[peteforde]

Audiobooks, borrowed for free from my library and listened to via the excellent Libby app, have been a life-line over the past four years.

I went from 3-4 books a year to 3-4 books a week, sometimes more. I listen in the bathroom, while exercising, cooking, cleaning, cycling, gardening.

My listening speed is typically 1.75x for dense prose and hard science, all the way up to 2.5x for fiction and biographies. The secret is to score a great pair of earbuds; I recommend Jabra Elite 75t. The further the sound is from your ear, the harder it is to parse speech at high speed.

You don't start at 2.5x, obviously; start at 1.25x and increase every day or two until you start to zone out. You'll be pleasantly shocked at how quickly you'll ramp up. 1x sounds like the performer overdosed on benzos.

In the past year, I've listened to everything Haruki Murakami has written, the entire Wheel of Time series (4.4M words vs 19D5H), and several hundred others.

For free.

And yes, I still read paper books, too. Sometimes.

[hamburglar]

I've never really gotten into audiobooks, but my pace of reading paper books has fallen off considerably lately, since I've fallen into a pattern of simply falling asleep when I pick up a book. My girlfriend loves audiobooks because she can "read" while doing chores or walking or whatever, and reads constantly. So I've been considering trying that out, and I have questions for you.

First, does this work very well for technical books? I would imagine not very well. Anytime you came across a code sample, a table of information or a diagram, I assume the audiobook rendition of it would be effectively useless. So perhaps the audio approach completely excludes technical reading?

Second, do you ever shake the feeling that having a book read to you is somehow qualitatively not as good as reading it from the page? I feel like seeing the written words on the page and the shapes of the sentences and the punctuation and having to interpret the tone and rhythm yourself is part of the experience of consuming literature. Does hearing it feel ... less to you? Is it the kind of thing that you just learn to get over, or does it stick with you? Or perhaps it was never an issue at all?

[danenania]

I like both paper and audio books, but for me I generally feel a bit less engaged with audio, I think, for a couple reasons.

One is that someone else is deciding on the pacing. With paper books, I tend to take a lot more pauses to think things over or savor something particularly insightful, dramatic, funny, or what-have-you in the story. I could just pause the audio for the same effect, but there seems to be an inertia when someone else is reading that stops me from doing it as often.

Second is that it's a lot easier with audio to pay less than full attention. If I realize I haven't been fully listening for some period of time, either because of an external distraction or because my mind has gone off on some tangent, I'm less likely to go back because of the annoyance of trying scrub back to the exact location where I tuned out. This creates a tendency to shrug it off and keep going, which adds up to a lower level of absorption overall.

With a physical book, it's much easier to backtrack and re-read sections, and I'm a lot less likely to zone out in the first place since I have to actively read each sentence. Of course, sometimes I do realize that I've been visually 'reading' a paragraph or two while my mind is actually somewhere else, but I seem to snap out of it a lot quicker with a physical book than with audio, and it only takes a second to jump back up the page and re-read (much quicker than finding my exact point of departure in the audio).

[mahogany]

> Second, do you ever shake the feeling that having a book read to you is somehow qualitatively not as good as reading it from the page?

Why would it be? I get where you're coming from, as I generally prefer reading over audiobooks, but it may be good to remember that story-telling began as an oral tradition. I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down.

We live in a time where we predominantly use and prefer the sense of sight, especially as a means of information transfer, but maybe we should let hearing have some fun too. :)

[hamburglar]

> I don't see why reading a story would be superior to having someone tell you a story. I doubt The Odyssey was a lesser experience before it was written down.

Well I don't think it necessarily has to be lesser, especially if it's designed to be verbally delivered, but it's a different art form, and it's not how most literature was created to be delivered. So it seems fairly obvious that you're going to lose something in the translation. The question is just whether or not that something that is lost is significant enough to care about.

[mahogany]

> Well I don't think it necessarily has to be lesser, especially if it's designed to be verbally delivered, but it's a different art form, and it's not how most literature was created to be delivered.

That's a fair point. However, when I write, I often read it aloud in my head, so I'm always "checking" that things sound good verbally in a way. I'm not sure how common that is, but it does seem to me that since writing is ultimately modeled after speaking, it's intimately linked with it.

Back to the audio books, I will say that I've had a hit or miss experience. Not only does the quality depend on the writing itself, but it also depends heavily on the narrator. An example of an audio book I listened to recently which I think is fantastically done is Moby Dick narrated by William Hootkins. The narrator injects a passion and perspective that I originally did not pick up on while reading it.

[hamburglar]

As an example, I've noticed when reading books to my kids that certain styles of writing lend themselves very poorly to being read aloud. An example is when the writer chooses to write pieces of dialog as alternating series of quotes missing directions like "Fred said" or whatever. Just literally what is said by each person in quotation marks. It's hard to read this aloud and convey who is saying what without trying to do funny voices or adding in the "stage directions" yourself.

[AlbertCory]

Funny. My books do have a lot of dialog, and when I was considering narrating them myself, I realized that it's not as easy as it looks. People do have to do the voices. A good narrator is used to it.

When you audition narrators on ACX, you provide a two-minute sample for them to read. I picked one with all three of the major characters, male and female, to hear how he did it. My guy is good.

[cscheid]

> do you ever shake the feeling that having a book read to you is somehow qualitatively not as good as reading it from the page?

I can't answer for OP, but I did spend a year commuting a bunch and got through ~60 books or so that way.

I went from having time for 10-15 books a year to having time for ~60 books a year, so yes, you do miss a little. But not ~50 books worth of missing. It's easily worth it.

[user3939382]

> First, does this work very well for technical books?

I just laughed imaging a professional voice actor reading out a block of code in a stately voice, complete with all the punctuation. "public function getName(Person $user)" xD

[AlbertCory]

See my comment above. I did exactly that with Inventing the Future.

Maxwell didn't know how to read Mesa, of course, but I gave him the audio for how to read it. Just imagine what a CS professor would do if they read the code off a whiteboard, and do that.

[hamburglar]

Well, the difference is that there's no whiteboard. If you're reading code off a whiteboard, you can shorthand over obvious things like brackets and indentation and whatnot, whereas trying to get a listener to picture a piece of code just by verbally describing it would take a lot more. I agree with your conclusion in the other comment that a lot of code would become unwieldy, but small snippets here and there are ok.

[AlbertCory]

For sure. I can't judge what a listener would grasp since I do have the text in front of me, but at least the code is mercifully short.

[peteforde]

Audiobooks do frequently come with PDF content, but depending on what you mean by "technical", there's lots of books that I wouldn't even attempt. Something code-heavy makes less-than-zero sense as an audiobook, even if the idea of hiring a voice actor to read git diffs sounds like something John Oliver would do.

As for maps and charts, well, I listen to a lot of books that fall into behavioural economics and there are definitely times where the author is talking about charts and tables where I know that I could and probably should look up whatever PDF, but since I'm currently using a mattock to remove large root bundles from what used to be a hedge, it's not happening and I forgive myself for the transgression.

I want to say that, even as a voracious audiobook reader, I still struggle with what to call it. Not just because "reading" no longer feels quite right, but because of the fucking air-quotes. Remember online dating used to be this awkward, shameful thing that was seen as "not as good" even though the outcomes were the same? That same snooty stigma still surrounds audiobooks, and if you can't tell, it kind of pisses me off for similar reasons. It all comes down to "nobody is making you do it, but don't think for a second that I'm going to let you make me feel like I'm doing something weird by doing it". (I say this knowing 100% that you mean well.)

The truth is that the fears you're expressing in the third paragraph are in fact projections of your own insecurities as a reader and listener. Reading by listening is wonderful; it's mostly the same, but interesting in the ways that it's different. If you find yourself zoning out or losing focus, either drink more caffeine or listen to something that is more interesting to you. These things are your own temporary inadequacies, not an inherent property of listening to books. If you stick with it - and choose stuff well-suited to the form - you, too, will come to love it.

ps. Good earbuds make it super easy to pause, and good player software makes it easy to jump back. Would I love to see Overdrive (the company behind Libby) make it possible to sync an ebook to an audiobook so you could see the word currently being read highlit and click to jump to an arbitrary moment? Sure, that would be one cool trick. Maybe that'll come.

[AlbertCory]

I hired a voice actor, Maxwell Glick, to do the audiobooks for my two books (https://www.amazon.com/Audible-The-Big-Bucks/dp/B0BDBG5VNP/r... is the latest. Your speed is interesting, because when I was reviewing his work, I only used 1.5x. Any faster sounded like a cartoon character and I might miss nuances in the dialog, among other things.

Someone else mentioned code samples. Fortunately I only had a couple Mesa samples in Inventing the Future and I actually gave him some audio for the way to read them. My guideline was "how would a CS professor read this in class?"

There IS a "pronouncing Mesa" epilogue to the manual, which helped. But a book with a whole lot of code in it? I don't think that would work.

[peteforde]

The books I tend to listen to share two things in common: they are in English, and they don't have large code samples. I don't doubt that there are excellent non-fiction books with source code - heck, probably some fiction as well - but listening at any speed sounds like something I wouldn't do unless my eyes were disabled.

In addition to (good) earbuds and practice listening at higher speeds, I suspect that not all pitch correction algos are created equal. If you are simply speeding up audio without correcting for pitch, it's going to sound like a cartoon even at 1.25x.

However, the main thing is concentration. I do not perceive that the words are sped up, because I am very actively listening to it while doing wrote, repetitive things. I have to stop the audio if I'm doing anything that requires any attention, computation or decision making whatsoever.

Cooking soup? No problem. Following a recipe? NOPE. Picking up vegetables? Sure. Reading ingredients? Not a chance. Biking on a path? Sure. Driving? Not a chance.

[metafunctor]

Wow, that's a lot of books!

Assuming 10% of those books are, in some way, in your opinion, better than the other 90%, what would you say were the best couple of dozen books you've listened to? How much would you say the performer affects your perception of the book?

[peteforde]

Great questions. I'm going to compile a list for you, and I don't do anything half-way so I hope you check back in a few days and let me know what you liked later on.

Great performers tend to be great, at the risk of being reductive and tongue-in-cheek. There are certainly mediocre talents out there, but most people working in that (rapidly growing) industry are really great. I do see names popping up so there's probably awards being given out for audiobook performances at this point.

However, the real question you didn't ask is how big of a deal is it for the author to read their own books. Truth be told, if you don't know the author's voice today, chances are the content would be better served by hiring an excellent voice talent.

For the authors whose voices you do know... it's hard to imagine a David Sedaris book being read by anyone except David Sedaris (except Tracy Ullman, which will be relevant when my recommendations come). It's not just biographies that need to be read by their authors to be properly enjoyed; everyone from Neil deGrasse Tyson to John Waters bring so much to their books. Whereas I'd pay good money to never listen to Neal Stephenson read anything again. Great dude, but he should stick to writing.

There are even books that are made better because they are read by their author. See: Werner Herzog's The Twilight World.

[jpmattia]

> I recommend Jabra Elite 75t.

Discontinued as of this month: "FYI Our current top pick, the Jabra Elite Active 75t, has been discontinued and is no longer available."

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-workout-head...

[peteforde]

This makes about as much sense as cancelling Arrested Development and Firefly.

While I'm confident that there are other earbuds, I'm tempted to hit eBay right now to pick up a spare set. They are that good.