Audiobooks are a great way to increase your book intake considerably. "Reading" while washing dishes, other house chores and commuting can easily get you through 2-3 extra books a month (depending on the length of the commute :)
Especially now that (more often than not) you can attach Audible books to your Kindle books for a fairly trivial price, and whispersync for voice means you can hop back and forth between reading and listening. Now, any time I'm using my eyes and hands, but not my ears and mind, I'm listening to books--increased my reading rate by a lot.
I've listened to 2 or 3 Audiobooks and nearly every one of them (short of Wheaton reading his own "Just A Geek") was unbearable to listen to. I don't know what the percentage of readers interject their own "emphasis" outside of just reading the words, but it's too many for my tastes.
I don't want a robot to read the book, but I also don't want the reader adding "color" by reading some characters with different voices (or - as i've heard in some cases - multiple readers each "in character").
James Marsters reads the Dresden Files books and he is amazing. It really is a performance by a good actor and (IMHO) adds to the book. He does use "voices" for different characters and it works really well. Most other readers will try to do this has well. It can be hit or miss.
A really good ensemble book is World War Z by Max Brooks. The cast is incredible (Alan Alda, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, and more)
I just finished listening to "am I being too subtle" by and read by Sam Zell. Initially I was slightly put off by the authors raspy Chicago tones but by the end it really felt like the author had been telling his stories to you personally with the colour and character that one would pick up in person and I was glad to have heard this telling rather than as you say a 'robot'
E-book readers like Kindle are another neat trick. In my case, it increased the amount of reading sixfold, because it's just so convenient to read on an e-book reader during commute, waiting in queues, or just going down the street.
Benefits of an e-book reader over a phone or a tablet include a better screen for reading, and it being a dedicated device that doesn't distract you with notifications or the ability to start browsing random shit on the Internet.
Since I mostly read non-fiction I find 1.5 a bit too fast if I want to really comprehend stuff without hitting replay all the time, so I just hear all books at 1.25 and it works well for me.
Yea it can be. But really depends on both the book and the reader. And what you're trying to get out of it.
Some readers are excruciatingly slow, so 1.25 just makes them sound normal. Other readers speed along, so 1x is like 1.5x on other books.
Some books need to be played at 1x if you're gonna follow the intricacies. Others with neither dense logical argument or thick, nuanced soul, like bestseller nonfictions where you have a sequence of little stories to illustrate "what studies have shown", can profitably be listened to quite fast, especially when also allaying their boringness with a Geometry Wars or Kingdom Rush addiction. (You might say, why read them then? Personally: as an excuse to play Kingdom Rush.)
If I'm not too into a part I'll even go faster than 2x to pick up the gist unto it catches my interest again.
Really, it's just like normal reading. Any displined reader has different speeds depending on the how much time the material is worth (Adler's How to Read a Book gives a nice model).
Sure, if you can maintain comprehension. It's a combination of 1) most audiobooks are narrated very slowly so that people have no trouble comprehending them, and 2) audio speedup algorithms have gotten really good.
Yes, and all the more enjoyable knowing I can fit more reading in at such a clip.
I've also noticed that the ability to comprehend spoken words can be trained; I started off at 1.25x speed and have gradually built up to 2x. Now when I listen to audio at 1x, it is just so slo-o-o-w. Anecdata, but I don't think my comprehension or enjoyment have gone down as I increase speed.
This is probably just me, but whenever I start a book at 1x, it sounds okay, if a bit slow. Then I increase speed to ~1.5x for a while, and, when I listen on 1x again, it seems unnaturally slow, to the point where I wonder if audiobook producers slow the recording down a bit on purpose, just to make it clearer.
However, the fact that I usually notice it after listening on 1.5x makes me think that it's really an illusion. Does anyone have any "insider" info on this?
