Ages old debate of reading vs. listening to books

Originally Posted by issybird

An opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday weighs in: Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?

This sounds right to me:

Sounds right to me too. The book I'm currently reading, The British in India is one in which I often find myself going back up the page to double check a detail like a name or a date, and then there's all the footnotes which have me jumping to and from the last third of the book several times per page. All of this is trivially easy to do in an ebook, but I imagine it would be less so in an audiobook.

[barryem]

I've been reading books for about 74 years now. I've also listened to a LOT of audiobooks as well as reading ebooks in the past 40 or 50 years. I began listening to audio literature on Caedmon records. I began reading ebooks before they were called ebooks.

A little while ago I browsed through a list of the 100 books you should read in your lifetime and I think I read maybe 1/3 of those books. Some I listened to. Most I read. In a number of cases I can't recall which I did. I both read and listened to several of them.

If it matters how I experienced them I can't tell it.

With lots of reading and listening behind me I can't really convince myself that reading and listening are the same thing. They are different although I don't think I can state what those differences are. It probably varies with each book and each narrator. But I can see no reason to think one is superior to the other.

Listening is probably, at times at least, a bit more focused. The narrator is driving and setting the pace. He's also read the book already and his knowledge of what's to come affects his phrasing and emphasis and probably gives me a little extra insight.

Reading myself let's me stop more easily to think about what's being said.

So both have their advantages. They're simply not the same experience.

My preference is for reading visually. I still do both but I read a LOT more than I listen. That's a personal preference and if I could only listen I'd be happy enough with that.

The argument about which is better can never be answered. The only answer ever is a personal one.

Barry

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

An opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday weighs in: Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?

This sounds right to me:

It sounds right to me to, and it's pretty much what the listeners in this thread have been saying all along. Without rereading the thread, I believe the pro-listening folks repeatedly said that we are talking about adults listening to books for entertainment, not people who are learning to read or people who are attempting to study and comprehend complex material.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by barryem

I've been reading books for about 74 years now. I've also listened to a LOT of audiobooks as well as reading ebooks in the past 40 or 50 years. I began listening to audio literature on Caedmon records. I began reading ebooks before they were called ebooks.

I can't help but wonder what you were reading ebooks on in the 1968-1978 timeframe?

[Apache]

I love reading books and listening to audiobooks. To me they do the same thing using two different senses. I do not see any difference in the two when it comes to enjoying a good story.
Apache

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It sounds right to me to, and it's pretty much what the listeners in this thread have been saying all along. Without rereading the thread, I believe the pro-listening folks repeatedly said that we are talking about adults listening to books for entertainment, not people who are learning to read or people who are attempting to study and comprehend complex material.

Yes. Although I’m not “pro listening” as much as I’m anti-snobbery. There is absolutely nothing superior about reading a book verses listening ONCE you’ve learned to read.

I liken these “adults” crowing about reading as the same as adults bragging about wearing lace up shoes over loafers because it involves tying your shoes verses slipping them on. The time to be proud of tying one's shoes ends in kindergarten. Puffing oneself up due to reading should end about the fourth grade.

Perhaps WHAT you read might matter....but not THAT you read

Originally Posted by leebase

Perhaps WHAT you read might matter....but not THAT you read

And were this an audiobook, we'd actually be to HEAR the sound of a whole nother can of worms being opened.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by issybird

An opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday weighs in: Is Listening to a Book the Same Thing as Reading It?

This sounds right to me:

It's particularly interesting to me that when they give the "advantage" to print, what they mean is "print is easier; listening is harder". Which is in stark contrast to the baseless assertions in this thread that listening is easy and passive, as opposed to print which makes you work harder.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I can't help but wonder what you were reading ebooks on in the 1968-1978 timeframe?

I may have exaggerated a bit. I began reading ebooks on an HP95LX. I bought it in the year it was released in 1991, not long after it's release date. Someone wrote an app for reading books scanned to text called the Vertical Reader, probably in it's first year. So I probably began in 1991, maybe early 1992.

That said, if I had known about them I could have read them earlier. Michael Hart is thought to have originated ebooks in 1971 and founded Gutenberg in that same year. I wasn't aware of this till after I bought my HP95lx but if I had been I'd probably have been reading earlier.

Ebooks didn't become common until the Palm Pilot, sometime in 1992 or later. I got my first Palm about 1993 and by then they were all over the place on Palm sites. It was still a few years later before you could actually buy ebooks. I'm not allowed to talk about this much in here but commercial ebooks came into being when there were already a lot of people reading ebooks, mostly on Palms.

I think a small point of protest is needed here. I'm all for keeping this site honest but being unable to talk about the real history of ebooks doesn't really seem like a good way of doing it.

Barry

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by barryem

I may have exaggerated a bit. I began reading ebooks on an HP95LX. I bought it in the year it was released in 1991, not long after it's release date. Someone wrote an app for reading books scanned to text called the Vertical Reader, probably in it's first year. So I probably began in 1991, maybe early 1992.

My first memories of reading ebooks were text format on a CP/M system which also ran a BBS system (originally using CBBS).

Originally Posted by barryem

That said, if I had known about them I could have read them earlier. Michael Hart is thought to have originated ebooks in 1971 and founded Gutenberg in that same year. I wasn't aware of this till after I bought my HP95lx but if I had been I'd probably have been reading earlier.

I remember some ebooks from Project Gutenberg being published using file distribution through BBS systems in the late 70's/early 80's.

Originally Posted by barryem

Ebooks didn't become common until the Palm Pilot, sometime in 1992 or later. I got my first Palm about 1993 and by then they were all over the place on Palm sites. It was still a few years later before you could actually buy ebooks. I'm not allowed to talk about this much in here but commercial ebooks came into being when there were already a lot of people reading ebooks, mostly on Palms.

I remember reading on a Palm starting around the 1995 time frame though I had read plain text files on CP/M, DOS and OS/2 systems. I tend to agree that the ebooks available then might not have been "legitimate" but there was no other choice at the time. For the most part, you either scanned and converted your own books or you downloaded what others had scanned and converted. I would likely have done more downloading other people's work but I found that the quality level of the few I looked at weren't up to my not very demanding standards--at least, I think of them as not being very demanding. At the time, I did not consider scanning and converting my books for my personal use as being piracy and looking back, I still don't consider those actions as piracy since I owned the book and was format shifting it for my personal use. If that defence is good enough to audio recordings, it should be good enough for books.

The only commercial ebook I remember purchasing in the early 1990's was from one author who made some of his books available in electronic format as plain text files with a shareware pricing scheme. Most of the commercial ebooks available in the early and middle of that decade were simply of no interest to me.

From what I remember, the commercial ebook market really started--for me--in 1999 and I started buying books in electronic form. My wife remembers Romance.net(?) a few years earlier in 1996 though she made relatively few purchases until she borrowed an ereader from me. Most of my early purchases were from Baen's Webscription service since they were publishing books I wanted to read. Oddly, I still find Baen as among my favourite ebooks sources. What can I say? Jim Baen's stance on DRM, the Free Library, the books on CD bound into their hardcovers. The Free Library alone resulted in my purchasing quite a few other books either to finish a series I started there or from finding an author whose work I liked.

Originally Posted by barryem

I think a small point of protest is needed here. I'm all for keeping this site honest but being unable to talk about the real history of ebooks doesn't really seem like a good way of doing it.

I would agree that discussing the real history of ebooks should be permitted. As one of those who was there, it took a lot more work and time to convert an DTB to electronic format that it took me to earn the money to purchase an ebook--if it had been available.

[DiapDealer]

Talking about how you scanned and converted your own physical copies of books to ebooks for your own personal use is perfectly acceptable. Always has been. It's talking about how you (rhet.) shared them online with friends that's taboo.

Personal scanning and converting may have been the "real history" of ebooks, but sharing copyrighted books online was the real history of ebook piracy. That it may have felt like a labor of love to you (rhet.) is immaterial to that fact. The golden - "Before We Were Called Pirates" - age of online ebook-sharing that some like to harken back to with a sense of nostalgia is a myth. You (rhet.) were always pirates if you made them available on (or downloaded them from) whatever they called your corner of the internet back in your glory years.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Talking about how you scanned and converted your own physical copies of books to ebooks for your own personal use is perfectly acceptable. Always has been. It's talking about how you (rhet.) shared them online with friends that's taboo.

Personal scanning and converting may have been the "real history" of ebooks, but sharing copyrighted books online was the real history of ebook piracy. That it may have felt like a labor of love to you (rhet.) is immaterial to that fact. The golden - "Before We Were Called Pirates" - age of online ebook-sharing that some like to harken back to with a sense of nostalgia is a myth. You (rhet.) were always pirates if you made them available on (or downloaded them from) whatever they called your corner of the internet back in your glory years.

Not everything in this world is binary. By your definition, anyone who read an ebook prior to 1998 (Baen) or 2006 (Sony, then Amazon in 2007) was a pirate unless they were reading PD books. For many, who are not so rigid in their beliefs, there were a couple of different dividing lines between who is a pirate and who isn't.

At the time, one dividing line was, did you make money off any ebook you scanned. If you did, and you were not the copyright holder, you were a pirate.

Another dividing line was did you own a physical copy of the book. Some people held that if you owned a physical copy of the book, then you didn't necessarily have to scan it yourself. You might scan one book and someone else scan another book and you traded. As long as you were not paying, no one was making money and you owned physical copies of books that you downloaded and were not commercially available as ebooks, then you were not considered a pirate.

I think those dividing lines were at least defensible for the time period. Of course, things are very different now. It's a rare book that has come out in the last 10 years that isn't available as an ebook commercially.

One can argue about orphaned works. Personally, I would argue that the correct solution for orphaned works is to put them in a separate category and come up with a fair way to make orphaned works available and still protect the rights of the copyright holder if one turns up. But do that via legislation. Others may disagree, but that's fine. It's a difficult enough situation where people can legitimately disagree on how to handle it.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by meeera

It's particularly interesting to me that when they give the "advantage" to print, what they mean is "print is easier; listening is harder". Which is in stark contrast to the baseless assertions in this thread that listening is easy and passive, as opposed to print which makes you work harder.

As someone who found listening very much a learned skill and still has to work at keeping my attention especially as texts get more difficult, I'd have never said that listening is passive per se in the sense of being easy. However, it's undeniable that while listening you're getting another person's interpretation of the text and it was in this sense that I took passive to mean.

So what was interesting to me in the article is that it cites interpretation as a positive, as in the quote from Romeo and Juliet. Fair enough in that instance and I even agree that there are books where I prefer audio because the narration/interpretation is so entertaining. It doesn't bother me that I'm listening to an interpretation; I don't find that objectively a bad thing. But I must note that I don't find narrators entirely reliable, either. I'd never, ever trust a narrator's pronunciation, for example; I've heard far too many howlers. For me, pronunciation issues are the single major drawback to audiobooks. One will take me right out of the story for a bit; many will ruin a book. QC needs to be much better in that respect.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

As long as you were not paying, no one was making money and you owned physical copies of books that you downloaded and were not commercially available as ebooks, then you were not considered a pirate.

Not considered by whom? Those who shared the same proclivities? Or the public at large who knew nothing about it?

That no commercial etext was available, or the fact that someone already purchased a hard-copy was just as irrelevant then as it is now; RE uploading/downloading copyrighted material.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My first memories of reading ebooks were text format on a CP/M system which also ran a BBS system (originally using CBBS).

I remember some ebooks from Project Gutenberg being published using file distribution through BBS systems in the late 70's/early 80's.

I was pretty active on BBS systems in the 70's and 80's but I don't recall any books there. Maybe they were there and I didn't notice them. I don't think they can have been discussed much or I'm sure I would have noticed them.

[edit] I just realized this sounds skeptical. It's not. I was surprised by your comments about books on BBS and I was expressing that surprise. I don't doubt you at all.

Barry