[drjd]

Originally Posted by issybird

I found that listening to audiobooks was a learned skill. It took effort, it took concentration, and I had to refocus frequently. I got better at it, but even now I can zone out. It was/is worth the effort for me.

I think I was not patient enough to carry on the efforts and practice the art of listening painstakingly. I guess nowadays I read the books (be it fiction or non-fiction) more casually and not like serious students who want to learn something out of them.

Originally Posted by issybird

My suggestions, if you want to try again, would be to try professional narration instead of TTS and to start with mindless books, light fiction, or something you already know well so you don't lose the thread. You can listen to OverDrive books for free through a smart phone or tablet, so that you don't have to make an investment in more equipment or the audiobooks themselves.

That is a good suggestion, thanks. I'll try it out soon as I find a reasonable free time to spend on learning this art.

Originally Posted by issybird

If you want to wonder over to the Audiobooks forum, I'm sure we'd all be happy to recommend favorite narrators/books!

Never been to that forum. Sure I'll drop in there and thanks for the invite, issybird!

Originally Posted by Larla

I think the biggest difference between reading a book and listening to an audiobook is the loss of control you have while listening. The words continue to come at you while listening without you be able to control the action. You can't (easily) re-listen to a word that you are confused about and if something attracts your attention while listening you will definitely miss some content.

Sure, you can stop and rewind, etc. but very few do that and if you had to do it much at all you wouldn't enjoy the listening session. While reading text, it is a trivial operation to reread something and even looking up a word in the dictionary is pretty simple.

This! Exactly this is another reason for my aversion to listening books. One has to do a lot of excercise to re-listen a word, a piece of text or a paragraph to fully absorb it and it becomes more cumbersome for a non-native speaker like me. To follow this process while physically reading a book is obviously much simpler.

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I think, because we're mostly much more used to reading texts than listening to unabridged audiobooks, both singularly, culturally and historically.....

Very true, I agree. The tradition or habit has taken hundred of years and many generations to evolve.

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Two suggestions that might help. My mind wanders like yours, I think because the reading isn't moving quickly enough to force it to concentrate. You could speed up the playback until you don't have time to wander, and/or you could do something else to occupy your mind's excess capacity. Listen while you're doing something else that prevents you from reading, like cooking or whittling or playing solitaire. Like issybird.

I'll sure keep this trick in my mind for my next attempt to listen a book! Thanks!