[grozzle]

I can imagine using TTS to catch up on news articles, magazine articles, reviewing a textbook, maybe even listening to opinion columns while out on the go or multitasking with my Photoshop time, but I can't imagine it doing anything except ruining a novel, or anything else involving drama or comedy.

[catalogia]

Far from ruining novels, it's quite pleasant. After you've become accustomed to it, it becomes a very low-fatigue way to read for extended periods of time. I find books read by TTS are just as immersive as reading print. In fact the experience of TTS and reading print seem closer to me than print vs audiobooks.

I guess what I'm saying is don't underestimate neuroplasticity. I wager you could even achieve casual fluency with morse code if you listened to it long enough. I'm under the impression that some telegraph operators did.

[air7]

That's really interesting. Basically the audiobook is more of an interpretation of the text. It's perhaps closer to a movie adaptation. Once you lose the exception for the TTS to "tell you a story" but rather to "tell you the words", it becomes just a different input stream. I didn't think about it like that until now. I'll give it a try.

[gxqoz]

I listen to a lot of non-fiction in TTS but I haven't found it all that satisfactory for novels. Although part of the reason is if I'm listening to a novel via TTS it's because there isn't an audiobook available and I've had to do some hacky OCR to get the text in the first place.

[pnutjam]

I do this as well. I used Samsung's TTS engine at first, but Google's has mostly caught up. As a bonus, I can switch between listening (in the car or working out) and reading (most other times) without losing my place.