to really to have a longlasting impact. And maybe after reading a great work yourself, it would be interesting to hear an Audiobook performance. But you can't say you've "read" AK if you had in the background while you were cleaning the kitchen, IMO.

Do you actually see plays being acted? Poetry reading? Where of course others speak the text and give it the weight they desire.

I’m sorry that you do not have the mental wherewithal to absorb a book through audio, but Your take is a pretty superficial one.

[Anonymous]

Cool story, bro. Maybe you can post it on your blog.

[Anonymous]

Audiobooks are good for lighter, pulp reading but physical books are essential for something deeper imo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fair. Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good (there are some things I would have "read" if I hadn't listened to them). Obviously a lot depends on the reader. Bonfire of the Vanities and Brideshead Revisited were outstanding on Audible. But something thicker, like Brothers Karamazov, I think I'm going to have to read by hand. It is just not sticking.

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't use audiobooks as my main source of books. I have found it's a good way to increase the books I have time for -- I can listen to them while cleaning or walking to and from school for pickup/drop off, and it allows me to get a bit more book time in.

The main problem I have is they take a long time and if I listen to them at night, I fall asleep and then have to keep going back to figure out where I left off (though this also happens with print books -- I'm just really tired these days). So I wind up listening to one book while reading another, which makes it hard to get immersed in others. I solve this by doing one as a nonfiction and one as a novel, but it's still not ideal.

Mostly I just wish I had more time to read and that reading in the evening, when I have the most time for it, it so hard these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your ableism is showing, OP.

+1

NP. I’m a paper reader but I think OP is ridiculous. People absorb literature in very different ways. There are people who are probably horrified at OPs inability to engage deeply with spoken word, and they are just as obnoxious as OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Audiobooks are good for lighter, pulp reading but physical books are essential for something deeper imo.

For you. FOR YOU. Why on earth can you and OP not understand that people engage deeply in different ways? It’s so narrow-minded.

[Anonymous]

Hence "in my opinion."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Audiobooks are good for lighter, pulp reading but physical books are essential for something deeper imo.

For you. FOR YOU. Why on earth can you and OP not understand that people engage deeply in different ways? It’s so narrow-minded.

Seriously. As it happens I retain nonfiction so much better in audio form, so I listen to nonfiction audiobooks. Fiction audio doesn’t work for me for some reason, so I read fiction as a physical or ebook. I don’t go around saying that people who listen to fiction or read nonfiction are “doing it wrong” and “not really getting a full sense of the book” just because that happens to be true for me.

[Anonymous]

I dislike audiobooks as well because my attention wanders and then I want to multitask, so then my attention wanders even more! I can only do them on a long car trip. I couldn’t not do a weightier book even then, though.