I listen to podcasts semi-regulary and enjoy them.
I’ve finally decided to try a Audiobook.
The Firm John Grisham.
I’ve seen the movie and Wikipedia says it follows the book pretty closely. Except for the ending.
It feels weird just sitting here. My hands feel so empty. I quickly learned that I can’t focus on anything else. Even checking the weather required rewinding and listening again.
I’ve heard many people listen to audiobooks while driving. I can’t see how. A podcast doesn’t require a lot of concentration. I find Audiobooks are just as demanding as reading. It requires my full concentration.
Does it get easier after a few Audiobooks books?
Do you try and do anything except listen?
Do you stay awake? I’m afraid to close my eyes to concentrate.
Assuming I like the Audiobook experience, I plan to go through several Grisham novels on Audiobooks.
I listen to audiobooks while walking. Every day. I’ve probably listened to at least a couple of hundred.
All audiobooks are not created equal. The narrator or reader makes all the difference in the world. So go to audible.com and listen to the sample before you buy a book. Read the reviews . A bad reader can ruin the experience, but A good reader make it a sublime experience.
Audiobooks are often twice as long as my reading speed. I do set the speed to anywhere from 1.0x to 1.5x, depending on the reader. My wife and I are listening to The Once and Future King (which I’ve read, but so what?). It’s 33 hours. She listens at 1.0x, I listen at 1.2x.
I listen to audio books when I go to bed as a sleep aid of sorts. I doze off after an hour or so which means it takes multiple sessions to listen to a book in it’s entirety and multiple repeat listenings to fully absorb it.
I have occasionally listened to audio books on You Tube. Usually they come with one or more static pictures, or worse, a static picture where the camera moves around, and there is fake falling snow over all that. Not sure what that’s supposed to be for. These books are usually mysteries, so they require some attention.
Anyway, I can’t just sit there and listen. So I play solitaire or hearts on the computer. I can even count cards in hearts while listening attentively. Apparently those activities use a different part of the brain or something. But I usually find entire books too long to listen to, so it’s either short stories, or radio dramas from the BBC for me.
I do hope that aceplace gets used to listening to books. It’s such a wonderful experience that I bribe myself to walk, to work out (treadmill, weights, bike), to do housework, and to drive.
As a result, I listen to four or five books a week. And will gladly go on errands, do scads of laundry, paint the house, anything to finish that spy thriller…
I liken it to having a butler walk alongside you: “Another chapter of Wooster and Jeeves, sir?”
And nowadays, when I wake up in the wee hours and can’t stop relitigating the election, listening to a book is a perfect way to drift off. But I do need a calm narrator who never shouts…
My ex wife listened to audiobooks, but I never did. I like to sit down and read a book and not have the distraction of driving happening at the same time. However, on one long road trip, I think it was from Montana to California, she wanted to play her audiobook and it didn’t bother me. You can start and stop it anytime you want, or pause it when you need to have a serious conversation. Another plus is you don’t have to make idle conversation with your spouse during a 2-day car drive.
Now that I’m single, I don’t often go on long road trips so I don’t listen to books in the car. I’d much rather listen to music or news. I occasionally checkout an audiobook from the library and listen to it at at home, but I prefer to read a physical book or one on my kindle. I guess I’m just old school.I listen to podcasts while I am on the treadmill, and sometimes listen to music when I am at home.
I listen to audiobooks while doing mundane work tasks.
I prefer non-fiction. History, biographies, science. I find serious fiction difficult to follow in audio unless I’m really paying attention, which I almost never am. Strangely a lot of fiction feels like it has no plot when you just listen to it, to me.
There is not a hard line between podcasts and audiobooks. Some audiobooks require more concentration than others (just as some printed books require more concentration than others).
Also, some driving situations require more concentration than others.
Most of the driving I do doesn’t require 100% of my brain’s focus, and I find that listening to audiobooks actually helps me stay alert and focused on driving. If anything, it’s less distracting than having a conversation with a passenger, because it doesn’t require me to think up a response.
But different people’s brains work different ways, partly due to how they’re wired and partly due to what they’re used to and what they’ve practiced. Which means that the answer to your “Does it get easier?” question is “Maybe.”
My reading speed is considerably faster than most speech.
I get impatient.
And you can’t easily put a finger in a page and skip back to check on things…
‘Hang on, in chapter 3 he said… but here…’
Also if it’s any kind of instructional thing, I’d rather have it as text so I can refer back to it as needed. Though there are some exceptions to that where pictures or video are really vital.
I like audiobooks (I’m an author, and all my books have audiobook versions). I’m even learning to record my own. That said, there are only a couple of instances when I can listen to them: when I’m driving, or when I’m doing some mindless task like folding laundry. I can’t listen while a passenger, at least not for very long–no matter how good they are, they put me to sleep. Same for lying in bed or just sitting on the couch. Not sure why. I think I need to have some other part of my mind or body engaged in something while I listen.
Even driving, it has to either be while I’m going someplace I know well, or out on the open highway. I used to love them when I had a long commute (back in the days when they were still on cassettes or CDs). I can’t listen while driving in an unfamiliar city or anywhere I have to pay a lot of attention to what I’m doing.
When I had an hour commute to work, I used to listen to them. For standard fiction or a humorist relaying anecdotes and that sort of thing, they were fine. If I missed thirty seconds of reading because I’m navigating some traffic, it was no big deal. No different from reading on the couch and realizing you just sort of scanned the last two pages.
Was it as “good” as physically reading a book? In some ways no but then physically reading a book while driving to work was never an option. I still got to experience a lot of stories I wouldn’t have had time for otherwise.
Yeah, my brain is really good about disconnecting from an audiobook if there’s something more important happening.
Come to think of it, I used to listen on an iPod, but didn’t get addicted to audiobooks until my daughter showed me her new-fangled iPhone. Because it had a “Back Up 15 Seconds” button.
IMHO it helps to be familiar with the material. Listening to audiobooks of books that I’ve previously read and want to read again works for me. I’m currently going through Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X books, which I read many years ago, as a refresher before I read the new sequel he just released.
I listen to them in two circumstances: driving or exercising (mainly walking).
When I’m driving, I prefer to listen to books I’ve already read or am otherwise familiar with. This way, if I have to pay attention to something other than the book, I’m not totally lost when I can focus on it again.
When I’m walking (I do 4+ miles per day), I’m perfectly happy to listen to a new book. I used to listen to photography podcasts, but the ones I listened to have pretty much dried up. So I subscribed to Audible.com a few months ago. It really makes the boring walk much more pleasurable.
I much prefer reading visually, but also recognize that my listening comprehension worsens as my hearing does, so I also treat audiobooks as a neurological strengthening activity, much like writing with my non-dominant hand.
I like audiobooks where the reader can effectively change their voice or inflection accent whatever to represent different characters. These talented readers/narrators are usually successful actors on stage and television or have recognition for their audio works.
Bettter yet if there are various readers and sound effects to tell the story.
I’m afraid to close my eyes to concentrate.