Listening is the new reading

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by barryem

Good analogy. So if I walk to MacDonalds and you swim there and we each order the same thing, which of us gets the better burger?

Barry

Me, mostly because you can't swim to a McDonalds, so I'll have to eat at some gourmet beach burger bar somewhere

[theducks]

Originally Posted by barryem

Good analogy. So if I walk to MacDonalds and you swim there and we each order the same thing, which of us gets the better burger?

Barry

You do.
His will be soggy from all the drips

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Me, mostly because you can't swim to a McDonalds, so I'll have to eat at some gourmet beach burger bar somewhere

No, but in one town, there are days you could swim to the pizza place.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

I can see where you'd leave things out if the audiobook is done as a performance, but not if it's a simple reading. I'd think a reading would use all the words, wouldn't it?

I'd love to hear about some of the "tricks of the trade" in recording books.

I've never been part of that trade. I participated in the forum as a listener. Wait, I mean reader.

This forum was active for more than a decade and some of the participants were top narrators such as Frank Muller, George Guidall, Simon Vance, Will Patton, Scott Brick, Anna Fields, Grover Gardner and Barbara Rosenblatt. Most of these participated daily.

There were recording engineers and representatives of the publishers. The guy who handled Stephen King's books was a daily participant, although I can't recall his name. I should because he was nearly always angry at me.

Anyway they discussed things like how to change the very least in a book to make it a palatable audiobook. I don't remember a lot of details about that but it mostly involved removing things like "he said" and "she said" when they were superfluous and made the narration awkward.

Another favorite topic was the pronunciation of names. There were a lot of problems associated with names, especially in situations where a place name is a common word but is pronounced in an uncommon way by local people. I ran into an example of that yesterday when someone mentioned a neighboring county, Saline County, pronouncing it as though it meant salt. Everyone around here has a different pronunciation and she was corrected. The strange thing is that now I have saline as in salty in my mind and I can't recall the locally correct pronunciation.

I found that to be a fascinating forum; one of the best I've been in. It was very active and never let up. There was always something going on. There were often heated discussions but they always stayed friendly and polite and that never took monitoring to achieve. It just sort of happened.

They didn't have rules there about discussing piracy or even advocating piracy, although being a publishers association sponsored forum there weren't many there who would advocate that. I once mentioned that I always made copies for my own use of Audible books with the DRM removed and I quickly received a call from an Audible lawyer who politely insisted that I not mention that again. I didn't.

Unfortunately the Audio Publisher's Association decided to shut it down. I think that was because of a new officer in the association but I didn't know enough about their internal politics to really know if that was just a rumor.

It was a beautiful thing while it lasted. I still miss it.

Barry

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The reason I choose not to use it myself is that I see reading as an “active” activity, but listening as a “passive” one. It’s the same difference, to my mind, that exists between playing a musical instrument yourself, and listening to someone else play one. As a listener, you are simply a consumer of someone else’s performance, whether that performance be the musician playing the instrument, or the narrator reading the book. When you read a book or play an instrument, on the other hand, you are creating the performance yourself. I regard these as entirely distinct activities.

I think this strikes to the heart of why some may think it's subtly condescending to be told one can't read an audiobook, despite how much others may insist that no one is suggesting it isn't any worse to consume a book by ears rather than eyes.

I also disagree with your assessment. Playing an instrument would be akin to someone narrating a book aloud. In fact, thinking over it, I don't believe reading with eyes is any more active than reading/listening with ears. The only absolute difference in activity is that, since the printed words are spread out on a page, one must move one's eyes around to gather in the words. However, it is possible (and now a reality with certain apps) that one could read a book by having one word flash at a time in the exact same spot, thus eliminating the need altogether to actually move one's eyes at all. Either way, there is nothing more active about consuming a word or sentence through the eyes than through the ears; in both cases one takes in the information and must make sense of it in the brain.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

In fact, thinking over it, I don't believe reading with eyes is any more active than reading/listening with ears.

It's "active" in the sense that you're in control of the process. When you listen, you are playing a completely passive role; the narrator is the person doing the reading, and you're the audience.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's "active" in the sense that you're in control of the process. When you listen, you are playing a completely passive role; the narrator is the person doing the reading, and you're the audience.

You're controlling the process the same. When you read a printed book you can start or stop or go backwards or forwards to a point as you like. When you listen to/read an audiobook, you can start or stop or go backwards or forwards to a point as you like.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

You're controlling the process the same. When you read a printed book you can start or stop or go backwards or forwards to a point as you like. When you listen to/read an audiobook, you can start or stop or go backwards or forwards to a point as you like.

That's what we're going to continue to disagree on, I'm afraid. I enjoy listening to audiobooks very much, but for me, "listening" is not - and will never be - "reading". Other people have different opinions. That's fine. I'm not trying to force my opinion on anyone else; just saying how I regard the matter.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's what we're going to continue to disagree on, I'm afraid. I enjoy listening to audiobooks very much, but for me, "listening" is not - and will never be - "reading". Other people have different opinions. That's fine. I'm not trying to force my opinion on anyone else; just saying how I regard the matter.

Right now, though, we're discussing whether listening to an audiobook is less active than reading a printed book. It's a similar subject but very distinct and perhaps even more to the heart of the discussion. Perhaps on this we'll also have to agree to disagree, as I see the view that it's less active to use one's ears to consume a book as subtly condescending especially to those who consume a majority of their books by audio, and even if those with that view also enjoy audiobooks.

[Lemurion]

As far as I'm concerned, there's no real difference in whether a person listened to an audiobook or read a printed codex, so I don't have an issue with someone saying that they "read" a book when they listened to the audiobook.

At the same time, I can't follow the thought that listening is reading. To me it's like saying swimming is bicycling. It's not that one is better than the other; it's that they are completely different activities.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

Right now, though, we're discussing whether listening to an audiobook is less active than reading a printed book. It's a similar subject but very distinct and perhaps even more to the heart of the discussion. Perhaps on this we'll also have to agree to disagree, as I see the view that it's less active to use one's ears to consume a book as subtly condescending especially to those who consume a majority of their books by audio, and even if those with that view also enjoy audiobooks.

I'm with Harry on the audiobook being less of an active experience, for the simple reason of tempo, when you are reading you can go at any pace you can handle, when you listen it's at the pace of the narrator.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I think this strikes to the heart of why some may think it's subtly condescending to be told one can't read an audiobook, despite how much others may insist that no one is suggesting it isn't any worse to consume a book by ears rather than eyes.

I also disagree with your assessment. Playing an instrument would be akin to someone narrating a book aloud. In fact, thinking over it, I don't believe reading with eyes is any more active than reading/listening with ears. The only absolute difference in activity is that, since the printed words are spread out on a page, one must move one's eyes around to gather in the words. However, it is possible (and now a reality with certain apps) that one could read a book by having one word flash at a time in the exact same spot, thus eliminating the need altogether to actually move one's eyes at all. Either way, there is nothing more active about consuming a word or sentence through the eyes than through the ears; in both cases one takes in the information and must make sense of it in the brain.

I agree that there may be negligible difference in effort for fluent decoders* however there is a significant difference for less fluent decoders. If I want my beginning reader to be able to discuss the plot of a book or if I want to her to remember a bit of science or geography then I need to read written material to her rather then have her read it herself as she will put so much effort into decoding the individual words that she literally loses the plot.

Many people hit a point when written material becomes as effortless as audio material and for some people the situation eventually reverses itself with written being less effort then audio.

Ironically, I would advise someone who is not trying to improve decoding fluency to consume material in the manner that takes less effort so that they can obtain the fullest understanding of the material. And even if they are working on improving their decoding I would advise doing a lot of listening while reading.

*decoding = the ability to figure out what a written word means/is. BTW I'd vote to keep the distinction between reading and listening simply to make the above paragraphs easier to write.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I'm with Harry on the audiobook being less of an active experience, for the simple reason of tempo, when you are reading you can go at any place you can handle, when you listen it's at the pace of the narrator.

It is possible to change audio speeds to suit oneself, but I don't think ease of changing temp correlates to how active an activity is.

For example, suppose there were a woman on a programmed treadmill going a fixed speed. Is her running any less active than another woman running on a track at any speed she likes, and even when the woman on a treadmill may be running faster?

Or, inversely, if someone were reading book text with an app that changes sections of text at a particular fixed speed, is this any less active than someone reading at whichever speed they like?

[arjaybe]

If I was asked if I had read a particular book and I had only listened to the audiobook, I think I'd say something like, "No, but I've listened to the audiobook." I would have to specify because it would be necessary to answer the question, safely assuming that the person asking the question meant the text version. And I would mention the audiobook in case they wanted to talk about the story.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by barryem

Anyway they discussed things like how to change the very least in a book to make it a palatable audiobook. I don't remember a lot of details about that but it mostly involved removing things like "he said" and "she said" when they were superfluous and made the narration awkward.

Another favorite topic was the pronunciation of names ...

It was a beautiful thing while it lasted. I still miss it.

Barry

Thanks for that insight. I understand streamlining the text to make it smoother in the spoken version. I've also noticed while making recordings that sometimes you need "he said" where you might not in the print version. It's actually affected the way I write my stories to know that I'm going to be recording them later. There are shortcuts you can take in text that you can't in audio.

Pronunciation. That's one place where a writer has the advantage in reading their own work. And emphasis. Tone. Other narrators can make a good guess, but the writer knows. Pronunciation of regular words and place names not invented by the author on the other hand ...

I hate it when something beautiful dies.

rjb