What are your thoughts on audiobooks?
It seems like I may be dipping my toe back into "reading" through audiobooks. I realized that instead of listening to random YouTubers at work, I can listen to more intentional writing this way.
How do y'all feel about them? If you listen, what sorts of productions do you prefer? Are there any particular ones you think are spectacular, a cut above the rest? Do you listen to them in addition to reading the book as like a companion piece or instead of the book?
I've listened to some GraphicAudio books now and I like having a full cast for the characters, they've got some good voice actors. Though they're listed as unabridged, I worry they've still perhaps dropped paragraphs. But I think I'd end up zoning out more on single narrator books.
Part of why I never engaged before is because I have poor auditory processing, so I figured I just couldn't keep up. At least for simpler texts, I haven't had much problem, and it may be helping me improve in that respect. I hadn't tried before, but now I can watch YT vids at double speed without missing anything.
I started since my partner was interested so I set up audiobookshelf and some other services for grabbing files. It's been a great piece of software to use, there's other software that can manage and serve audiobooks, but none puts them first like abs does. Do recommend if you're interested in self-hosting audiobooks.
I'm a life long compulsive paper-book reader. I got an audible subscription several years ago when a job I had required that I occasionally do a 1-2 hour drive to another office. Since then I've listened to probably 12-15 or so per year.
I love them in situations where I'm not distracted by anything else, long boring drives, flights, etc. I also walk a lot and now I can't stand it if I don't have a book or podcast to listen to. When I feel my attention start to get drawn away from the recording, for example if I get into really frantic traffic when driving, or if a walk takes me into an area where there's a lot of noise, I just pause the book rather than trying to concentrate on it.
I like audiobooks for non-fiction in particular, since I have a habit of wandering off mentally if I'm reading some long history title with dry sections. With the audio versions, the act of focusing on listening seems to reduce the wandering-off stuff, although it does still occasionally happen and I'll have to rewind a little.
A friend has an audiobookshelf server that I use occasionally. I have had a lot of trouble with the app losing my place between sessions, or accidentally bumping the tiny controls causing me to skip ahead to some chapter and it can be difficult to figure out where I really left off. I'm not going to look such a gift horse in the mouth if you catch my drift, but mention it since its about the only irritation I can think of with the open source self hosted stuff.
Over the years I've run into some titles where I felt like the audio version of a novel brought something extra that made the experience better than print; I somehow wound up listening to the entire Dungeon Crawler Carl series recently and the voice acting in those books is remarkable enough that I recommend them over the print versions.
I still read about as many print books as I ever did, although I find the audiobooks allow me to enjoy time that would be otherwise be wasted. I probably wouldn't do it were it not for the subscription services since I'm not likely to spend 30-40$ for a title and was too lazy to set up the self hosted stuff. I think the main thing is figuring out which scenarios they work well for you and whether you have enough of that kind of time for it to make sense to set everything up.
+1 for this especially. I prefer books generally, but when I’m doing something mindless, audiobooks give my brain something to do. Laundry and/or dishes plus an audiobook is something I actually look forward to doing.
Ah I'd never consider that someone may prefer them because of fiction vs non-fiction! I made sure one of my earliest grabs was DCC, I've heard it recommended quite a bit, especially since the original narration is pretty good.
My ABS use has been fairly simple, connect locally or offline only, losing progress would be rough. When I drop a book on my face, I've got a feel for where I was and can slim text to find it again -- not so much audio.
Yeah our previous solution was renting from the library, but that means time limits -- that was the inciting action, an audiobook in progress that was returned and would've taken months to get back. I'm sure timewise it didn't make sense to go through the setup, it's almost more a hobby to run my own services over subscribe.
Thanks for sharing :)
I can't do it. Admittedly, i haven't forced myself to give it a proper try, i've always bailed 10-15 minutes in. It just feels very weird to me, which is odd because I listen to podcasts and i've got youtube going in the background a lot of the time.
I do read a lot in text, though, mostly fiction, mostly gamelit/LitRPG
I find I'm unable to concentrate on audiobooks very well. I constantly find myself lost in thought and discover I've got no idea what's going on in the book or how far I need to backtrack to get to the last place I was actually paying attention. I can listen to podcasts fine because I usually don't care if I space out and miss a few minutes of random guys laughing at their own jokes, but in an audiobook that lasts like 20 hours I slowly get more and more confused as the number of story details I missed piles up over the course of the book. So for books that I actually care about I only read e-book or dead-tree formats.
Different take: I love them. I live in a car dependent city (Atlanta), and am a father of three kids. The amount of time I spend on the road, between my errands and theirs, I have knocked out 33 audiobooks so far this year. And when I'm emptying the dishwasher at home by myself, and other house chores, it's great to dive more into the books I love.
I have done audiobooks in the past. They're OK but they have the same fundamental problem as podcasts; they require me to have long periods of time where I am not focusing on anything.
I read a lot, and I also play a lot of video games and I'm of the opinion that good voice acting (Hades 2, for a more recent example) can absolutely elevate a game to new heights.
That said, I can't stand audiobooks. I don't know why. Probably for the same reasons that I absolutely cannot fall asleep if the TV is on no matter what is playing, or how I would rather the TV be off if I'm not specifically trying to watch it. I'm bad at multitasking I guess.
It really depends on what I'm reading. I read physical books at home and Audiobooks during my morning commute. I only listen in the mornings because I'm leaving at 6AM, the roads are less busy and the commute is very routine, I can concentrate on the book more, on the way home I find my mind is too full and traffic is too chaotic to really focus (as much as one can focus while driving).
At home I am reading almost exclusively serious literature which I would never really consume via Audiobook, I need to make character lists, notes in the margins, ect. I really like to underline sentences/passages that grab me or stand out. I need to be going back and re-reading things or sometimes I just need to read a page or paragraph over and over to really feel that I understand it. Also I believe that great prose should be sipped like fine wine and washed around in the brain before moving on. None of that is possible easily with an Audiobook.
In the car I'm listening to more plot driven novels, simpler books with a smaller (hopefully) number of characters or things that are thematically less important so that if I do space out or need to concentrate on something else it really doesn't matter. I also try and stick to shorter works (<15 hours) for Audiobooks as listening to something 20-30 hours long in 30-40 minute daily chunks takes a long time. I also listen at 1.1 to 1.2 speed but anything faster than that becomes harder to follow and chipmunk voice starts happening. Reading isn't a race, the journey is the whole point. I listen to all my audiobooks through Spotify as the prices at Audible are criminal and I'm already paying for Spotify for music, the monthly limit on Spotify matches nearly exactly my morning commute and I haven't hit the limit yet.
A. I have to do something else to be able to follow an audiobook, like simple mobile games, drawing, knitting or walking on uneven ground.
B. Yesterday I joined a group call where someone was reading a book out loud. It was an amazing experience. The pauses, the difficulty pronouncing names, zoning off, readjusting the voice, etc, etc. It was ultra cozy and a completely different experience than an audiobook.