‘Reading’ audio books while on vacation
July 19th, 2007I am on vacation. This time I decided I would not take books along with me: just audio-books in my mp3 player. Although I had already relied on audio-books for my bicycle commuting time, I had never taken them seriously enough to bring them as my only holiday reading. This week, I have ‘read’ Michael Connelly’s ‘The Lincoln Lawyer‘, which is a 21st century version of Roman Noir à la LA Confidential. Next week’s read: I am downloading Huckleberry Finn while I am writing this.
I will tell you more when I come back, but this one week was a revelation of sorts. Audio-books are a completely new reading experience:
- It is easier to enjoy the language
- The pace is much slower: it is like walking instead of flying
- I cannot read faster when there is more suspense
- I can read in many circumstances where a book is inappropriate: on a bus inching up its way up a mountain on a winding road, I can read without feeling nausea, and I can still watch the landscape; at night in a sleeping-car, I can read while lying awake, without bothering fellow travelers with the light; on a beach, when the sun makes it impossible to read from white paper, etc…
- I can still read while doing something else (something that does not require too much concentration): cooking, packing, waiting for other family members to be ready for whatever we will be doing today, …
Today, I found LibriVox, and I am really contemplating volunteering as a reader to contribute. If you know some French, you might be able to hear me read a book to you in a near future.
Mandarine, after years of snobbishly deriding audio books as being an inferior medium, I am now completely won over by them, for all the reasons that you list. Although the suspense one is sometimes too much for me. And I think both Emily and I can absolutely recommend Jeremy Irons reading Lolita
I have a very fickle relationship with audiobooks. I love them for many of the reasons you note, like being able to do other things while “reading,” but I often have a harder time concentrating on them (I’m just not an aural learner, I guess), and it’s very annoying if I miss something and have to go back and “read” through stuff again I didn’t miss to get to the bit I missed. The slow pace sometimes drives me nuts. I’m very, very picky about narraters and have discovered “the oral typo”: words or names being misprounounced or emphasis put on the wrong words. All that being said, I couldn’t live without them for the long drive when I go to and from the office; I certainly love being able to enjoy a book while walking without having to worry about bumping into or tripping over things, and Becky’s right: Jeremy Irons reading Lolita is fantastic. And you’re so right about being able to enjoy the language more.
Becky: although the double-speed on my mp3 reader still allows me to understand, it is not as good as plain old page-flipping when suspense becomes unbearable.
Emily: Yes. Oral typos are painful. In my very favorite passage of Proust, the narrator pronouces the word ‘mail’ (which is a disused French word for a small lane with trees on both sides, and which should be pronouced ‘my’) like mail (as in e-mail).
Great to know that you like Librivox. I found it a few months ago, and listened to half of Anthony Trollope’s “The Warden” from their archives. It is a double-edged sword though, since the mood of the novel which is generally conveyed directly to the reader is now dependent on the abilities of a third party.
I’m currently contributing a chapter to Howards End. My diction is quite pedestrian, but I hope to improve as time goes by. I feel responsible for how listeners might respond to Howards End, and that makes me want to do a good job.
I am not sure, but I think I could enjoy an audio-book even if it was read by a machine. All I need is to have the raw text conveyed by a non-visual input channel, and then I can process it as usual. Maybe I will try one of those machine generated audio-books available from project gutenberg and see whether I can confirm the above.
Anyway, I will download Howard’s End as soon as your chapter is available…
I adore audio books and they are very good for my French. Please, please do tell me if you record something as I’d love to hear it.
If I ever go down that path, I will have to ask technical advice from you among podcasters. Maybe I’ll try a few short stories — I’d love to read Maupassant’s or Daudet’s work. I am not sure I am any good at reading, but I reckon a dull audio-book is still better than none, until a true actor does the job properly.