posted
I have a decent amount of time to kill in the car each week, and for a while now I've taken to catching up on podcasts, mostly npr, while I've been driving rather than listen to music, really I mostly listen to npr anyway. I decided I want to try listening to audiobooks and see how that goes.
I've never gotten into audiobooks for a few reasons. When I read fiction books I tend to like to imagine how the characters sound in my head and worry that an audiobook will take away from that. I also don't know if listening to someone else speak the words I usually read will throw me off or not. I also read a lot of non-fiction books, mostly science or philosophy oriented and I end up stopping a lot and contemplating what I just read, or re-reading lines and passages, and I worry audiobooks will make that more difficult. I guess I've always worried that audiobooks might not only ruin my enjoyment of what I'm reading, but also detract from the knowledge I retain from reading.
Part of this I think depends on the quality of the reader. Are they a good story teller or a good orator? I've heard people do readings of stories before who were amazing. I'm currently listening to Barack Obama's Audacity of Hope, and he reads it himself, so it's like listening to an extended speaking of his, which I find great. I've heard other authors speak or lecture before and most of them have been great speakers, so I can imagine if they have done the reading of their own book it'd be quite enjoyable. Do fiction books have casts of voice actors acting out the roles possibly creating a more vivid an exciting experience?
So what are your experiences? Do you find audiobooks as fulfilling as regular reading? More or less? Are there certain types that work and others that don't? Why?
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Well, Audiobooks from Blackstone, which is the company that produces Tor books, including the whole Ender and Shadow series, does many "ensemble," casts. There are a couple of key narrators, like Stefan Rudnicki, Scott Brick, and Amanda Carr, who play respectively Ender, Bean, and Valentine. They play other characters too, and there are other voice actors who play smaller roles, but these are the principle readers for the books. Other OSC books are done solely by Rudnicki or Brick, to great effect- their readings are quite exceptionally good.
I have about 300 audiobooks, and I have listened to about 1,000 in my life, I would say. I started out by listening to audio dramatizations, especially by Louis L'amour, because he was a relative (Great Uncle). I can recommend some particular authors and broad areas that work well in audiobook form.
The Patricia Cornwell, Kay Scarpetta books, especially the earlier ones, work well in audioform, and are competently read by Kate Reading.
The Kinsey Milhone books by Sue Grafton also work very well in audiobook, and are all available in the format.
OSC books like the Worthing Saga and the Ender/Shadow series have some of the best narration I have ever heard.
There are some uber-prolific readers of audiobooks who spent decades of their careers committed to the work. Grover Gardner is one, who is in my opinion a bit dull, but extremely steady and easy to listen to.
Frederick Davidson (AKA David Case), who recorded under a variety of names, is a god of historical and historically significant novels and non-fiction. He had a great ability to mix dialects and character voices, so you'd hardly be sure it was him doing all of them. Simon Prebble is another classic and brilliant British reader.
If you want to hear what a book will be like before you get it, I suggest looking around at Audible.com. They have a huge selection of books available by monthly subscription. 2 books a month for about 22 dollars- and you can download and keep them for as long as you like, and also re-download at any time. Their customer service is excellent, if you were wondering about them. On the site you can listen to samples of the readers, which I often do to weed out the readers I have had trouble with in the past.
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I am a geo-batchlor and maintain two households with six-hundred miles of great american desert between them. five-hundred of those miles have no radio avalable. I make the round trip on the average of twice a month, always alone. Therefore audiobooks are a way of life. I don't know how I would ever stay awake otherwise. I would rather read a hard book, but I never have that kind of uninterupted time to do it. I have enjoyed many books that I wouln't have picked up otherwise. (I sometimes screen for time. It's more convienent with two 8 hour books, or one 16 hour one) This weekend I read "The old ace in the hole - Proulx, 16 hours. Last weekend, Fancy Pants - Hake. For the record, I'm not a fancy pants guy. But, I already did all of the history titles in our little library. Sometimes I discover gems. Who would actually pick up a novel called Portuguese Irregular Verbs - Smith? I give that little volume four stars. Sometimes, I will pick a book because I know the reader. And, I don't like the ensemble format. Some of my "best" trips have been with Tony Hillerman. George Guidall is a great narrator, and Hillerman's desert is close enough to mine that my imagination has a holiday.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Generally, I enjoy audiobooks. I unfortunately have a very short attention span when it comes to listening to people talk (I have trouble with not zoning out during lectures, and I always preferred to read before bed when I was little to having my parents read to me), so I have a hard time following them sometimes. But generally, I condone audiobooks, I think they're great fun and a great way to spend a long drive! Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I have become a pretty big fan of audiobooks lately, mainly because I don't have a lot of time to sit and read - but I do have a lot of time that I spend in the car each day.
Unfortunately, audiobooks are hit or miss with regard to their readers. Some readers are a lot better than others.
Generally, I go to the library and take out 3 audiobooks, knowing that 1 of the 3 will have a good reader. Also, make sure that you don't get abridged versions.
I've found that Scott Brick is very good - I liked him on Dune and Blade Runner (and a quick Google shows me he's done a lot of work on the Ender series... which I might have to check out).
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I am a huge fan of audio books, and like to listen to them when I'm driving, woodworking, cleaning, etc..
That said, they are less fulfilling than reading. I need to listen to an audio book twice to get out of it as much as I'd get out of reading it once. It's not uncommon for me to finish an audio book and turn right around and listen to it again because I really want to get all of the book.
The reader makes a huge difference. There are some audio books that are almost impossible to follow.
It is very enjoyable to listen to audio books of books that I've already read. That way, if [when] my attention wanders, my memory can fill in most of the gaps. There, I'm pretty much just listening to the audio book to keep myself entertained, but that's not bad either.
I have enjoyed the readings of Scott Brick, Grover Gardner, Scott Fry, and Jim Dale. I'm not a fan of Patrick Cullen, who did a lot of the old science fiction "books on tape" I've listened to (Dune, Foundation, Ringworld, etc.).
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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He's my favorite voice actor and sometimes when I'm looking for a book to read I start by looking up the books for which he's doing the reading. My introduction to Brick was "The Company", an epic (40+ hour) cold war espionage novel. That was a great audiobook.
I also enjoy books read by the author. These are typically autobiographical or observational books where dramatic skill isn't necessary. The intimacy of hearing the writer read their own work adds to the experience.
OSC has noted that he considers a dramatic audio presentation to be the best way to experience his work - superior to either the paper books or any potential movie adaptations.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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I recently listened to the podcasted novel "7th Son" (no, not the OSC one) by J.C. Hutchins. He reads it, and the performance gets slowly better over the course of the reading.
I also swear by the Dark Tower and Harry Potter audio books.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I am visually impaired so I pretty much have no choice but to read audio books. I can read print with a magnifying glass, time, and eye strain. When I first lost my site, I stopped reading for about 3 or 4 years because for all of the reasons you stated and more, I didn't want to listen to someone else read me a book. As a child I gobbled won books so fast my mom refused to buy them for me. (We used the library.)
Anyway, I get my books through talking books -- a national program for the blind and visually impaired, so most of the books are read by volunteer readers. I therefore can't say much about the professionals out there but I can say this much -- the reader makes a HUGE difference. The best book read by a bad reader is crap. There is a balance to strike between trying too hard to make up all the voices and sitting back and reading blandly, because we don't hear blandness in our heads when we read text -- we animate it.
Anyway, I did have the pleasure of listening to "The Audacity of Hope" read by Barack Obama himself and it was great. (Most of the time, they don't let the talking books program have the commercial audio books to use.)
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Strider, you're on GoodReads, neh? There's a very active audiobook group there. And with the new ability to add narrators, more and more of GR's audiobook listings specify the narrator.
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MPH, It's fairly easy to change the font size in most browsers. It sounds like she can read things that are big enough to see easily. Plus, there are some *fairly* good text to speech applications these days.
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I also enjoy books read by the author. These are typically autobiographical or observational books where dramatic skill isn't necessary. The intimacy of hearing the writer read their own work adds to the experience.
OSC has noted that he considers a dramatic audio presentation to be the best way to experience his work - superior to either the paper books or any potential movie adaptations.
OSC is fairly exceptional in that he gets such high quality productions of most of his books. There are a few older recordings that are awful, but most of his books get really good performances.
Bill Bryson is a fairly good narrator of his own works, as is David Sedaris, who combines live reads of his material with studio recordings, making for a nice mix- you get portions of his audiobooks that have an audience in the background laughing. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team did a good recording of America, the audiobook, and Stephen Colbert also did his own reading of I am America, and So Can You.
Scott Brick does some stellar recordings, particularly he did the bulk of The Worthing Saga, which would be interminable with the wrong narrator.
On the flip side, a good narrator can also reveal how bad a book is in itself. Frank Muller is scintillating in his reading of Silence of the Lambs, which is one of the best audibooks I have ever heard, but positively too much for the John Grisham novels he also narrated. Scott Brick is great in most settings, but with the post Ludlum novel, The Bourne Legacy, he is floundering in a text that is repetitive and boring, and alternately histrionic.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Listening to Harry Potter on the way to work got me hooked. The narrator was truly amazing
I have Stephanie Meyer's The Host playing in the car these days. The narrator has a good speaking voice, but most of her characters sound the same.
I Am Legend was great, the narrarator was very spooky.
I had to listen to Blindness, I had issues with the lack of punctuation in the novel. I am glad I did though, great narrator and it was so much more intense then the movie.
For some reason I pick up audio verisons of novels that are coming out as movies soon. Lovely Bones is next on my list.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: I have Stephanie Meyer's The Host playing in the car these days. The narrator has a good speaking voice, but most of her characters sound the same.
It didn't help that I couldn't stand the novel, but I really didn't like the reading of that book.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:I am visually impaired so I pretty much have no choice but to read audio books. I can read print with a magnifying glass, time, and eye strain.
How do you read, for example, Hatrack?
I use Firefox as my web browser because it has proven to be one of the best browsers for increasing the size of the text. A simple control + and control - makes the text bigger or smaller. Now, even with that some web sites are easier to handle than others. Some make their text into images so I can't make it bigger or smaller and I can't do a lot with that. Others use obnoxious contrasts that are unreadable no matter how big I make the font. Others don't scroll well -- if I'm interested enough in what's there I do the best I can with those but it's annoying. Hatrack is pretty friendly. And bear in mind that my vision isn't as bad as it could be -- I can fairly comfortably read the equivalent of about 20 point font. Your average paperback book is about 8-10 point font and even with magnification, those are very difficult to manage.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Strider, you're on GoodReads, neh? There's a very active audiobook group there. And with the new ability to add narrators, more and more of GR's audiobook listings specify the narrator.
I am, I thought we were friends? Did you de-friend me???
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I mostly enjoy audiobooks but my enjoyment is, unsurprisingly, largely affected by the quality of the reading (which is subjective).
I think Jim Dale's reading of the Harry Potter books is fantastic! He even comes up with tunes for songs that are sung in the book and sings!! Each character is presented with seemingly unique 'voices' (with perhaps Draco and Snape sounding too similar) but rarely in such a manner where the clarity of dialogue is obscured for the sake of character. Fantastic stuff.
I disagree with Orincoro, who liked the "Worthing Saga" reading. While I like that particular reader in his later works (he reads some chapters/POVs from the Ender/Bean series), there were several times where the emphasis he places on certain words seemed simply WRONG. I can't come up with a specific example, but I do remember being bothered by it when I listened to that book.
I agree, however that the reading for the Ender/Bean books is great, overall. I particularly like the voice acting for the beginning dialogues of every chapter in Ender's Game. And I greatly appreciate the efforts that go into different POVs being read by different readers - it makes it very obvious when we have changed characters. I am, however, bothered by the female reader who often reads for the POVs of various females (Val, Novinha, etc.) because she seems to read veeerrrry slooowly and pensively. I almost get depressed when I hear her. Again, however, this is utterly subjective. My wife, for instance, doesn't mind her reading at all.
Before we went on a road trip this summer, we loaded up our iPod with many, many books: Lord of the Rings, Ender/Bean, Harry Potter, other stuff. It made the drive much more enjoyable.
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quote:Bill Bryson is a fairly good narrator of his own works, as is David Sedaris, who combines live reads of his material with studio recordings, making for a nice mix- you get portions of his audiobooks that have an audience in the background laughing. Jon Stewart and the Daily Show team did a good recording of America, the audiobook, and Stephen Colbert also did his own reading of I am America, and So Can You.
Scott Brick does some stellar recordings, particularly he did the bulk of The Worthing Saga, which would be interminable with the wrong narrator.
I've "read" all of these and agree on every point. I just listened to The Worthing Saga a couple weeks ago. I'm working my way back through the Ender's Game series now.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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The only audiobooks I've ever heard were The Langoliers and an abridged version of Atlas Shrugged (both on the road from Bethlehem PA to Santa Cruz CA). I don't particularly like them. I'm a lot more visual than I am auditory. My mother insists on referring to listening to audiobooks as "reading". Pet peeve.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: I am, however, bothered by the female reader who often reads for the POVs of various females (Val, Novinha, etc.) because she seems to read veeerrrry slooowly and pensively. I almost get depressed when I hear her.
That would be Amanda Caarrrr... who reads everything as if she was whiiiinnnninggggggg. She also talks as if she is making fun-of-some-one-who-is-self-imp-ort-ant by do-ing this.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I'm a big fan of audio books, though I can't add much to what has already been said.
I listen to them at work because I have found the repetition required of my job to be intolerable. Audio books have been a God send for me, I highly recommend the folks who narrate the Tor books, they do a great job. Orincoro's impression of Amanda Carr made me snicker. But then again so does Jim Dale voicing Hermione, "Hawee!"
I wish I had more money for to buy more books. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: The only audiobooks I've ever heard were The Langoliers and an abridged version of Atlas Shrugged (both on the road from Bethlehem PA to Santa Cruz CA). I don't particularly like them. I'm a lot more visual than I am auditory. My mother insists on referring to listening to audiobooks as "reading". Pet peeve.
In my world, it is reading. If someone asks me what I'm reading, I answer with whatever book is in my tape player. I do not explain that I am listening to an audio book. It seems like an unnecessary detail for most people and those who know me, understand that I "read" my books on tape.
I can't stand abridged books. I always wonder what I missed and whether it was important. Sometimes it is and you can tell that is has been poorly done. This is one real advantage to the talking books program. None of their books are abridged.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: My mother insists on referring to listening to audiobooks as "reading". Pet peeve.
Reverse pet peeve, I get annoyed when people insist on the idea that you aren't "reading" if you listen to a reading of a book. It's just semantics, and your appreciation, understanding or absorption of a particular text depends on your natural learning abilities, experience, and some amount of skill. There are Shakespearean actors who insist on the idea that you are "hearing" a play rather than "seeing" a play, but you're doing mostly the same thing.
Yes, I understand you troglodytes and self-styled essentialists, who insist that reading is having in your hands a chunk of paper pulp that has been sliced into a number of pages and smeared with bits of ink and covered in poster board with a glossy photograph of the author and the sticky residue of a price tag collecting bits of hair and dirt on the back, and how that is how we were meant to receive the written works. But I can sit and look at a printed page, and read through the words without absorbing a single sentence after more than 20 minutes. With an audiobook, I can retain nearly exact wordings and encyclopedic knowledge after one listen. I am an auditory learner, and I have a pictorial memory, so the conversion of what I see on a page into what I hear in my head (because reading forces you to use the auditory centers of your brain anyway), into my visual representation of the words contains too many steps to make reading print comfortable for me for long periods. OTOH, I can listen to an audiobook with better retention in probably a quarter of the time.
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Why? Not picking, just wondering...reading and listening are very different thing to me, so I don't.
Not saying one is better than the other (not yet, anyway), but I don't see how reading happens though the ears. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Reading is consuming the contents of a book. It's also a technical exercise by which one converts symbols into ideas. Most people who say "I'm reading a book" are conveying the former more than the latter.
Besides, if you can "read" braille with your fingers, I don't see it being a misuse of the word to say you "read" an audiobook with your ears.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Why? Not picking, just wondering...reading and listening are very different thing to me, so I don't.
Not saying one is better than the other (not yet, anyway), but I don't see how reading happens though the ears.
But it does. As I read your post, my mind interpreted the words into sounds and that is how I store the memory of them -- not the characters or letters but the sounds that they represent.
Some people are more visual and some more auditory, so this may be different for different people, but you can definitely read a book through your ears or at least, I can.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:I don't see how reading happens though the ears.
When you're listening to an audio book.
After some time is passed, I'm hard-pressed to remember whether I read it in a dead-tree format, ebook format, or audio book format. It's the same story.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Yes, I understand you troglodytes and self-styled essentialists, who insist that reading is having in your hands a chunk of paper pulp that has been sliced into a number of pages and smeared with bits of ink and covered in poster board with a glossy photograph of the author and the sticky residue of a price tag collecting bits of hair and dirt on the back
Also, I agree that listening to an audio book is indeed reading a book. I didn't used to, but I was convinced years ago. And I don't like audio books -- they don't work for me at all.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:I am a huge fan of audio books [...] That said, they are less fulfilling than reading.
I absolutely agree with this. I greatly enjoy them, but I always pick either books I've already read or lighter books that I kind of have an interest in reading but that I don't think will be great. I have found it almost impossible to listen to non-fiction books with any sort of retention.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:I am a huge fan of audio books [...] That said, they are less fulfilling than reading.
I absolutely agree with this. I greatly enjoy them, but I always pick either books I've already read or lighter books that I kind of have an interest in reading but that I don't think will be great. I have found it almost impossible to listen to non-fiction books with any sort of retention.
I can definitely see where you're coming from here. As I said before, I don't have much choice but to read audiobooks, but it wasn't easy to get started. You're right -- the lighter stuff is much easier to digest, even to this day, but I was able to train myself to get information out of denser material as well. In some cases, I have to listen to it twice. For example, I just finished John Locke's Second Treatise on Civilization (probably the most difficult thing I've ever ready in audiobook format) but I have not sent the cassettes back because I intend to listen to it again in a few weeks (after I take a break and read a couple of whodunit mysteries).
Not all nonfiction is a problem. It really depends upon the topic. My book club has read a few nonfiction selections that I had no trouble digesting in audiobook format, such as "Under the Banner of Heaven" and "In Broad Daylight." It really depends upon the subject and the writer.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I have an hour and a half commute each way, and carpool with my boyfriend. We fairly quickly discovered that neither early morning (tired and unfocused) or after work (cranky at coworkers) were great times to have heart-to-heart chats--we just ended up snapping at each other, or forgetting things later. So we switched to having me read books aloud.
It's cheaper than audio books, the selection is better, and I suffer from fewer technical difficulties. On the down side, sometimes if we take a break for a while I forget which voice goes with which character, and, no matter how often my boyfriend tries, my volume cannot be modulated via the car radio controls.
We've found the best books for us are ones without too heavy suspense, otherwise he gets tense when I have to stop and rest my voice. Pratchett works well, as do Bujold and Wrede. Martin we ended up quitting before the Starks even left Winterfell. Novik is fun, but we had to do the last 80 pages or so of Empire of Ivory in one marathon session. We're just about done with our first Kay novel now. His prose style is fun to read, and the melodrama suits dramatic intonation.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I've always found the audiobook voices too pompous-sounding for my taste. I've only listened to audiobooks as a curiosity, not as part of a commute or anything.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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You'd get used to it fairly quickly, if you did it every day. But yeah, the same thing happens to me.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I did lose my voice for three weeks back in June, but I think that had more to do with other things (going to a play and screaming my head off cheering while in the middle of a bad cold--not my wisest decision) than with the reading. Though it might have exacerbated things; dunno.
Usually I can do 20-30 pages without a problem. Past that, it starts to be a strain unless I pause, drink, and regroup.
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I am sorry, but the fundamental act reading is different than that of listening. Reading describes a specific act, and listening describes another.
I don't think we teach listening in school...although perhaps we should.
While there are similarities in the way the brain functions while doing both, they are not the same. Reading has a completely different skill set, and they are not the same thing at all.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:I am sorry, but the fundamental act reading is different than that of listening. Reading describes a specific act, and listening describes another.
There are differences, but they're fundamentally the same -- consuming a novel.
quote:Reading has a completely different skill set
posted
Maybe it's like riding a bike vs. walking -- they're fundamentally the same if your goal is to get somewhere (consume the story/book), but completely different is the goal is the activity itself.
Personally, I read for the story, not the reading. They're the same to me.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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One positive thing that came out of my having to learn to like audiobooks is that in the end, I got more out of the book. At one time, I was very good at reading quickly to get the gist of the information. I would skim over boring parts rather than read every word.
now I read (listen to) every word of a story. it's quite a different experience. Even if most of those words are description rather than the meat of the story, i feel like i am getting much more out of it.
But that's probably due to my reading style. I was always so impatient to get to the end, especially of a good book!
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