Reading vs. Listening

I happen to be listening to John Adams by David McCullough. It is pretty long, I think something like 30 CDs, so what maybe 30 listening hours. My first question is this. Which is faster, reading the book or listening to it? I know I get through more audiobooks then real books but that is because I am in the car for 2 hours everyday. If I had that much reading time maybe I could read even more.

The second question is related. Is comprehension better with listening or reading? When I am driving I sometimes have to pay attention to the traffic and may miss some parts of the book, but if I was home reading there would be plenty of distractions there too.

Actually many CD's are 70+ minutes, so 30 CD's would be closer to 35 hours. I am a fast (print) reader, with a short attention span; those two factors tend to cancel each other out.

"Comprehension" for me tends to be how related to how much I enjoy (get into) the book.

Partly, this depends on how much time you have to devote to each.

I consume about a third of my reading by audiobook.
I spend an average about 80 minutes commuting each day by car in total, usually with an audiobook going, so I get through about a disc a day.

A typical CD is equivalent to about 40 pages of text on average, which is a little less than what I can read in an hour of an average book, but the only time I devote that long to reading is when I get the London Underground from my home to the city centre, which is about a 60 minute round trip. Other than that, it is usually snatched time here and there or a few minutes in bed before lights out.

Comprehension depends on state of mind for both. If I'm tired, it doesn't matter if I have my nose in a book or am listening whilst driving, the chances that I'll take the text in fully are less. Seajack's point about how much you get into a book is also an important influence.

This morning I had to back up 3 times to catch part of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I kept getting distracted, then would realize I'd glossed over something important.

There aren't many audiobooks that I like - I'm very persnickety about the reader's voice - so read many more books than I listen to even though I have a 40-minute each way commute.

#3 "this depends on how much time you have to devote to each."

Exactly. Reading is much faster than listening. But I always seem to be too busy for this relaxing pastime. I enjoy listening during my commute when I have the time.

On the "which is faster" question--I agree that reading silently is faster than reading aloud (listening). But, if I only read, and didn't listen during my commute, I'd would "read" nearly so many books!

Comprehension--listening and reading are about the same for me, unless the story has a tangled plot.... I find it very hard to go back to an earlier chapter and re-listen for that clue I missed 4 disks ago!

Here's some interesting data from Wikipedia. The average adult reads prose text at 250 to 300 words per minute (of course, we are all above average here). The recommended speed for books on tape is 150 to 160 words per minute. Auctioneers speak at about 250 words per minute.

I don't know about you but I would have a hard time comprehending an audiobook at an auctioneers pace.

Although I never tried it, my iPod has the option of speeding up my audiobooks by 25%. Does anyone have experience with this option?

Sometimes I like to replay a passage because it is so beautifully read. This happened to me last night. The passage I was listening to was about a psychiatrist who is going mad and the narrator's voice had it really down pat..it was horrifying. I had to hear it over and over again.

#7 Our library audio download program, Overdrive, has the option of speeding up listening to the books. I have tried it a couple times. With some readers who have a languous, drawnnnnnnout reading style, it works fine. Haven't we all listened to people who talk or read, where we just want to say "OK OK, just get on with it!" But with others, in fact the majority, I find the faster pace a bit too much for my liking. I also don't like the slow down very much either.

>7 Vic33: I've tried the iPod "speed up" feature on an audiobook that I thought was being read suuuuuuuuper slowly - but I felt like the "faster" was still too fast, and it made me twitchy.

I think that the enjoyment of the audiobook is largely dependent on the performer. For example, I loved the Harry Potter series performed by Jim Dale so I found I was really engrossed in it. Others, like the Twilight audiobooks, were not as well done and I had a harder time paying attention. Overall, I would rather read because nothing beats your own imagination!

A good reader can get you through some books, though. I never could read Wuthering Heights but listening to Flo Gibson read it did the trick.

I listen to an audiobook via iphone/ipod more and more over the last year. One reason is to hear unfamiliar words pronounced. A more substantive reason, especially for non-fiction works, is to get an overview of the book; I then read it more slowly (and frequently on my Kindle1).

The Kindle, by the way, has brought me back to reading more. The convenience of always having the book(s) I want, at hand, makes it, more and more, the reading medium of choice.

I agree with

...a ghost?

:) i'm having real problems here, i'll give it one more go.
I agree with

I love to listen to books but it has to be the right reader. I've just been through the six Jane Austen books, read by Juliet Stevenson, and for the first time I enjoyed Northanger Abbey she brought out the humour that I'd missed when reading it myself. I'm just listening to I capture the castle and this is the first book that I haven't read myself first. I did wonder if I would be able to absorb the details as well as from the printed page but it's been great. The reader is Jenny Agutter. I was going to buy a reading of The Forsyte Saga but the reader mispronounced (to my mind) the name Fleur. It sounded more like floor and I decided I couldn't put up with that for long. I also have favourite readers now and sometimes choose books by reader rather than writer. I'd listen to anything read by Prunella Scales, Juliet Stevenson and Peter Jefferies. You can probably tell I'm from UK and I do find it difficult to listen to a non-American book read with an American accent. Do American listeners have the reverse problem?

>17 yosarian:
I think your ghost is making a point of staying that way. ;)

Edited to counter intermediacy of another post.

yes, seems i can get no further than "i agree with", i guess he doesn't agree with me! :)

all i wanted to add was basically what CDvicarage says in the post above, for me the person reading the story is more improtant than the author in deciding an audio book ....
"
I agree with lit bitten in post 11. We have / listen to quite a number of audiobooks and it's the person reading the book rather than the author that I enjoy, I've listened to quite a number of books that I don't think I would have otherwise read. At the moment we're re-listening to some tapes (yes, I know ... tapes!!) of Sherlock Holmes stories read by Robert Hardy and I think he's perfect for them. Whenever I read sherlock holmes now I hear his voice.

#18 I prefer it when the reader echos the narrater's voice in the book - male vs female, American vs British, etc. I gave up on an audio book recently that was set in France, but the characters all had English accents. I couldn't get past the sound of the words to hear the story. But some readers are so good, that I'd listen to them read anything - American or British doesn't matter.

I remember being very annoyed when I listened to The Guns of August because it was read by a man. We have so few widely read women historians, I felt it should have been read by a woman.

Good point, Jennieg !

Because I have reading problems (lowest percentile of people who can read) and OCD which also interferes with reading, I
mostly use audiobooks. The main difficulty I have with audios is the narrator. A bad one can kill a book.
Because I decided to go for a another post-grad. degree after
retirement I am now waist deep in the big muddy of theology
and church history. I have found that "The Teaching Company" is helpful in there areas. They do audio and DVD lectures by profs. from fine universities including my own - Harvard Divinity School! The lectures are a godsend to me. I
can go to the books with more confidence.

#20: yosarian,

I never listened to Sherlock Holmes stories, but watched the Granada TV series starring Jeremy Brett. I read the books several years later, and I knew I was fascinated by the character in large part due to Jeremy Brett's wonderful performance.

Come to think of it, if we enjoy the narrator more than the author, it's because the narrator is able to transmit the feelings better and make the book come alive to us.

quite agree booksontrial, a lot of my audio books I could listen to over and over again simply because the narrator does such a wonderful job of giving 'voice' (if you pardon the pun :)) to the characters.
I've just started pillars of the earth on audiobook (a whopping 32 discs! I read the book years ago but didn't remember it being so big!!!) and initially I couldn't stand the accents the narrator gave a couple of the characters ... now I can't imagine them talking any other way.

I mostly find a bad narrator is more likely to kill a book for me than a good narrator is to make it. I do particularly appreciate author narrators, because I assume they will get the emPHAsis on the right sylLABle or clause, and because it gives me further insight into their understanding of the work.

OTOH, I often, including my 2 most recent listens, The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan and now The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, switch from hardcopy to audio when I'm afraid I'll pitch the book out the window for one reason or another. I needed to read McGowan as background to a writing project, but it was just so awful! And my book club is reading Ebershoff, but I got tired of having my nose rubbed in his fictionalization of historical documents and assignment of purely fictional material to one innocent historical figure, while he protected another figure, who actually was involved, with a pseudonym. (See my review of the book for details.) Indeed, I find it easier to ignore the irritations when I'm listening (mostly in the car).

OTOOH, I have often stumbled across an audiobook on the library shelf and enjoyed it so much I sought out and bought the hardcopy for rereading and reference. Only once or twice have I switched mid-read from audio to paper, mostly because I was having trouble following a mystery, history, or nonfiction argument and spending too much time rewinding.

#26 bkswrites,

"the emPHAsis on the right sylLABle", LOL! (Nothing to do with Mike Myers, I hope)

Narrators can be interpreters of the books sometimes, just as musicians are interpreters of the music they play, they can either destroy it or make it come alive to us.

I started on audiobooks only recently. Because I read mostly non-fiction, I don't expect much from the narrators except that they speak clearly and fluently.

War and Peace is the only fiction book (so far) that I both read and listened to. The narrative by Frederick Davidson is a good one. He captures the personalities and emotions of the characters very well. I'd highly recommend it.

Musicophilia should be an audiobook with music pieces interspersed in it, but alas there is no music.

Walden was not easy for me to listen to, because there were many words I had to look up, and I got distracted easily and spent much time rewinding indeed, but OTOH, I could be drawn in by the narratives and imagine myself in the woods with my eyes closed. Many times I go form audio to paper to re-read and reflect on the passages that caught my attention.

#27 booksontrial,

I got the emPHAsis comment (though I figured out how to write it) from a former boss, on a magazine and later we worked with the CEO on speechifying. No idea where Tony might have gotten it. Could well have been Mike Myers, but I don't know that ouvre well enough to speculate (and there's a word I'd much rather spell than speak but might well let pass in an audio book).

I generally avoid nonfiction in audio because of exactly the looking-things-up problem. Not to mention that I'm an inveterate annotator and underliner (but don't tell my antiquarian/collector spouse).

I'm very limited in the audiobooks I can listen to, precisely because of the voices. When I was a child, we had The Hobbit read by Nicol Williamson, which was _spectacular_. All the voices were perfect (I still hear them that way when I read it!) - each of the races had a different English regional accent. The trolls were Yorkshire - which I figured out by seeing how Herriot wrote the dialect. I don't know what the dialects were for the hobbits or dwarves or humans, but you knew right off at least what race was speaking and mostly what individual (which is amazing when you think how many different speaking parts there are in The Hobbit!). It also had the songs - Carefully, Carefully With the Plates and Down, Down Underground (among others). Oh, and Fifteen Birds in Five Fir Trees. I still have it - tapes transferred to MP3 - and it's still wonderful.

Similarly, I listened to an audiobook of The Daughter of Time read by Derek Jacobi, and it was wonderful. Again, I knew who was speaking by the voices. I love that book, I've read it easily 10-12 times, and the audiobook was an enjoyable re-read.

On the other hand, I also tried to listen to The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley - possibly narrated by Roslyn Alexander, I'm not sure (I didn't notice at the time, went and looked it up). This is another favorite book, I've read it 5-10 times easily. I had never realized until I listened to the audio version how long the flashbacks at the beginning last...I was constantly wishing she'd hurry up and get on with it. I couldn't recognize anyone by voice - they all sounded the same - and in general it drove me mad. Because I love the book, I got more than half-way through before I stopped (and returned it to the library). I've tried others and mostly I can't stand them.

I'm a very fast reader - either of those last two are about two hours' reading for me. And reading is something I'll do in preference to just about anything else, so I generally get an hour or so minimum a day. I had a long commute for a while, which is why I tried The Hero and the Crown, but after that and a few others I retreated to music for the commute and reading on my lunch hour and when I got home.

BTW - my father has used 'emPHAsis on the right sylLABle' for years - since I was a kid. No idea where he got it from, but he infected me with it...

I find that I miss just as much in audio books as I do reading....the distractions are still there for both. It's just easier to go back and find what I missed when I'm reading.
A couple of things surprise me with audio books. I'm amazed at how my mind blocks them out when I'm thinking about something rather than listening. Guess it's the same thing that happens when someone is talking (like the teacher in school) to you but they're not right in your ear.....unless it's sweet nothings that is!!
The other strange thing that happens is, I listen to books when I'm driving on long trips and the next time I go that way, a whole scene from the book I listened to the last time will come to mind when I pass somewhere that I heard it. I don't have nearly that association with read books.

I strongly recommend the Tantor production of Little Bee by Chris Cleave, read by Anne Flosnik. At the same time, I've just made a dash to the library for the hardcopy (finishing the book on the way), and think I probably will buy my own copy. But this is a case where there are a number of accents (Nigerian and various British, mostly), genders, and ages, but different chapters are very stream-of-consciousness, alternating between a Nigerian teen who taught herself "The Queen's English" from newspapers during 2 years in immigrant detention and also reflects frequently on differences between the village world in Nigeria and the world to which she has come, and a 30-something British journalist. Flosnik hit all the right notes (as far as this USAmerican can tell) to give those 2 streams and other characters clear voices, consistent with Cleave's characterizations.

By contrast, I also just finished reading Sarah's Key, which includes speakers in English (American and British), French, German, and Polish (and possibly others), only occasionally identified after they've spoken as to what language it was. And sometimes the language was the whole point ('She listened to her parents speaking their native tongue,' whole chapters before we learn where they were from). I wished I had a reader with half the talents of Flosnik to let me sink into the story instead of worrying about what language or accent I was supposed to be hearing.

I never listened to audiobooks until a long commute forced me to start. And now I'm addicted!

I read silently at a breakneck pace and I love getting through books quickly, but I do appreciate the slower pace of audiobooks because little details about the characters tend to stick in my head better, simply because I'm hearing them each time. And I do love a good reader who can explore the nuances of the language with sensitivity and respect.

One thing I have really enjoyed is listening to books I read years ago. I did this with Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and it was an amazing experience. What a book! And what a read! Anna Massey was phenomenal.

I also loved hearing a new take on the Chronicles of Narnia, with the radio dramas from Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. I have loved those books for years, and I really enjoyed the radio dramas.

In some ways an audiobook is like a movie playing in your head. It's between reading a book yourself and watching a good film adaptation. Good stuff.

#22> I have a couple of Barbara Tuchman's books on audio and the narrator is a woman who reads very well. The same narrator reads Paris 1919.
I've been reading audiobooks for about two years. I listen to downloaded audiobooks on an ipod. I always listen to a sample before I get the book if I can to check out the narrator.
For me listening is usually slower than reading. I often go to sleep listening to a book and then have trouble finding my place. I read a lot of non-fiction, mainly history, and have bought several print copies of my audiobooks. I find it easier to go back and repeat a paragraph by reading. Also print books have maps which I find necessary for some books and indexes which allow me to look up something in the book.
Lately I have been limiting the audiobooks to my fiction reading and it works much better. I am listening to The Iliad and it is nice to hear all of the names pronounced. The translation is by Stanley Lombardo and he does the narration with Susan Sarandon doing the introductions for the books or chapters. It is very good.

>32 atimco: I really like Anna Massey's reading style. I listened to her narration of Cold Comfort Farm and it most definitely brought the book to life. I think my library has her CD of Rebecca so I will check it out!

#32 - well put! I'm totally with you - I've gotten completely addicted to audiobooks (and I've got my husband going on it now too!). I love the fact that I can have two books going at once and not feel like I'm cheating either of them (one in print, one in the car). I tend to read at breakneck pace as well - a book a day minimum when I'm really going - but I do tend to absorb more with the audiobooks. The slower pace forces you to really relish all the aspects of the books as opposed to plowing through them. It's like swirling a fine wine around on your tongue as opposed to chugging it. :)

I started listening to audiobooks almost 10 years ago when there was considerably less selection than there is now. I've always been grateful that I was forced to listen to authors I normally wouldn't have looked at or not have anything to listen to at all.

I also am ashamed to admit I'm one of those readers who cannot, just cannot resist reading the ending of a book at some point early on. Audio books kind of put the kibosh on that, now don't they??;-)

#33 I really want to listen to Barbara Tuchman's
Distant Mirror. I'm glad to hear you think her work goes down well in audio. There is a new book about the Bubonic Plague that I also want to do in audio format. For now I have only been listening to mostly light novels, but I plan to try some nonfiction in the near future. Like others here, I am crazy about audio
listening. A good friend says it's "lazy" reading but I
totally disagree. Audio reading add a new dimension to the experience, and you have to be an active participant in the telling of the tale.

#1 the longest book I've listened to is Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. John Lee's narration was fantastic and helped me through some of the minutia of the story. Had I attmepted to read this book, I would not have gotten very far.

As for retention and comrehension, I think actually reading the material will cause to stick in your brain more than listening to it. Just my opinion. Many of the thrillers I've listened to over the year are vaguley remembered. But I guess that could be said of some of the books I've read. I'll say that retention has more to do with how much you enjoy and/or are affected by the material.

And whether you remember better via reading or hearing depends very strongly on the individual. I simply don't retain audio information - if I don't see it written it's gone within hours. If I want to remember a phone message I have to write it down. So audiobooks are fun sometimes if I've already read the book, but as a first run through - by the time I get to the end of the book I've completely lost the beginning so I mostly don't understand what's going on.

On the other hand, one of my sisters can repeat things she's heard once easily days later, but the written word does nothing for her. An image falls in between. There really are different types of comprehension, and any individual will usually key into only one or two, and may miss one or two out entirely (I can't remember the whole list - written, audio, and kinesthetic (movement) are three I know).

For me it depends on how much attention I am paying. Listening to something does make me take it slower, and if it's an enthralling piece I do think listening helps me retain it better because it has my undivided attention and I also have the narrator who is helping me interpret the nuances.

I only listen to audiobooks in the car when I'm alone, so it's pretty easy to focus on the book. Occasionally, though, I hear something that makes me realize I zoned out, so hit the button on the CD player to back up to a point I remember.

I'm listening to The Genius by Jesse Kellerman right now. The narrator is good but not the best. He has a fairly high voice but makes it higher for the womens' voices, which makes them sound a tad breathless and flat. The book is told in the first person from the point of view of Ethan Muller and he tells us he's 6'3". I have a hard time putting that high a voice to someone that tall.

But all in all it's a pleasure to listen to.

Which is faster? Depends on how fast you read. Most people read (silently) faster than they can be read (aloud) to. I read much faster than an audiobook can run so I often get quite frustrated when the reader/performer doesn't add much to the experience. Ones that have stood out from the crowd, in that the reader/performer may have even made the experience even *better* than reading the actual book myself: Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund, Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, Empress Orchid and The Last Empress by Anchee Min. These were wonderful by audiobook.

Is comprehension better with listening or reading? Some people are more visual learners, some are more auditory learners. I'm definitely the former, which partly explains my pickiness about the quality of the reader. I bet there are a bunch of people out there who are not big readers who don't realize that they would enjoy audiobooks, because their dominant learning style is auditory.

I have not read a book in over 18 months yet I have listened to over 100. I listen to conventional CD's, no Iphone or pads, as well as old fashioned tapes, for about 2 hours every night. I have just listened to the Stieg Larsson 3 books, so well read by Saul Reichlin. The only problem I had was that I could never see any of the Swedish names so it was confusing at times.