Recorded Books..

[pooteeweet]

I admit to having tons in the car with me -- I listen to audio books more than music and occasionally get someone at a stoplight give me a strange look when they hear that what I'm listening to is not a commercial :) Anyways, anybody here enjoy recorded books? I don't have them as replacements to the novel, if anything they are an addition and I enjoy the different performances.

I just finished a Great Gatsby recording and the performer, Frank Muller, did the very best I have heard ...and honestly I think I've heard them all for this book.

At the moment I am listening to Invisible Man by Ellison and Joe Morton's voice is fantastic for the narrator!

Patrick

[L.M. The Third]

Oh, yes! I love audio-books. Mostly because there is just not time to read all the books I long to read. I listen to them primarily while doing house work, yard work, and gardening. They really spice up long, hot, hours of weeding. I don't use audio books often in the winter, but get back into them during the summer.

But here's a question: Does anyone think there may be disadvantages to audio books? Not that I would ever want to make them my sole form of 'reading', but I sometimes think that a well read one helps me get into a new book or author more than if I was actually reading.

[Rores28]

I dont think I ever feel nerdier than when I'm driving around on a summer day with my windows down listening to some classic. I'm glad Im not the only one.

Right now I've got ,On The Road, Oliver Twist, two by Wodehouse in the Jeeves collection, and even (probably the nerdiest of all) a 7 disc series of college lectures on literature.

I think most novels are actually worsened by having them read to you primarily because of liberties the reader has to take when performing them. For some reason I never think descriptions are as beautiful or moving as when they are sliding silently through my own head.

Jeeves is definitely an exception. I don't think they'd be nearly as hilarious without the voice acting.

I had my doubts about Frank Muller at first but I've actually really come to like him, I think he's doing a particularly good job with On The Road

[dfloyd]

They are great time savers and, of course, they save on the eyes. I see no disadvantages to listening to recorded books, and they are great when you have already read the book. Last week I listened to four Hemingway novels plus the new edition of A Moveable Feast with more of Hemingway's original writing in it. I have on tap several more classics such as Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Listening to the recorded book and following along with the actual book is also a pleasure. A few weeks ago, I listened to Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After while following along with the books. Luckily my books were the same translation used by the reader.

Some long novels I have listened to are Gone with the Wind, Pickwick Papers, Crime and Punishment, Of Human Bondage, and The Count of Monte Cristo. The latter book was the longest I have listened to at 36 cds.

[kasie]

I listen to books on an iPod - I bought it to use while travelling, partly to cut down on luggage weight and partly because I can't read on coaches/cars/planes but I have also found it useful for reading in bed, having never previously found a position in which I can see properly and keep warm. I want to acquire one of those adapters so that I can use it in my car and listen on long trips.

Advantages - I can't skip to the end and listen to the last chapter so I know how it all turns out. :smile5:

Disadvantages - I can't flick back to a previous chapter to re-check some part of the plot. It does sometimes lull me to sleep and then it takes a while to find my way back into the story. :sleep:

So far, the readers I've heard have not taken too many liberties with their interpretations and the voices that grated on first hearing become familiar as the book progresses.

As long as I can see to read and sit up to hold a book, I don't think audio versions will take over entirely from printed books for me but should these functions weaken in the future, it's good to know there is a substitute ready and waiting.

[Emil Miller]

I never listen to audio books because I like to see the written passages unfold under my eyes. A major disadvantage for some people would be that their vocabulary would suffer by not seeing the spelling of words as on a printed page. Then there is the voice of the reader which may not match the story. Some years ago I was listening to an audio version of Alphonse Daudet's famous short stories Contes du Lundi and the reader had an accent that sounded completely at odds with the tone of the book.

[dfloyd]

I suppose it depends somewhat on the library nearest you. My library can be searched from home, then the CD package can be reserved. I only have to driven 3-4 miles to pick up the CDs.

I find that audio books are most useful when listening to modern thrillers. I am a book collector, and, as such, I have many superbly printed and bound classics. But when listening to a classic I have previously read or a new thriller, I don't need a book in my hand. I just listened to The Girl with a Dragon Tatoo. This is not a book I would want to buy or even check out at a library

I listen to books at home and in the car. Recorded books have at least doubled my reading ability. I have no problem with vocabulary or spelling. My English vocabulary is more than 100,000 words (recognizable vocabulary).

CDs give you the capability of retracing a book section. Most CDs are on three minute tracks so if you fall asleep or just didn't comprehend a passage, you can easily find the section and listen to it again.

[L.M. The Third]

I think it depends on the person and on what the read, whether or not the vocabulary will suffer. I make a habit of looking in the dictionary for unfamiliar words, even when listening to an audio-book.

I've found most recordings very well done. However, recently I chose not to listen to an audio book of Oliver Twist that was read by the same reader whose recording of Middlemarch I had just finished. I felt I wanted a different voice, for distinction.

[JBI]

I suppose it depends somewhat on the library nearest you. My library can be searched from home, then the CD package can be reserved. I only have to driven 3-4 miles to pick up the CDs.

I find that audio books are most useful when listening to modern thrillers. I am a book collector, and, as such, I have many superbly printed and bound classics. But when listening to a classic I have previously read or a new thriller, I don't need a book in my hand. I just listened to The Girl with a Dragon Tatoo. This is not a book I would want to buy or even check out at a library

I listen to books at home and in the car. Recorded books have at least doubled my reading ability. I have no problem with vocabulary or spelling. My English vocabulary is more than 100,000 words (recognizable vocabulary).

CDs give you the capability of retracing a book section. Most CDs are on three minute tracks so if you fall asleep or just didn't comprehend a passage, you can easily find the section and listen to it again.

I don't know - I can download them from my library at home for free, or get them from the library too, but at the same time, I feel I wouldn't since the nature of the book changes - audio is not an equivalent medium. It's not about the quality of the binding on the book - it's about the nature of the fact that it is read by an actor - there is a certain degree of interpretation taking place.

In that sense, it creates a fake step in a sort of oral-based change that would have occurred in oral literature, lets say, 1000 years ago in England. The actual plot and details of the story change slightly with the reading, and if the story was memorized from that recording and then repeated by another person that would be another interpretation.

In that sense, you are not reading the book, you are listening to a whole other story - there is a variation, with slight nuance of the way one person from a different background than yourself maybe has thought the book to be. In the past maybe such a distinction - amongst slowly changing societies - would have caused less of an interpretation to be imprinted, that is, when the single word, as a word not an act, was respected to the word. Eventually, when new thoughts move the understanding of the story, a new story emerges as an interpretation, that is, significant interpretations having taken place, creating a new meaning - the medium wasn't written, or entrenched, therefore was able to change without the story being rewritten, but rather rethought.

Now, when you take that idea - you are not getting the same experience from listening to an interpretation, mixed with catchy background music, and a scratchy recording sound. You are getting something which has been appropriated in a voice. Arguably, if one doesn't care too much, then that is no justification for the aural interpretation being different - the act of reading itself must be questioned, in the sense that one must reconcile what the response of literature is in contrast.

For instance, what does what feel, or understand when listening to something, versus reading, and how does that effect the enjoyment, and understanding of the material listened to (or perhaps even the value of time, as reading for most people, I would wager, is faster than the 20 or so pages an hour those book readers read at). When we value this then, can we say that by listening to audio, you are not reading a book? You are not having the same experience?


How much is different when being able to interpret a printed form - first of all, the actual meaning I would argue is far more flexible, as tone and precise implication are left out, and free to be interpreted. Next, focus is able to be heightened, as the visual allows for a greater comprehension of the whole, in that by not memorizing, you are allowing a selective process to create a free interpretation, in that you aren't as preoccupied with precise details.

When I question the practice then, I do not do it on grounds that books are somehow better. I would just say that an audio reading is an impoverished way to read, the same way reading about something is an impoverished way to see something first hand (the reason that reading is still preferred by many to film is because one has less freedom seeing what they want in a film than in real). To me, listening to them is perhaps an idle pursuit, like twiddling thumbs. My question would be, is that really worth doing, in the sense that music or something, or even just radio would be more interesting. It's like watching game shows that are 100% based on luck, in that it just gives people something to not have to think about. In that sense, I think that audio books need not be discussed. Simply put, if they are listened to to be ignored - that is, to make one ignore everything, and not care about anything - then they have no value for any discussion. One shouldn't even bother mentioning them - the same way nobody mentions brand names of pipe cleaners. They don't particularly have any value, being a form devoid of meaning of lasting value.

[Quark]

Audio books do work well for long car rides or when you're relaxing. Janine gave me some of Chekhov's short stories that I still use. Generally, though, I prefer the printed word because I can read much quicker, and my job calls for a superabundance of that pursuit. Any chance to speed things up I take. I also prefer to experience the text myself.


I would just say that an audio reading is an impoverished way to read, the same way reading about something is an impoverished way to see something first hand (the reason that reading is still preferred by many to film is because one has less freedom seeing what they want in a film than in real). To me, listening to them is perhaps an idol pursuit, like twiddling thumbs. My question would be, is that really worth doing, in the sense that music or something, or even just radio would be more interesting. It's like watching game shows that are 100% based on luck, in that it just gives people something to not have to think about. In that sense, I think that audio books need not be discussed. Simply put, if they are listened to to be ignored - that is, to make one ignore everything, and not care about anything - then they have no value for any discussion. One shouldn't even bother mentioning them - the same way nobody mentions brand names of pipe cleaners. They don't particularly have any value, being a form devoid of meaning of lasting value.

I'm surprised to hear someone who usually takes a pretty scholarly angle on these questions to equate hearing a book out loud with twidling ones thumbs. If you're a scholar of, say, Henry Fielding, for example, I would think you would want to know everything about that author's works. You would want to know the personal and historical conditions that led to their works, the early forms those works took (as revealed by journals, letters, previously published versions, etc.), the way readers receive these works and imagine them, and how they summarize and talk about them. You don't just study a single text for a work. You look at everything from a works conception to its reception and remembrace. Writing and reading do not all happen with the published text. There's a lot that happens before and after that's important to understand. The reading of a text (in one's head or aloud) involves adding a certain tone and pacing to the lines they read. This is an important part of reading. I don't see how hearing someone else read the work immediately destroys the work. If this were true, then we wouldn't be able to talk to each other about texts because we all bring a certain tone and pacing to the texts we read. You're right that there's interpretation involved here, but there's no way around that interpretation. Whether you're listening to a CD or reading the book to yourself you have to chunk the words in a certain way or imagine a certain tone. This is unavoidable. You equate this with reading a summary of work, but we do that, too: they're called synopses and criticism. Twidling ones thumbs, though, is not part of reading.

Moreover, people have read works aloud to one another for centuries. The book historian Roger Chartier estimates that the practice was common among the European literate from 1500 to 1800 (a rather conservative estimate from "The Practical Impact of Writing"). This is not something that started recently. For a large chunk of reading history, people have interpreted works to each other by speaking them aloud. Is this really the same thing as watching a change-based game show? Eventually, as education becomes more widespread, reading becomes silent and solitary, but the change has more to do with utility than interpretation. Reading aloud take more time than reading silently. As readings become longer and there's more of them we want to read faster. Reading silently helps to get through more quicker. But, that doesn't change the fact that for long periods of history people read aloud.

I also sense a leap in logic when you move from "there is a certain degree of interpretation taking place " to "They [recorded books] don't particularly have any value." How does interpreting a text strip it of value. Clearly this doesn't work.


http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/leap.jpg
[I]I can't quite make the leap here

We couldn't read Shakespeare if this rule were scrupulously observed. After all, the texts in our current edition were cobbled together from actors' memories and printers' attempts to match what they were hearing. If interpreting takes away a works value, then what do we do here? I think this hard line about interpretation is hard one to maintain. It's ahistorical and it doesn't take into account the process that of reading and writing. A better approach is to take into consideration everything that happens from the conception of a work to its reading and remembrance by readers. You're right that giving voice to a work is a matter of interpretation, but it's one that necessary to receive that work.

[JBI]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear - I was talking about the above poster's discussion of how he listens to thrillers, books which he thinks of as not "educational" but purely for the uneducational enjoyment he encounters by listening.

Of course if you listen to Milton you will still get some Milton - but that idea is still not getting the full Milton, since text-Milton is so much fuller. It's like that exercise beginners to poetry do with Shakespeare's sonnets, reading them in different tones of voice, seeing how they work - if you just overhear one tone, you are limited.

Now, there is the exception - those who have difficulty reading, for one reason or another - then audio-books function as a substitution - not the real thing, but still enjoyable under the circumstance.

Now, if we listen for the pure enjoyment sake - something is lost. Of course, it is not lost for thrillers, since you are merely supposed to briefly be absorbed in them - but my argument is not that this is a stupid thing - it is just we shouldn't discuss things like that - it's like discussing twidling thumbs.


It makes no difference anyway - the page is just so important for most literature that anyone who wants to enjoy them as literature is not going to listen - one needs to interpret performance, not a locutionary act, but perlocutionary act - it is the result of the text, not the text, and people must keep that in mind.


As for Shakespeare - he is an oral tradition - as for Cervantes, he is part of a written tradition - there is a difference. That is why Shakespeare is so relative to the ages, in that he keeps be reinterpreted, rethought, and remade - our Shakespeare is not Johnson's, or Hazlett's - he has evolved with the times.

If we were watching the 18th century Shakespeare, I doubt we would be particularly entertained. That's the beauty of it - each watch of Shakespeare is person - but when it comes to film Shakespeare, it seems to flop - somehow in cinema, Shakespeare really doesn't work properly.

I would say audio books of Homer may not be too bad, but audio books of John Donne? Inconceivable The Flea is nothing if you cant see the long S suck the word right from the poem..

[_Shannon_]

LOL! I get too easily distracted....and then I can't remember where the fluff got in my ear.

[L.M. The Third]

I've got agree that audio-books, through inherently being interpretations, are somewhat one-sided. (That's what I referred to when mentioning disadvantages.) But I don't think they should be entirely cast aside, because of this. Every time Shakespeare is performed, it is an interpretation. And yet that can interest persons in reading his works as literature. I've listened to audio books, and then gone on to read the books and develop my personal views.
Maybe it's not the best way, but it is inevitably going to be done in various forms.

[kasie]

I have to say that the recordings of poetry that I have heard so far have been nowhere near adequate - I have rarely heard an interpretation that I felt opened up a poem for me. Many actors/actresses who have beautiful speaking voices cannot seem to be able to read poetry - but maybe I'm just being hypercritical.

[Quark]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear - I was talking about the above poster's discussion of how he listens to thrillers, books which he thinks of as not "educational" but purely for the uneducational enjoyment he encounters by listening.

Oh, then you're not really talking about audiobooks, but rather "thrillers." That's a whole other thing.


Of course if you listen to Milton you will still get some Milton - but that idea is still not getting the full Milton, since text-Milton is so much fuller. It's like that exercise beginners to poetry do with Shakespeare's sonnets, reading them in different tones of voice, seeing how they work - if you just overhear one tone, you are limited.

The "full Milton"? Funny, but I think we could apply the same argument to literary criticism. No literary critic would argue that their reading of a text gives the full meaning of the work; however, we still read literary criticism and we don't refer to it as a "beginners[']" exercise. That's because we recognize that reading a text isn't so simple as sitting down and turning the pages once. Rather, it involves thought and reflection on matters of interpretation and relevance. Even though a piece of literary criticism doesn't carry the entire content of the work, we still read it because it informs part of own reading and lets us know where other are coming at the text from. Something similar can be said of hearing a text read aloud. It shows us how other pace their reading and the tone they give to the lines. Sometimes that information is illuminating as to how they see the text they're reading. When I listen to Kenneth Branagh read through Chekhov's "The Trousseau" or "Misery" and I can hear him playing the pathos of the story up--which is interesting given that Chekhov's big draw for decades was his sophisticated irony and ambiguity, not his pathos. This clues me into a change that might be happening in the way Chekhov is received these days. It also made me aware of the tragic in the stories, as I had be seeing through the focus of those 1950's/60's critics who praised Chekhov's mastery of the ironic. This is why it's useful to hear as many people talk about the text or read the text aloud as possible--because these are things we do in the process of reading.


Now, if we listen for the pure enjoyment sake - something is lost. Of course, it is not lost for thrillers, since you are merely supposed to briefly be absorbed in them - but my argument is not that this is a stupid thing - it is just we shouldn't discuss things like that - it's like discussing twidling thumbs.

Again, this is more of an attack on "thrillers" than audiobooks.


It makes no difference anyway - the page is just so important for most literature that anyone who wants to enjoy them as literature is not going to listen - one needs to interpret performance, not a locutionary act, but perlocutionary act - it is the result of the text, not the text, and people must keep that in mind.

That's a pretty outdated way of talking about reading. I suppose back in the 40's in 50's when Adler wrote How to Read a Book or Frye talked about reading in his early works this is how they viewed the practice, but things have changed quite a bit. When you talk of a singular "performance" or a singular "act," I get the sense that you're referring to something like Frye's "original experience":


The original experience is like the direct vision of color, or the direct sensation of heat or cold ... The reading of literature should, like prayer in the Gospels, step out of the talking world of criticism into the private and secret presence of literature [Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton UP: 1957) pg. 27]

For Frye, the literary text is unchanging and out of discussion. Our reading of it occurs along the axis of perlocutionary effect: it's a subjective experience like feeling "heat and cold" rather than knowing precisely what one has touched. Again, it's an experience that occurs at once. It's not something done gradually or in a social context. That's a pretty outdated way of viewing both the text and the reader's reaction to it. A more recent model of reading is given by Jerome McGann:

This is a process by which the entire sociohistory of the work--from its originary moments of production through all its subsequent adventures--is postulated as the ultimate goal of critical self-consciousness [The Textual Condition (Princeton UP: 1991) pg. 120). McGann rightly points out that the text is on "adventures," rather than just sitting idly by in the same for it originated in. I brought this up before in post #10 when I referred to "the personal and historical conditions that led to [a writer's] works, the early forms those works took (as revealed by journals, letters, previously published versions, etc.)." Even after that the text continues to change as new versions come out. The initial publication of Our Mutual Friend in small little blue books covered in advertisements is much different than the annotated Penguin version. The reception of the text is also a process. We read the text through as linguistic code, see it on the page as a spatial code, conceive of rhetorical figure and genre, reflect on the works importance and relevance, inquire about linkages to other works. This is not a single act or performance. It's a process, and the best literature call on us to work our way through this process. Typically, those cultural artifacts that want to be read as simply a perlocutionary act are rather banal. McGann sees this in advertisements and propaganda:


But many text producers neither want nor expect anything more than a purely responsive act of reading--an act which will decode the transmission in precisely the way the sender desires.

If messages and senders were innocent and reliable agents, this ideal of communication would be all that we would require. It is the ideal of advertisers , of course, as well as the ideal of all those who desire to create homogeneous and self-gratified audiences. [127]

That would be the result of a purely perlouctionary act. You would get something like the stupid ads we get on during sports games. The creators of the ads don't want you enter into a careful process of reading their ad. Instead, they want to create some effects like the oft-praised "sex appeal" or "brand recognition." Real, engaging reading goes beyond this. At least, that seems to be the current opinion of scholars.


I would say audio books of Homer may not be too bad, but audio books of John Donne? Inconceivable The Flea is nothing if you cant see the long S suck the word right from the poem..

Well, "The Flea" may not have been a good example here. I get what you're saying (some works belong to an oral tradition and other to a book tradition), but Donne's poetry was published posthumously from many different manuscripts. According to the Variorum edition (I have to paraphrase here as I'm not a Donne scholar and the Variorum costs hundreds of dollars, I'm sure), few, if any, of these manuscripts are authoritative. Many don't include titles. The versions of the poems found in most anthologies today are cobbled together from multiple manuscripts, and titles are invented. A Variorum for the amatory poems is yet to come out, but I would bet money that the "S" appears differently in separate manuscripts. Variorum for the amatory poems is yet to come out, but I would bet money that the "S" appears differently in separate manuscripts.