[jppope]

Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either.

For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.

[PsylentKnight]

I agree that it’s a pretty different experience for fiction, where the subjective experience is everything and the narrator can color your experience a lot.

For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal

[jimmydddd]

I used to have a 45 minute driving commute each way to and from work. I listened to many non-fiction audio books (on cassette!)during that time and would often listen to them over and over many times. 20 years later I can still quote long portions of those books from memory. I can't do that with any print books. Definitely easier for me to listen to an audio book several times in a row than a print book.

[swed420]

Personally I like to highlight certain passages (non-fiction) for future reference, and this only works on ebooks.

[officeplant]

You can also bookmark audiobooks depending on the platform/playback application.

[loughnane]

Works on print too, no?

[swed420]

In a limited fashion, yes. But ebooks mean you can search highlights, categorize them, see summaries of them, etc if using calibre, zotero, or similar.

[dredmorbius]

Zettelkasten.

[swed420]

I love Zettlr for this!

[zanellato19]

The fact that people say "I've read 30 books last year" when they heard the book is absurd to me. It is a completely (and honestly quite interesting) medium. I've heard and then read a few books and the experiences are completely different. Also, one of mine biggest things for reading is to completely focus on the text, and the audio book is almost the antithesis of this, because most people like them so they can do chores/driving _and_ listen. Two completely different ways of experiencing the text.

[throwup238]

I also don’t think people realize how often they zone out while listening to audiobooks and miss important details. You can zone out while reading books too but with audiobooks there usually another stimulus by design.

[colechristensen]

>I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways.

Is this attitude a holdover from encouraging small children to read for themselves? I don't know if this is quite the right framing but are you... hearing-illterate to some degree?

Some voice actors definitely add a layer of interpretation, and some are distractingly bad, but otherwise it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears. Unless there was a need to physically interact with the book, quickly flipping between sections or keeping notes in the margin, which I rarely do.

"I didn't really get the full experience until I read it on the page instead of listening" is an absurd statement to me, but maybe people's brains work differently.

There are things missing from text that can be conveyed over audio or with body language in person certainly so those experiences can't be directly translated from real life to the page.

[dqv]

It's not a maybe. People's brains work differently.

For one thing, in the written version, it's way easier to scan backwards precisely to a point in the text to clarify missed details.

Sometimes I like to stop reading for a moment and take in the scenery. With an audiobook, the narrator has already decided to blurt out the next line. Or I'd have to quickly pause it and lose my train of thought. With reading I'm fully in control of when the next bit of information will be introduced.

Audiobooks are great for dialog-heavy stories, but sometimes I want to spend a little bit longer on a particular page when the author is building imagery... what's the equivalent of that in an audiobook, slowing the speech down? Except it's not about speed, it's about soaking in the particular meaning of a word (or string of words) before going onto the next.

I don't think this even scratches the surface of how different they are as mediums of storytelling.

[kriro]

Fair enough, I understand the UX/interacting with the medium argument. Regarding the processing in the brain, there's claims that "The Representation of Semantic Information Across Human Cerebral Cortex During Listening Versus Reading Is Invariant to Stimulus Modality", see: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/39/7722

The study has issues but at least the hypothesis of representing information independent of the modality you consumed it in seems like a decent default to me.

[dqv]

Yes, this is where the disagreement between the two camps arises. Some people view reading holistically while others are only concerned with the end result. If only the end result matters, it doesn't matter much how you got there.

This isn't a perfect comparison (since I believe there may be some underlying mechanical difference), but it's like how it's possible to get your nutritional needs met with liquid nutrition or eating whole foods. They have the same end result nutritionally, but some people find liquid nutrition to be horrible.

I think it's especially the case for harder-to-read books that I prefer the textual version. Some books are highly referential. They may take place in a country I'm not familiar with. Take The Stranger by Camus. I have never been to Algiers (or Algeria for that matter), so I want to get a feel for the beach in Algiers. Sometimes the author will refer to a flower I've never heard of, so I will look it up. Stuff like this is important to me for experiencing the story, but for others, it's not important. They use context clues to determine "it's a flower" and just fill in whatever flower they feel like putting there.

[telxosis]

I am sure people are very different in this area.

I love books and audiobooks and I experience absolutely no difference between the two but that is contingent on liking the voice actor's voice.

This year I have really moved to listening to all books read by the synthetic af_heart model. I love that voice so much. #1 Robertson Dean, #2 af_heart.

[jolmg]

> it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears.

With stories, probably. With nonstories, and depending on what kind of nonstory book, I might jump around a lot. I might like to skim quickly (e.g. chapters/sections, starting sentences of every few paragraphs, etc.), then skim more thoroughly (e.g. recheck paragraphs of a chapter to get a general flow of it and how they connect, etc.), then read thoroughly on some sections and less others. You just can't do that with audiobooks. You don't have the same level of control.

Depending on how thought-provoking something is, my mind may stray on thinking of implications. Then, it's easier for my eyes to dart back by the time I notice and reread x or y, than rewinding, listening a little bit, rewind some more, etc. I might just stare at some words sometimes. You can't stare at sound.

Memory in relation to sight and sound is probably different, too. With sight you can kind of make more associations. You read an idea, and you can associate that with the location of where you're reading it (what part of the page, around how many pages have been turned in the chapter, what chapter, thickness of pages on left and right side of the spine). With sound, it's just a single stream. You're not staring at the timestamp location in the file of everything you're hearing and there isn't like this hierarchical location structure.

[wahnfrieden]

I often pause and reflect. Or replay a couple pages or start over with a chapter. Not totally alien to what you’re describing, but most people aren’t so hands on with audio controls, sure. Though you can choose to be with the right tools for it.

[jolmg]

Yeah, the benefit of audiobooks is being able to do it while doing chores or being out and about. The medium's ideal for being hands-off.

[microflash]

> Audiobooks are just a different medium.

When I read I build internal voices of the characters or narrators through the pages as a part of my imagination engaging with the words of the book. With audiobooks this never happens.

[matwood]

Agree. I'll listen to nonfiction because it just feels like a long podcast. Fiction I always read. But in general I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks.

[hahahaa]

A good non fiction book should take a year to "read" though. Because you'll need to stop, reread, scribble, look up online for other help. It should be a challenge!

[picklesman]

Depends highly on the subject matter

[nephihaha]

Audiobooks are heavily dependent on the reader. In one case, I had an audiobook where the translator was the reader. She is an excellent translator but a poor reader.

Many authors are poor readers of their own work.

They are certainly good while you are on a long drive etc, because they entertain you while doing some another task which you wouldn't be able to do while reading. During lockdown, I could not read due to the constant stress and fear mongering, but I had to walk a lot every day and the audiobooks were a good way to accompany that.

[estetlinus]

+1

The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Stephen Kings On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, read by the author. One of our times best storytellers, both when it comes to writing them and telling them.

[nephihaha]

I've a soft spot for that book because it saved me from two days of very long and dreary jury service. (They kept us sitting around all that time.) I think I read at least a third of it in there. The only court stuff I heard was for about ten minutes and incredibly unexciting.

[arach]

I've been building a little app on the side that allows me to primarily read my books in epub, mobi or pdf -> text format but generate readouts on demand for only the bits I want (highlight, paragraph, page, chapter) so that I can continue while I'm on the go, without having to bifurcate between apps - this might already exist but I made mine

Naturally, I also added the ability to highlight, leave notes and ... ask questions (via API)

Even with incredible models, it's a decent amount of work to get this to work nicely

[boznz]

When I write a character, I picture not just the character but the voice, same with reading, and going from a paper or eBook to an audio book usually breaks both. Books I write rarely include characters from Manchester (UK), so reading voices with my strong accent would definitely break a lot of my books. It is also the reason I sometimes don't enjoy movies if I have read the book. It is not a one way street though, some really good narrators can improve the experience a lot, same with good directors.