Audiobooks

[sus]

This is impossible.

 

[version]

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.

Why'd you specifically respond to my post and not his then?

 

[sus]

Well because I felt you'd missed the point and I couldn't bear for the reading snobs to win over an unwitting ally of your power level.

 

[version]

Well because I felt you'd missed the point and I couldn't bear for the reading snobs to win over an unwitting ally of your power level.

If you'd actually read what I wrote instead of trying to slot me into some stupid cultural debate you've absorbed from Twitter then you might have realised I'm not an "ally" of theirs, unwitting or otherwise.

 

[sus]

Hahaha! Haha! Ha!

 

[sus]

I think audiobook readers should have to read to someone they love and/or want to impress a little. Like their grandmothers. That way they have someone real to speak to. It must be very odd reading a story but not reading it for anyone, to anyone. Just imaging some vague... What do you imagine? Some conglomerate?

 

[version]

This one sounds like quite a feat.

'I cried when it was all over': the actor who brought 120 characters to life

JR is a 700-page satire of capitalism featuring 120 characters who speak in unattributed quotes. It has been called ‘unreadable’. Nick Sullivan, who narrated the new audiobook, reveals how it engulfed his life

www.theguardian.com

 

[version]

I think audiobook readers should have to read to someone they love and/or want to impress a little. Like their grandmothers. That way they have someone real to speak to. It must be very odd reading a story but not reading it for anyone, to anyone. Just imaging some vague... What do you imagine? Some conglomerate?

Maybe it's similar to what actors experience when they have to do green screen. A lot of them talk about how uncomfortable it is to be deprived of feedback like that, having to perform in a vacuum.

 

[sus]

Maybe it's similar to what actors experience when they have to do green screen. A lot of them talk about how uncomfortable it is to be deprived of feedback like that, having to perform in a vacuum.

Yes good analogy.

 

[version]

Interesting to consider the fiction/nonfiction divide here. I instinctively feel fiction and poetry lend themselves more readily to this kind of performance, but then I've read nonfiction books which were compiled lectures, so it's not that clear cut that one works aloud and one doesn't. It's a different kind of performance, but still.

Having said that, I think I'd be much more receptive to listening to, say, Moby-Dick than I would any of the theory I read.

 

[sufi]

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.

(i do that with paper books too - so annoying there's no search box on the paper copy)

 

[version]

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.

(i do that with paper books too - so annoying there's no search box on the paper copy)

I find endnotes so much clunkier with digital copies. I can just stick in two bookmarks and flip to the back with a physical one, whereas I have to use this irritating bookmarking function in my reader software or just remember the page numbers and type them in each time.

 

[sus]

Footnotes are always better I feel. Why even flip?

 

[version]

Footnotes are always better I feel. Why even flip?

Yeah, much better. They aren't as disruptive. My strategy with endnotes is to check them out beforehand and see how many are references and how many are further information then just remember I need to flip to the back when I get to 'Note 41' or whichever it is.

 

[sufi]

I find endnotes so much clunkier with digital copies. I can just stick in two bookmarks and flip to the back with a physical one, whereas I have to use this irritating bookmarking function in my reader software or just remember the page numbers and type them in each time.

a few times i have found myself mentally reaching for the search box in books, once or twice my mouse finger has even twitched

 

[pattycakes_]

An ear operates differently to an eye.

You heard it here first folks

 

[version]

You heard it here first folks

I felt Sus'd missed the point and I couldn't bear for the ear-eye conflationists to win over an unwitting ally of his power level.

 

[pattycakes_]

Heaven forbid

 

[jenks]

Thanks @sus and @version i asked because I’m not sure and do vacillate between those two poles. When an audiobook is at its best I do think it brings the text to life and gives it something I don’t get from reading on the page. The best example I can think of is the Murphy/Malone /Molloy trilogy. I had tried half a dozen times to get on with those books but the audio opened them out for me - the rhythm of the prose, the voice came through. I think someone like Beckett is a performative writer - he wants the ear as well as the eye. I think Dickens is the same - there are definite cadences in there. Melville wrote wrote huge chunks of Moby Dick in iambic pentameter - he wasn’t doing that just for the eye. However, there are other books I’ve listened to where I have felt it would be a more intimate experience with just the words on the page.

 

[version]

Thanks @sus and @version i asked because I’m not sure and do vacillate between those two poles. When an audiobook is at its best I do think it brings the text to life and gives it something I don’t get from reading on the page. The best example I can think of is the Murphy/Malone /Molloy trilogy. I had tried half a dozen times to get on with those books but the audio opened them out for me - the rhythm of the prose, the voice came through. I think someone like Beckett is a performative writer - he wants the ear as well as the eye. I think Dickens is the same - there are definite cadences in there. Melville wrote wrote huge chunks of Moby Dick in iambic pentameter - he wasn’t doing that just for the eye. However, there are other books I’ve listened to where I have felt it would be a more intimate experience with just the words on the page.

Pinter reading from The Unnamable comes to mind. Not sure how much I like it, but he really brings out an escalating panic from the text.