Audiobooks

[jenks]

Just been reading about the recent spike in audiobook usage in the last few years. I'm guessing it's kind of connected to how easy it is to listen to books while on the move, in the gym, in the car etc. I must admit that since lockdown i have become a convert and regularly listen to stuff while on the turbo trainer (however, i always have a physical copy of the book too as i like to go back and loo over certain passages)
I'm just wondering do people perceive them as reading or something else, i see there's serious disagreement online? And if you do listen to audiobooks do you play them at normal speed or x1.3 or something, and does that matter? Finally, any recommendations? I have listened to quite a few and it's really interesting the way that some writers really cannot read their own work and really should just pay an actor to do it properly.

 

[Murphy]

They vary a huge amount. After your Pogue Mahone recommendation was put to audio I had to listen and it reinforced its garrulousness and poignancy, 15 hours in a studio, even after spacing sessions out, is a lot. You’d think boredom would’ve crept in but not at all. Imagining if Goldengrove might get similar treatment

Others fail because the reader’s voice isn’t punching through or goes too far into performance. Keep music for the bike and audiobooks for the car on long hauls north

 

[Corpsey]

I am such an idiot that I own about 200 audiobooks on audible despite repeatedly failing to listen to any audiobooks.

My mind just keeps drifting, either off the book entirely or into thoughts prompted by the book.

For some reason conversational podcasts are easy for me, but I'm also not worrying that I'm missing anything important.

I really wish I could listen to them cos then I could kill two birds with one stone when walking/running.

My biggest successes with audiobooks have been reading along to them--the audiobook propels me along, the book keeps me focused. I probably couldn't have read "Ulysses" without audible and I definitely couldn't have read "Paradise Lost".

The best audiobooks I've heard/own are Stephen Pacey reading Martin Amis. They work really well as audiobooks (talking Money/London Fields/The Information) because they're basically extended comic routines.

 

[Benny Bunter]

My biggest successes with audiobooks have been reading along to them--the audiobook propels me along, the book keeps me focused. I probably couldn't have read "Ulysses" without audible and I definitely couldn't have read "Paradise Lost".

Why didn't you just read them out loud to yourself?

I've never listened to an audio book, unless you count that RTE radio drama of Ulysses which is brilliant, and I listened to each chapter after reading it before going on to the next chapter. That was a good technique.

 

[Corpsey]

 

[version]

I'm just wondering do people perceive them as reading or something else, i see there's serious disagreement online?

It's listening, not reading. I think you'd have to ignore the reality of the process to argue they're the same thing. It'd be like claiming reading sheet music's the same as hearing someone perform it. A markedly different mode of engagement. In this instance, having someone read it takes away a lot of the work you'd have to do in terms of pronunciation, rhythm, voice, pacing, and so on were you to read it yourself. There isn't the same room to stop and think, re-read, etc. either, unless you want to keep skipping the thing back, pausing and whatnot.

Agree with Corpsey re: concentration too. I take in more when reading something myself. It requires more of my attention, which is what I want if I'm trying to understand something.

 

[Murphy]

only really bother if the book's been read first, it's a long drive to Glasgow's environs and back audio books offer a different experience

part of the journey will be in darkness, cruise control, so it's more finding a voice that works and settling in as opposed to focusing in

again, can't imagine listening first, something doesn't sit 'right' - your initial dive can be compromised by a voice actor's/author's voice

 

[sus]

(however, i always have a physical copy of the book too as i like to go back and loo over certain passages)

I prefer this too, but traveling's made it impossible; Project Gutenberg's been quite good to me—while listening, I'll jot down a few key words from sections I want to revisit, and then at night ctrl-F around their copy. It's been a nice way to navigate a book actually, because you see all the other times a word or phrase has been used—if you pick interesting keywords, thematic words, then it helps you see connections you wouldn't have otherwise.

 

[sus]

It's listening, not reading. I think you'd have to ignore the reality of the process to argue they're the same thing. It'd be like claiming reading sheet music's the same as hearing someone perform it. A markedly different mode of engagement.

Yes, sure, but any two things can be lumped together or split apart depending on why you're lumping and splitting them. Obnoxious people want to say audiobooks aren't reading because they want to control and throttle the flow of cultural prestige in a way that privileges themselves.

Literature began with, and had a ten-thousand year prehistory of, oral storytelling; poetry has been an oral-first tradition for most of its history; many people (Borges famously!) experience books largely through having them read to them. There are some minor downsides, and also some advantages, and there's no real reason to privilege either of them, except to play silly status games.

 

[sus]

People who feel the need to pearl-clutch & publicly extoll on how audiobooks aren't "real reading," as if their beloved Jane Austen English realism weren't a transient fad in shifting millennia of storytelling tactics, are not worth attending to.

 

[sus]

having someone read it takes away a lot of the work you'd have to do in terms of pronunciation, rhythm, voice, pacing, and so on were you to read it yoursel

This could just as easily be a benefit of hearing a book aloud—that it frees you up to think on more important things, like the theme and the voice and the style.

 

[version]

It's not a status thing. It's a different activity. An ear operates differently to an eye. If someone describes a painting to me I'm getting a different experience to looking at it.

 

[version]

This could just as easily be a benefit of hearing a book aloud—that it frees you up to think on more important things, like the theme and the voice and the style.

Right, but you're now agreeing that there is a difference as if there weren't you wouldn't be able to attribute any benefits to it over reading.

 

[sus]

It's not a status thing. It's a different activity. An ear operates differently to an eye. If someone describes a painting to me I'm getting a different experience to looking at it.

Oh that's a rubbish analogy and you know it

 

[sus]

Right, but you're now agreeing that there is a difference as if there weren't you wouldn't be able to attribute any benefits to it over reading.

Obviously there's a difference. There's a difference between any two apples but we still call them apples.

 

[sus]

It absolutely is a status game the way people toss around the "Audiobooks aren't real books" line, you can't tell me it isn't, it's the most transparent form of cultural signaling since Williamsburg.

 

[version]

The problem is you're reading a description of difference as a value judgement rather than what it actually is, a description of difference. I didn't say one was better than the other. I said they're different. You've just got some broader argument you want to make and are misrepresenting mine in order to do so.

 

[sus]

Nobody thinks that plays are better read from text than performed. People go on and on about how the human voice and face add so much bla bla but then when it comes to audiobooks all they can say is, "A bad reader will ruin it." Well obviously, and a bad actor butchers Chekhov, but a great performance of Chekhov sweeps away a reading of Chekhov, and I don't think it's crazy to say the same might be true of verbal storytelling performances. I've heard many poems read that made me understand, that communicated the poem to me in a way the text couldn't unlock. And poets have always worked this way, with the voice first; this is so clearly true of Pound even. Mass transmission via text begins as a compromise, not as an ideal. It is only when Modernists embrace and optimize the medium's limitations that the letter threatens to replace spirit.

It's true that some of the difficult and serious books from the past two centuries are not optimized to be read aloud. But those are just a subset the books that are out there. Ulysses is impossible, listened to, I think—totally impossible, I've tried, maybe others have different experiences, it's impenetrable and I can't keep focused and I never know what's going on unless I already know the chapter well.

But many books historically were meant to be read aloud, people were quite envious of the privilege of being read to. Even today many books in their composition, the authors painstakingly read the lines over and over to themselves, work so hard to get voices and rhythms right. They read their writing aloud to loved ones at the dinner table; their beloved is their primary reading, their perfect reader, the one shapes how they write. And to say that the text is always the pure form of the thing, the perfect thing—and not the spoken, vocal spirit that precedes the chicken scratchings—I don't think that's always true.

 

[version]

Oh that's a rubbish analogy and you know it

It's a fine analogy.

Obviously there's a difference. There's a difference between any two apples but we still call them apples.

An apple's an object, not an activity, and the difference between two apples isn't functionally as stark as between listening and reading. You're doing the equivalent of claiming a call and an email delivering the same content are the same. The information being communicated isn't the only factor.

 

[sus]

The problem is you're reading a description of difference as a value judgement rather than what it actually is, a description of difference. I didn't say one was better than the other. I said they're different. You've just got some broader argument you want to make and are misrepresenting mine in order to do so.

Jenks asked about a common line that's brandished around in everyday discourse, online and in real life. I'm addressing the substance of the discourse rather than getting in some completely pointless debate over technicalities.