Towns in my area are pretty spread out. An audiobook on a six hour drive is a godsend.
Towns in my area are pretty spread out. An audiobook on a six hour drive is a godsend.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
During Christmas time I overheard an audiobook my father was listening to while he was packing. The narrator's voice was so perky that at first I didn't even realize he was narrating a very tense scene from some thriller novel until I paid close attention to the words. It was kind of funny, but very distracting.
I like when male narrators affect a female voice and end up sounding like Mrs Doubtfire.
'...A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.' --Dr. Mortimer, The Hound of the Baskervilles
I was wondering how the Douglas Adams version was. Thanks, I'll give her a shot.Originally Posted by FrankMarcopolos
I love audiobooks. It's one of the reasons I started doing audio versions of public-domain short stories on my website.
Two of the most awesome performances I've heard are Douglas Adams performing his own, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Stacey Keach doing some of Hemingway's short stories.
http://unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com/
I can't read paper books any more because of a busy schedule. I read 'audiobooks' now and love them. I still buy paper books but most of my 'reading' consists of audiobooks. I am listening to Hilary Mantale's Wolf Hall these days. It is unabridged and I am more than half way through this 23 hour reading. Audiobooks have transformed the very mundane tasks of cooking and walking the dog etc into learning time. I have a lovely hardback edition of Wolf Hall as well but for now I will have to stick with the audiobook. I am a regular customer of Audible and they have a huge collection:
http://www.audible.co.uk/aduk/site/p...seBVCookie=Yes
"The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
-- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett
I won't listen to a whole book, but what I like to do is to read at night, then listen on my commute. Then when I'm back home I flip ahead to where I stopped listening. I recently did that with Anna Karenina, and enjoyed it quite a lot. It's fun to get the foreign pronunciations correct (or I presume so). The voice actors on these can also be quite good. In teaching myself German, I got the CDs for Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass, and that had a large and wonderful cast. The bass voice for Iorek was worth it alone.
Which narrator did you listen to for Anna Karenina?
http://unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com/
I have nothing against them except for the fact that the going gets so slow compared to actual reading. They are great in situations where you don't have the opportunity read, though.
/Claes
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Nadia May. She was quite good.
The problem with audio books is that you are not, as Kafka's Crow suggested, reading them.You are hearing them through someone else's mind. When anyone reads a novel, as opposed to non fiction, they are relating to it through their own experience; which is why we all have our own views on the book concerned. Of course it is very nice to hear a story told by a melifluously spoken reader but it is told second hand, no matter how well-spoken. There is also the fact that if we rely on audio readings we will not increase our vocabulary and rely on others to explain the complexities of a given work rather than figure it out for ourselves.
I listened to an audiobook a while ago. It was new because of two things: it was in English and the first one I've listened to when I'm healthy and not a sick child lying in bed.
I realised there were only so many things I could do while listening, because something like doing the dishes causes so much noise that I would keep missing words which is very irritating, and while with a regular book it's easy to reread the sentence, rewinding an audio book isn't as quick and easy.
Audiobooks aren't really my thing, and they're really expensive, so I wouldn't buy them. Getting them from library and ripping them on my computer, however, might be a good idea. I probably wouldn't bother with books in Finnish, though, but at least with English audiobooks there would be an additional plus of improved listening comprehension.
You don't learn how to spell words, true, but you can still pick up some words or phrases and check the spelling later, if necessary, don't you think?
I don't quite understand how someone reading the text aloud explains all the complexities. They're just reading it, not commenting on it, after all
Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes.
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Yes you are right but I think you are more likely to go to a dictionary when you can actually stop reading rather than listening and stopping the audiobook each time a new word is spoken. Also, with a book you can underline the words in pencil and check the dictionary later. Many words can be roughly deduced from the context of the sentence but it is always better to make certain of their exact meaning with a dictionary . I agree that the complexities will not be explained by using an audiobook, I had just finished a bottle of Cote du Rhone when I wrote that and was feeling rather tired.I listened to an audiobook a while ago. It was new because of two things: it was in English and the first one I've listened to when I'm healthy and not a sick child lying in bed.
I realised there were only so many things I could do while listening, because something like doing the dishes causes so much noise that I would keep missing words which is very irritating, and while with a regular book it's easy to reread the sentence, rewinding an audio book isn't as quick and easy.
Audiobooks aren't really my thing, and they're really expensive, so I wouldn't buy them. Getting them from library and ripping them on my computer, however, might be a good idea. I probably wouldn't bother with books in Finnish, though, but at least with English audiobooks there would be an additional plus of improved listening comprehension.
You don't learn how to spell words, true, but you can still pick up some words or phrases and check the spelling later, if necessary, don't you think?
I don't quite understand how someone reading the text aloud explains all the complexities. They're just reading it, not commenting on it, after all
Annamariah, I do agree with you here on most points; and I also get mine free from the library most times - too expensive to buy. I don't agree with you, Brian, in this point - I don't find it decreases one's perception of the vocabulary; If anything, for me, it increases it or enhances it. I do think it wise if someone wished to re-read a book and then instead listened to it being read. I did this with several books - "Frankenstein" and "Women in Love"...oddly enough, I actually picked up on things in the books, I had not noticed or noted in the text. This was especially true of the second book, which by the way, I had already read it twice...strange, isn't it? I mustn't be as attentive a reader, as I thought I was.I listened to an audiobook a while ago. It was new because of two things: it was in English and the first one I've listened to when I'm healthy and not a sick child lying in bed.
I realised there were only so many things I could do while listening, because something like doing the dishes causes so much noise that I would keep missing words which is very irritating, and while with a regular book it's easy to reread the sentence, rewinding an audio book isn't as quick and easy.
Audiobooks aren't really my thing, and they're really expensive, so I wouldn't buy them. Getting them from library and ripping them on my computer, however, might be a good idea. I probably wouldn't bother with books in Finnish, though, but at least with English audiobooks there would be an additional plus of improved listening comprehension.
You don't learn how to spell words, true, but you can still pick up some words or phrases and check the spelling later, if necessary, don't you think?
I don't quite understand how someone reading the text aloud explains all the complexities. They're just reading it, not commenting on it, after all
I do find I can't do much other than listen to the book or story being read or acted out. I loose concentration. If I listen in bed at night, I tend to drift off and fall asleep; the it's hard to find the place I left off. I only listen on headphones; otherwise, I am totally distracted. Best was when our electric went out one night and I bundled up and listened to my player on headphones - all of the 3 disks of the set of Chekhov short stories, I bought. I had listened before with half concentration, but this time I took in every work and really enjoyed them by candlelight. I didn't lay down, so I managed to stay awake. I would think maybe driving would be good; but then again, one would lose some concentration playing attention to the road. The reason
Brian,I think nothing is truly lost in vocabulary is because, I have more trouble pronouncing words and so this helps to increase my vocabulary because I stop avoiding those words in my own verbal speech. Now spelling is always a different story. I admit to not being a good speller at all.
"It's so mysterious, the land of tears."
Chapter 7, The Little Prince ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Well Janine I was referring to the fact that Annamariah ( pretty name) is from Finland and was speaking of reading in English; in which case, a book is certainly better than an audiobook for vocabulary but not so useful for pronunciation.
I've tried several times to listen to audio books, but I tend to find that my mind wanders when listening. There is a certain level of engagement that I have with a book, and I just can't find it with audio books. I have the same aversion to the little e-readers. I don't know how to describe it, but neither can bring me the same feeling or sensory experience as a real book.
I love them for my children, but I can't not find any way to listen to them myself. I've thought to try again since I find so little time to read, but it always feels as a stand in. Maybe I'm just picking the wrong ones...
Exactly what I was thinking, except the e-book part I find I can get lost in an e-book just as easily as with a print book.
Do, or do not. There is no try. - Yoda
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