Is Listening To An Audiobook Inferior To Reading A Book?

Obligatory comment tracking comment.

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Question to you: If you had to go to a job, say, an hour away and was spending two hours a day in the car would you reconsider listening to audiobooks?

It depends a lot on the book and the author and the type of trip and other variables.
Obviously if I was headed to a job interview it might be the best time to try to
focus on Crime and Punishment. But if I was headed to a job an hour away and
the traffic was light it might be a good time to give it a try.

Thanks for the responses, Viki and Biscuit and Yasmin.

Ok. sounds good.

Incidentally I've been listening on audio to Frank McCourt's Teacher Man.
Are any of you listening to any books on audio and, if so, what?

I've contacted a few publishers to ask if I can get my books to review on audio since
I seem to have more time lately to listen to books than to sit and read them. I've not
decided whether that is cheating in some way but I figure I'll just note in the interview
or review that I did it that way.

"surfing the tubes?" I'm not sure what that means.

Let me ask what I think you're getting at:
Is there an important distinction to be made between listening to a book while doing the same commute to and from work that you always do and, say, driving somewhere you've never been and thus
focused more on road signs and other details?
Answer: Yes.

Ah, I tried to block Ted Stevens out of my brain, apparently somewhat
successfully.

Ideally, one would listen while following along in an eBook.

While driving!?!
I'll tell the police officer that Henry said it was ok to read my e-book while driving:)

As I type this I'm being shipped review copies on audio to supplement the books
I have, for the new Einstein biography, Don Delillo's latest and James Burke'e latest.

I'm just finishing up listening to Boomsday. That will mark the first book I'm reviewing by
listening to it versus reading it.

Maybe I'm crazy or overly sensitive or maybe it's the writer in me that feels like I'm
not being fair as a reader when I don't "read" the book in the traditional way. Thus I
feel like I should mention in the review that I listened to it versus read it.

It's also what sparked me to consider polling the authors with those three questions above.

In a perfect world I'd read all of the 15 books laying, waiting, for me to read and review
and/or use for an interview.
In my world I'm ready to start "cheating" by using audio. Yet there I go again calling it
"cheating."

Any thoughts on this?

Audiobooks are making interesting adjustments like shorter chapters - I saw one advertised yesterday as a new chapter every 3 minutes.
That way when you're listening and you realize you missed something important, or you just pulled up to order fast food and the announcer interupted important dialogue, you can just click back a chapter or two.

Or with Boomsday, Christopher Buckley's new one, there's one chapter that never fails to make me laugh. So lately I listen to that track once a day just like people listening to their favorite song.

When's the last time you picked up a book and read the same chapter four days in a row? Granted, it's a chapter where a preidential candidate tells a stuffy president to shut the f up and how the media struggled with how to carry that story.:)

Then I came home and found two books on my doorstep. I think it would be hard to think of two books less similar. One was the new biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson. I'd previously arranged an interview with the author then asked if I can get it on cd since it's pretty dense. Coincidentally the Hagerstown campus of the Frostburg university has a new book discussion group, which I helped inspire and start. And the book chosen for next month is... the Einstein one.

The other one is by Kate White, who I'd never heard of before a publicist begged me to read and interview the author. Has anyone here read of her stuff? It looks like Harelquin-Nora Roberts type stuff except by a Cosmo editor.

You know what I should do? Send the wrong questions to the wrong author so I'd be asking Kate White what she thought the repercussions were of Einstein's involvement with the bomb and I'll get back an answer involving orgasms and have to explain I'm talking about a different kind of bomb.

For my composition class we are to journal twice a week on whatever we are thinking about – he said it did not even have to relate to class topics – and then stop and reflect on how what we wrote can be turned into something else, i.e. an essay, a poem, a song, etc.

Journal #1 – Scott Butki

While driving to and from work and, on Thursday to class in Frostburg I have been listening to books on cd. I've debated with people whether it is truly "reading" to read a book on audio and have even polled some authors on the topic. Pulling together that poll into an article is on my to-do list. But not until after I catch up on my reading in this class, of course.

But what really struck me Thursday was the content of what I was listening to. I was alternating between two books: "What's So Funny?" by Donald Westlake and a new popular biography of Einstein. I'm interviewing both authors via email. I've joked with friends about accidentally sending the wrong questions to the wrong authors.

As we talked about in class Thursdays ideas seem to come at the most inopportune time. And so it was here. I recently "read" on audio Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. I'd read it a few years before and listened last year to his other best-seller, Blink. I'd been sent a copy of The Tipping Point by his publisher after I offered to write a review of it.

But for the last week I've struggled with what I can say about his writing that has not already been said. Or even how to begin. I think it was listening to Walter Isaacson struggle to explain Einstein's theories as I drove through Cumberland that sparked the thought about how hard it is to make science interesting. I've written before about how it is harder to write short pieces than it is long pieces and this is sort of a similar idea – it is harder to write in simple language about complex ideas without losing the meaning.

So I pulled over in a gas station and scribbled the following down:

"It takes a truly talented and gifted writer to make complicated science not only understandable to someone unknowledgeble about science but to make it downright fascinating, mesmerizing and engaging.

Many authors try to pull off this Herculean task and most fail. The mistake many writers make is they dumb down the content, thus robbing the reader of some of the more important details.

Today I am going to talk about one writer who pulls it off: Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling works The Tipping Point and Blink.

I have written before about a few other writers who have this gift, most notably James Gleick and the late great Richard Feynman.

But Gladwell is our focus today. He has managed to pull together countless case studies, theories and concepts into fascinating books, upending common beliefs and myths. He has pulled off the task of teaching about various concepts of philosophy and social science while also stringing together fascinating stories…."

I stopped there to make sure I would not be late for class. But I had the start of a good review and I have no idea where exactly those thoughts came from, perhaps germinating in my sub-conscious for weeks.

Reflection: Those words I wrote down will provide the start of my book review of Gladwell's books. But they could also become an essay about science writing in general. They could even form the basis for an interesting interview as I ask science writers whether they agree this is a difficult task and how they pull it off.

I thought I'd mention this experience as my first journal piece because it proved a point you touched on regarding the one part of the writing process that is hard to explain because it is not quite ration, namely inspiration or a specific idea comes when you least expect it to. For me, for some reason, ideas seem to come most often when I'm driving and I have to pull over and scribble down some thoughts.

Anyone listen to any good books lately?

The New York Times has a good piece today about audiobooks.

I've run into a lot of people lately who mention listening to Harry Potter
on audio, as I allude to here. How does that fit into this whole
debate?

That reminds me - I still have a piece to write sometime where I write up
answers from authors I pulled regarding their thoughts on this.

I've been waiting until I get a job before I do that project - and yes I realize
that's exactly bass ackwards.