In a recorded interview I heard recently (at the end of an audio book) Neil Gaiman said the exact opposite. He said that, for him, when reading he misses things because his eyes will sometimes skim over the words, and an audio book forces him to pay attention to every word. I find for myself, both can be true. I lose things when listening, and when reading. This is especially true when I read (or listen) while tired or distracted. Then I have to go back and re-read the page (or re-listen to a track.) I do both. I read. I listen. I find I get through more books while listening because I do it while driving, while walking, while doing everything my life requires me to do. I read more "regular" books than most people. The audio books for me are in addition to my regular reading. The only bad effect is that I rarely have mental rest time, because I always have a book in my ear (when I don't have my eye on one in my hand.) One of my future goals is to work on that. Sometimes you need to process what you read, and let your mind relax. It's also nice once in a while to listen to music, which I rarely do any more. Charlie
Charlie: Since you read a lot of audio books, do you have a favorite reader? A lot of books I like such as ones by Joseph Finder are read by Scott Brickman. He's got this nasally, whiny voice that is so annoying.
I generally don't like audio books, but I should say that I'm currently listening to the audiobook of World War Z, and it's amazing. The book is basically a series of interviews with survivors of the zombie war, and it's performed with a full cast. I would probably enjoy it less f it I hadn't already read the book several times. But if you are interested at all, go get it ASAP, it is 6 hours of pure awesomeness.
I have always hated audiobooks. We used to listen to them in elementary school, and I would always get impatient with how slowly the audiobook went, so I would read ahead and be finished with the book before the audiobook was over. I prefer to read at my own pace, not be read to.
Not especially--I select an audio book if it's a book I want to read. In most cases, I find that when I start listening, I can adjust to whatever voice I'm hearing. Rarely do voices bother me, even when they have distinctive accents. For example, the readers of the Harry Potters and the Neil Gaiman books had a British accent, Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne was read by a woman with a distinctive upper New England accent. A book I read (listened to actually) whose title I can't recall had a slight Indian accent. That rarely bothers me, though. Often, I imagine the main characters having a similar accent, and by the time I'm into the story, the distinctiveness of the voice seems to disappear into the words and the story becomes my main focus. I've probably read nearly 500-750 audio books (roughly about 150 a year for the last 5 years or so) may be 1 or 2 of which had a voice that bothered me. It's equally rare that I especially like a reader, though the reader who does all the David Baldacci novels, and the one who did Dan Brown's Deception Point was very good. I'm generally pleased with the voices though, and usually, they fit whatever I'm reading (listening to). A Stephanie Plum novel obviously has to be a woman's voice. A Harry Potter book obviously should have a British accent. Stephen King, when he reads his own books, doesn't have a very good voice, but once I'm into the story, I don't hear the voice, I'm lost in the story. I can tell you one particular example of bad audio: Most of the Shakespeare plays are recordings of actual performances, and often, one voice will be too quiet to hear and another too loud, which makes it even more difficult as I'm also trying to mentally decipher the Old English. One funny thing, too, sometimes when I'm listening to an audio book and, later the same day, I pick up a regular book, in my mind, I "hear" the regular book in the voice of the audio book I'm listening to. (I never read or listened to Joseph Finder.) Charlie NOTE: I found out some bad news for me. Many of my audio books, I get from the library through intra-library loans. That is, I give my library a list and they order from other libraries. Due to major state budget cuts, the intra-library loan system is soon to be suspended. I will then have to stick to books I can download from the library website (I hope that's not also part of the cuts) and books that my own library has in house, which are not very many.
Aw, that's too bad about the budget cuts even affecting the intra-library loans. I wonder if that means you have to return the book to the library that you borrowed it from rather than another one in the system. If your library has any audiobooks by Joseph Finder, I'd recommend you give one of his earlier books a try. Both our Seattle and county library systems are awesome, but people pay a lot of taxes to keep them running well and well-stocked. We even just got a new library here on the plateau where I live because the other one was considered too small.
It will actually mean that I won't be able to get any books (audio or otherwise) from any other library than my local one. If my local library doesn't have it, I'm out of luck. That's if I have a local library at all, which I might not. Even if I could borrow from the other libraries, which I can't, in many cases I'd have to drive hours just to get there, which isn't a reasonable option. I'm upset about the loss of the intra-library system (just one of many lost services) but what I really think is going to outrage the general public will be the loss of in-library internet access, and the complete closing of many libraries. My own library may be one of the closures. We just don't know yet. They've also cut schools so badly that teachers are being laid off, my daughter is losing her after school program, and her classroom size is going to increase, possibly to 30+ students. Meanwhile, the average person's taxes will be going up, not down... and the layoff of teachers and librarians will increase the local unemployment. Oh well. I hope they keep the library website up. At least then I'll be able to get the audio book choices available for download. For now, I'm scrambling to get all the audio books by intra-library loan that I can, that I want to read and aren't available for download, before they shut the system down. Charlie Edit: Regarding taxes: I can't speak for your area, but I did some research on my state and found out that the entire library budget is less than 3% of our total property tax revenue.
