This is a genuinely new point in what is for me a very old question/"question." (What's the question? Do audiobooks "count"? What does that even mean?) Egan also makes many of the familiar points about audiobooks: You can do other things while listening — chores, crafts, exercise — and it's good for people with vision troubles, great for drifting off to sleep, etc. etc.
But I love this idea that the audiobook is more intimate, bringing you closer to the material. Is that even true?! I think she's saying something about the experience of hearing in contrast to seeing. When seeing, you are looking at a physical object outside of your head. Or so it seems. The words are out there, on the page, your eyes allow you to sense them. But sound feels like it has entered your head, almost like your own thoughts, especially if you're using earphones. And yet both hearing and seeing happen in your brain, through a nerve located deep inside the organ that is part of your head — your optic nerve in the back of your eye or your auditory nerve in your inner ear.
So the intimacy of hearing as opposed to seeing is a subjective feeling, don't you agree? But then the question becomes whether we prefer this intimacy when reading? I suspect that by using vision to consume a book, you maintain a more sharply critical mind. The page is out there. It's the other. We're suspicious. Or admiring. The audiobook reaches us differently. It's automatically already inside us, stirring us like music, like the murmurings of a loved one.
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72 comments:
I read too fast to be comfortable listening to a book being read to me.
I'm one of those people that treats books as a process of immersion. So when I hear an audio book, it's like listening to a lecture. It becomes a completely different experience for me, and I prefer the immersive experience of letting my imagination fill in the tapestry.
I don’t like that it’s so hard to do a “Wait, wut?” And in my experience, no more than half the readers have the depth of understanding, combined with the skill, to express what’s in the text.
I am the opposite, if a book is not worth reading slowly, it’s probably not worth reading at all.
No, no, no.
An author wrote down words. I then read those same words. That's what it means to not be mediated.
versus . . .
An author wrote down words. A reader interprets those words, infusing them with her own chosen tone. The author's work has now been mediated and presented to me in an altered and channeled form. It is now a combination of the author's work and the reader's work.
Audiobooks add another dimension of interpretation to influence perception.
A book has transitions and it has hard parts. An audio book goes at its speed, I am not going to rewind to hear the deeper parts again. I guess an advantage is that you could play them when you are sleeping because everyone knows that you can perfectly absorb them by that method.
Let me join the chorus.
You are certainly welcome to prefer audiobooks, if that's what you prefer (channeling Miss Jean Brodie here.). But that's not reading, it's listening.
I think I miss a lot of a book when I listen to it instead of reading it, even if the reader is very good.
I preferred when books were actually read. Then I could concentrate on the words and not the reader. Now it’s an acting gig and it interferes with the listener’s perception of the author’s intent.
I only read books. I don't listen to them. With reading you can read at your own pace, pause to think about something the author wrote, underline or make a notation, flip back if you can't remember an important fact or character, and just savor the writing.
Listening to audiobooks is a skill, a knack, that you do have to acquire. And there are novelists who write compact prose with no repetition of information (Don Dellilo comes to mind) who are very difficult to handle in an audiobook. OTOH, if you haven't listened to Frank Muller read Moby Dick you're only hurting yourself. You will see the whole book in a new light. At least I did.
Arguing about whether it "counts" seems bizarre to me. Have you been through all of F Scott Fitzgerald's books if you've read all the words silently but not if you've heard them aloud? Seems a bit of a fishy distinction.
Coincidentally, I decided yesterday to start experimenting with audiobooks. Joe Rogan near the conclusion of his recent podcast with Gavin de Becker asked whether his new book, Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression About Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines, was on audio book read by the author. Rogan said he prefers when it's the author in his own voice. Gavin has a good voice, so I can understand why Rogan asked that.
Topic outside de Becker's usual wheelhouse of criminology and high-end personal threat security, but an intriguing podcast. Surprised how skeptical de Becker is at this point about all government secrecy given his background. From Amazon...
Have Government agencies and big corporations ever created and promoted outright lies and cover-ups?
Of course they have. When they do it together, that is the definition of conspiracy.
Internationally recognized criminologist and bestselling author of The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker, investigates how the Government ‘debunks’ inconvenient and unwanted truths. This story of true crime includes bogus research, bribes, compromised experts, paid conspirators, destruction of evidence, and massive publicity campaigns to discredit people and truths that don’t fit official wishes.
Readers are provided real-time access to original source material that clearly details how Government agencies and Big Pharma have routinely conspired to deceive the public on matters of profound importance.
de Becker said publishing the book is not about the money at this point in his life. Kindle = $5.00, audio "free with trial," whatever that means. I don't read much fiction. But here the material sounds dense and broader than just vaccinations, so I'll probably do both (I like to go back and review and highlight).
Anyway, seems to me that publishers should have "print" + audio deals for purchasers to do both.
Wince, I think you are looking the wrong way through the telescope, if you think de Becker's experience would lead him to be more trusting of government, rather than less.
Audiobooks with dialogue grate. One person doing different voices.
I was thinking more about de Becker openly expressing his distrust of the security state because of the implications for his ongoing security business (e.g., loss of government cooperation, contacts, etc.).
But as I said about his book price, he sounded like at 71 he's in position where he has his "fuck-you money" at this point.
I love listening to the old radio shows because they had voice actors for each character. Audiobooks need to hire actors for each character and the narrator.
It was common in times gone by for one person to read aloud for others. Often while the others did work like needlepoint, or to others who were illiterate. You find this in various Victorian novels. Here's an example from "Little Women."
https://www.amazon.ca/Little-Women-Louisa-May-Alcott/dp/0140390693
Social improvers who wanted to educate the working class used to do this too.
Reading works better. You get your own speed.
I find the voice of a audiobook narrator tends to argue with the voices in my head.
I prefer the physical feel of a book and the ability to page backwards on occasion to check/confirm things. Audio books are great while driving long stretches, and especially good if read by George Guidall. Books read by women are at the other end of the spectrum (sorry!).
" The audiobook reaches us differently. It's automatically already inside us, stirring us like music, like the murmurings of a loved one." GAH! When I had an hour commute each way in the '90's I'd listen to biographical audiobooks. Now, Luddite that I am, I only read hardcover books (used to read ebooks but only for financial reasons).
I find audiobooks very useful for long car rides.
i Love audiobooks, while driving long distances alone (which i do All the time).
However; i frequently have to back up (again (and again)), because if you take your mind off of the book (because; i don't know, a DEER jumps in front of you), the book just keeps on going. NEVER happens when you're reading, 'cause you Stop reading.
Also, i often get confused about who is Katya, and and who is Kea (which sound much more simular than they spell).
And, NO; i DON'T think it "counts" as reading, it's just listening to a radio drama
"George Guidall"
It just goes to show that audiobooks are very much a matter of taste. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I cannot stand Guidall. Will not listen to him. He does this voice for women characters that drives me up a wall. But you're not the only one who really likes him. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Wince,
Ah! I understand.
But also, expressing such sentiments will likely gain him as many or more unofficial contacts as it costs him official ones.
For me it’s the opposite. An audio book inserts a other person between me and the author. But they’re great for long road trips
"..I love the way an movie brings me one step closer to a story, removing the middleman of paper or a screen. I’m not just hovering over the action, I’m in it. Channeling it."
fify!
IF an audiobook "brings you closer", than SURELY a movie brings you closer still! Right? i mean, RIGHT?
i mean, are we ready to admit that this is STUPID, yet?
Listening to an audiobook with my wife is much more of a shared experience than each of us reading the same book. Done on a long drive it allows us to discuss the books on our stops, and afterwards the experience of the book merges with the journey.
Reading a book is more immersive, I feel like I have become part of the story. I can easily reread passages if i need to. I love the heft and smell of a book. I tend to zone out audiobooks, it becomes noise like a tv in the background.
I'm just a few years younger than our host, and I am a retired criminal prosecuting attorney, and one of the great things about being retired is having the time to read all of the books you wanted to read while you were working, but never had time to do so while working 60 hour a week. Readers are Leaders.
"mccullough said...
I love listening to the old radio shows because they had voice actors for each character"
This kinda fun. Not book length, Short old time with different actors. Listened to cop show Dragnet. They did things different back then, robber running away, empty your six shooter at 'em.
Driving cop car? Hear it shifting through 3 gears.
https://www.oldradioworld.com/
The middle man finds where stuff is cheap and arranges to move it to where the same stuff is expensive. It's an economic function.
"You can do other things while listening — chores, crafts, exercise..."
This doesn't work for me. If I'm doing something else while listening, I end up thinking about that *something else* and lose track of the story.
Audiobooks are best for well written novels, plays, and poetry. I found the worse the writer the worse the audibook. Further, Longwinded non-fiction is better read than listened to. But there are excpetions. "Fall of the Roman Empire" was enjoyable to listen to because Gibbon was such a great writer.
I listened to one audiobook once. It was about Mallory and Everest, but something of a biography as well. Was doing something for hours at a time that didn't require a lot of thought. Loved it.
That said, I tried to listen to a fiction book once, read by the author, and turned it off after 10 minutes.
YMMV.
Anticipated.
I do not read novels anymore. I Listen to them while driving in the car. A little like muti tasking. If I am reading a serious subject and really want to understand I use a book.
Interior dialogues are something you cant translate to film
https://youtu.be/pu_PFq7tzCo?si=PwLU04POq1nziakD
Like jason matthews red sparrow cannot translate to film
Impressions local recipes
I got through “On the Road” by audiobook. I never would have made it more than a tenth of the way through by reading it.
I prefer reading because I read quickly and I can stop to re-read unfamiliar words and difficult concepts.
For books I need to really study I read it first, then, after a week or so I listen to it because when I listen I hear every word. Then I will read it again closely taking notes. I am doing that now with Dr Peter Attia's book "Outlive"
Also, for long trips I listen to detective stores. Once every couple of years I listen to the Lord of the Rings.
I enjoy listening to stories at bedtime. Some readers are very good at doing scenes with several characters. Some suck at it.
Reading a book on a printed page does offer critical distance, I agree. A page allows me to interact with the text through highlights and notes in the margins (marginalia). Listening to a book is different, I know. I miss a lot I may have picked up reading. But what does stay with me through an audio book flows right into the bloodstream. So, yes, more intimate.
I prefer audiobooks because they provide better recall for me. I rarely remember what I read but I remember (perhaps due to the time and place of where I am driving) stories from audiobooks. Maybe there's a memory palace aspect to it all.
Reading was a natural thing in school. As I got older, I found having to sink (or rise) into a fictional world and then rise or (sink) back into the real world wearying. Having to notice style, mood, theme, rhythm, symbolism and various literary devices also took a lot of the fun out of reading fiction. Audiobooks brought back the immediacy that reading once had.
Perspective from the other side of the headphones:
Some people develop a feeling of intimacy towards someone they've never met after listening to someone's voice for many hours.
This makes sense, because for almost all of human history, the only people you have listened to someone talk to you for hours and hours in a quiet, one-on-one voice, where those with which you had a very close relationship. But it can be strange when you meet these people in real life, because the 'relationship' has all been one way: they have listened to you for hours, but you are hearing their voice for the first time.
Most of my audio is college courses, and I imagine that lecturing/teaching is less intimacy-generating than reading fiction, so those awkward, asymmetrical moments probably happen more for them.
Most of the time the awkwardness is short-lived, and the feelings that help generate it are really an enormous compliment. But it's also obvious that there's the potential for the pseudo-intimacy to lead to worse things than awkwardness.
I've been lucky in that I've really only had one distressing experience: someone who told me that my courses helped in getting through a painful divorce invited me to speak at a symposium with all expenses paid and an honorarium. But when I arrived--and this was overseas!--there were only about 25 people in a little social club and a couple very confused grad students, almost none of whom really understood English. Really all the person who invited me wanted to do was to spent time talking about very abstract, semi-philosophical-sounding stuff that at its core was about the divorce.
I was very relieved to get away with nothing worse than incredible awkwardness for a few days. My wonderful family kept texting screen-caps of Kathy Bates in Misery! Now I investigate every invitation.
This is all an oblique way of agreeing with that quote at the top of the post that audiobooks do indeed create a sense of intimacy, but that's no always a good thing.
I didn't care for George Guidall either. IMO, his readings were often choppy and overly enunciated rather than natural and flowing. Before him there was Flo Gibson. I didn't like her either, but in those early "books on tape" years a wide variety of 19th century novels were available. Not just Dickens and Austen and Hardy, but also Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Eden, Benjamin Disraeli, and the minor works of Thackeray, George Eliot, and Walter Scott. Now that audiobooks are an established product, the popular stuff crowds out the older public domain material, though I suppose you can still find such works at Librivox as read by amateur volunteers.
Koot Katmandu,
> I Listen to [novels] while
> driving in the car.
That kind of limits your options, doesn't it-- e.g. who can afford to listen to War and Peace at today's gas prices?
I think that the two are different experiences, but I wouldn’t place one as more legitimate than the other. Otherwise, are we really saying that blind people can’t appreciate literature? So much of writing was intended to be read aloud, it seems like quite a recent invention to think that only physical reading “counts”.
Personally I’ve found rereading Cormac McCarthy on audiobook helped me appreciate the rhythms of his sentences. Plus the Spotify 15 hours and local library audiobooks have saved me a ton of money on taking a punt on recently hyped novels that turned out to be crap.
Totally agree with author. Hearing the speaker adds a lot to the experience.
Audible says my library has 847 books now. I better slow down.
I blame Althouse for this. She recommended Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and it took off from there.
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Sounds like the most wonderful passage in English when read in an AI rendering of Yul Brenner's voice.
A stroke scrambled my vision in September. I struggled as the words slid off the page. Things moved where nothing was there. I tried one audiobook. It was fine. Well done. But I am a reader so I stuck with it. It’s tiring. But I’m reading okay now. My online typing is a chore and I don’t catch all the idiot things Otto Korrect tosses in to confuse things. Oh well life goes on. Obla Dee, obla dah.
"I love the way an audiobook brings me one step closer to a story, removing the middleman of paper or a screen. I’m not just hovering over the action, I’m in it. Channeling it."
That’s just silly. When you read you see exactly what the author wrote, nothing interposed. With an audiobook someone else reads what the author wrote, and tells you about what they saw on a paper or screen.
removing the middleman of paper or a screen.
Audiobooks literally have a middle man or woman reading the book. Any enhanced intimacy is brought by the narrator. That's part of what makes the narrator is so important.
The author seems to be asking if listening to an audiobook counts as reading the book. No, it doesn't. Listening and reading mean different things.
Listening comes off as lazy, while reading comes off as something smart people do. Never mind that some readers stick to trashy novels. Saying you read a book when you listened to it instead, is a lie. It's a small thing and only matters to people with integrity.
I listen to audiobooks all the time, but don't say that I've read the book.
Great audio content with a great reader produces a rewarding experience. OTOH, I'm the sort of reader who loops back to reconsider what's happening. It sometimes takes several re-reads for me to feel I've understood. Hard to do in an audio format.
"removing the middleman of paper or a screen"
This is the point of view of a child who is used to having a bedtime story read to him or her.
"...like the murmurings of a loved one"
Ooo!, gross. Get off me and go make us lunch.
I find it difficult to keep attention to details in audiobooks.
“Audiobooks add another dimension of interpretation to influence perception.”
Yes. Over the years I’ve read The Little Drummer Girl half a dozen times. The last time just a few months ago. But I’m listening to the audiobook now and still finding new rewards, and faults, in the story.
An audio “re-read” being worthwhile depends a lot on the quality and complexity of the book and the voice and style of the person performing the reading. And, done right, it’s definitely a performance.
I started listening to audiobooks to reduce the tedium of long drives. Most of my listens are of books I've already read. I've found that I find things in the audiobooks that I missed in the text because I'm forced to listen to every word instead of skimming through long descriptions or sex scenes. The latter are embarrassing to listen to in the car with my family but as I'm driving I can't safely fast forward through them. The larger point is that you can get different insights when listening than you do when reading.
A good audiobook is a great thing. It takes me back to both my early childhood, and having stories read to me, and to my daughters being children, when I would read to them. There is something atavistically satisfying about being read to, or reading to others, especially in person, when it is an act of sharing. But I am too old, and entirely too in love with reading, to ever give it up. For one thing, I read much faster than listen, and thus the story moves along at a much faster pace. My wife on the other hand loves audiobooks, and devours the romances on YouTube. It is more relaxing for her to listen than to read. I will say that 30 or so years ago, when I listened to the LotR cassettes with the BBC version, I really enjoyed the experience, even though I had read the books so often I knew every missed scene and complained!
I've gone to audiobooks in that my ADHD makes reading something longer than an essay a chore. My mind wanders too much. I usually have one or two audiobooks going at a time, depending on my mood. History, detective stories and the lot. Some authors (Bill Bryson and Jordan B. Peterson) are great readers of their works. I cannot imagine the 12 Rules for Like being read by anyone else. Before audiobooks I read constantly and devoured several library books a week. I don't know when the change occurred in reference to how I devour a book. I suppose I started listening to audiobooks when I walked on the beach daily. I am perplexed how to tell someone I experienced a book: I still say "I just read this book by...." even though I listened to it.
Jacques Derrida spent an excessive amount of time contrasting the written with the spoken -- to what end, I'm still not sure -- but if you consider that the author's written words on the printed page may not be more authoritative or canonical than the same words spoken, it opens up a new view of things. And if the author reads his own audiobook, is that more authentically his own work than if someone else does?
Isn't reading just creating your own narrator in your head?
I prefer audio books to reading, because speed isn't an issue when I can do other stuff simultaneously, but for news type content, I prefer to read the transcript rather than watch a video, because it's much faster to read it if it has my full attention.
I found, from book club discussions, that I frequently got more from listening to a difficult novel than others did reading it. Non-fiction, contrarywise, I can't listen to. Love Guidall. Tony Hillerman and Rita Mae Brown had/have unlistenable voices. The audio book of Wyatt's Possession drove me nuts because the English production got the various American southern accents completely wrong. I'll switch between reading and listening. Sometimes the reader is so much more appealing I will stick with listening. By the way, I've noticed that some urban fantasy I've looked at has full cast editions.
A S Byatt (doesnt have any southern characters)
George Guidall is great. My favorite used to Walter Zimmerman especially when reading things like War and Peace or Dostovesky. The British guy who read the "flashman" novels had a voice that was perfect for the part.
Put me in the George Guidall fan club roster. I don't know why, but I had trouble reading War & Peace. I just could not get going. It took two starts on Audible but I finally got through it. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1752 pages) was one that I did enjoy reading but that was pre-Audible. I started with the service for listening while walking or driving. I wound up going almost 100%. I am fond of UK (usually Scotland) detective novels and I just finished all the DCI Evan Warlow books, 18 in all. I love when I discover an author whose series I enjoy. Stuart MacBride's series is fantastic reading and listening (I've done both) and I have LOLed at some of the exchanges of his poor lead DI Logan McRae. I heartedly recommend it. I wish Michael Connelly would leave his TDS-influenced politics out of his books. And the Bosch series was good reading. But I had to LMAO when I saw the offshoot Rene Ballard series turned into a black character on ... of course, Netflix. James Lee Burke is a fantastic descriptive writer even though his fixation on slavery is tiresome. His daughter, featured in his earlier books as a fictional character, Alafair is now writing books. She's good but I often have a hard time getting into women's fiction. And lastly: Audible sends me emails about books "meant for me". I suppose they base it on my purchases. Guess what. The vast majority are women writers, lesbian and gay writers and characters, black authors and characters, and a selection of authors (usually memoirs) who I know of but have never watched their movies or TV shows and don't care for them as people. I suppose they feel a need to push those agendas because those books probably don't sell. I wouldn't read or listen to those people if they paid me to do so, as the saying goes. GN and God Bless.
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