a lot of people read while doing other things, like working out. Bruce Lee famously read while he was working out and listening to the news. The real problem is that you can't do anything that you need your eyes for--which is basically everything. And you either have to use your hands to hold the book(which also eliminates basically everything that humans do) or you have to put the book on something and stand still, which eliminates a whole different set of things that you could be doing.

But obviously audio is much better for multitasking.

I can quote you parts of books that I've only ever listened to, just about as well as I can quote books that I've only ever read and I'm always doing something else while listening. Usually I'm driving or walking or running or doing physical tasks that don't require a lot of deep thought, if you're doing something like that you can easily listen to an audiobook with great comprehension.

To be honest, with a good narrator I think I have better comprehension with audiobooks. You get all of the same words, but you also get tone, which helps you understand a sentence before you've seen/heard the end of it. For this same reason I very strongly believe that inverted punctuation marks should be adopted in english. Also, when I read I tend to read in a hurry, listening to it read out loud forces you to hear every single word as it was written, which can easily result in better comprehension.

Have you ever given audiobooks a real chance? I only ask because I felt the same way you do before I started listening to them, heh

Reading the more difficult classics you barely understand half of what's going on even if you give it 100% of your attention at all times, even if say walking only takes 5% of your attention leaving 95% to focus you are still missing out on more than you should when listening to audiobook while excercising.

Now with popular genrefiction it's different because it's written to appeal to as many people as possible so it's probably easier to understand in the first place but I could never imagine "multitasking" my way through classics, historical works or philosophy for example.

Philosophy is terrible for audiobooks, as I said in my first post. But it's because you can't just read everything once and truly understand a great philosopher, there are entire sections that you have to re-read to truly understand. This is more difficult with audio, especially while doing something else. History is great though, and I guess it depends what you mean by "classics"

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are excellent in audio, as are many american classics like Twain and Fitzgerald. The only difficulty I've had was while listening to stories that I didn't enjoy reading either. Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the most notable example, which I find extremely dry and pedantic. Although pedantry is a downfall of most great writers, especially the further back you go in history, I think Joyce really perfected the fucking art in A Portrait, which is by all accounts a classic.

I thought Hemingway was good in audio too.

I'll ask you the same question I asked the other guy, have you given audiobooks a chance?

The same way you can't read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy once and truly understand everything, it's literally not possible. I guess if you read Dostoyvesky for plot audiobooks is fine but you should treat him the same way you treat the philosophers.
Litterature that's suitable for academic discussion 100+ years after initial release you are not going to fully comprehend with one superficial read and thus they aren't suitable for audiobooks.

I haven't given audiobooks a chance because I don't read genrefictiion but if I ever feel like reading Stephen King I might give it a shot but for Tolstoy or similar, no never.

Dostoevsky didn't write pedantically though, or at least English translations of dostoevsky are not written pedantically. You can understand exactly what Dostoevsky is saying in any given paragraph by reading that paragraph once. I'd agree that you miss a lot of nuance and foreshadowing the first time you read an entire book by dostoevsky though, but the same is true for any decent writer.

You can't compare, for example,

"The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases — a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it — all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws — is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason." -Hegel

with

"It wasn't the New World that mattered … Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all. But what's the use of talking! I suspect that all I'm saying now is so like the usual commonplaces that I shall certainly be taken for a lower-form schoolboy sending in his essay on "sunrise", or they'll say perhaps that I had something to say, but that I did not know how to "explain" it. But I'll add, that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas. But if I too have failed to convey all that has been tormenting me for the last six months, it will, anyway, be understood that I have paid very dearly for attaining my present "last conviction." This is what I felt necessary, for certain objects of my own, to put forward in my "Explanation". However, I will continue." -Dostoevsky

Be honest, did you have to read the quote by Hegel twice to understand what he meant? Did you have to read Dostoevsky's twice to understand? I've read and listened to just about every major story Dostoevsky ever wrote, and I don't think there's a single example of him writing something that is not very easily understood.

So, while Dostoevsky is equally philosophical, his work is not purely philosophical and is infinitely easier to understand at first glance.

Obviously the Hegel is more difficult and obviously i'm gonna spend alot more time reading any decent philosopher than I will Dostoyvesky but many classics are filled with cryptical shit you're just not gonna pick up on unless you read carefully, like the significance of the Green Light or Egel's Eyes in The Great Gatsby.

Kafka is a great example of what I am talking about, anyone can rad any Kafka work because his langauge is very simple and his books are all really straight forward but he will never explain anything ever so if you're not thinking while reading you won't like it, just picking up on the what's happening isn't enough.
He isn't difficult but the more you think while reading the more rewarding he is.
Genrefiction is not like that, you understand the plot and main events and you have the gist of the book but classics are always multilayered, they reward multiple readings and they reward thinking while reading.

The green light and eckleburg's eyes are simple symbology and can be easily understood through audio... they're explained in pretty strong detail

Kafka I'll give you, I would never listen to kafka on audiobook. but that does not suggest that no great classic books are good in audio lol kafka is one of the most unique and bizarre writers in history.

I'm not saying that everything is good on audio, just that a lot of things are. Vonnegut is my favorite author to listen to, but he's also probably my favorite author to read so I don't know what that really says

Well you may think so but you are obviously a pretty advanced reader, I don't think the average reader find the symbolism in Gatsby simple and easily understood in any format.
I'm not saying everything is bad on audio i'm mostly saying you should take your time with classics and give them your full attention to benefit as much as possible from them and therefore classics is for the most part not suited for the audiobook format.
Your personal experience may dispute this theory of mine but I think the average reader would benefit more from reading a printed version of the works we've discussed.

And Gatsby is of course a pretty easy read anyway, if I were to say Master and Margarita instead I don't think you can say the symbolism is simple and easily understood.

working out isn't really a mindful task - I'm always listened to either music or watched tv but it's still not the same level of mindful concentration as when you're fully engaged in just reading. I suppose it would be a good time to listen to a financial/autobiographical/ self help book kinda thing - i guess you would need to clarify what kinda books are light reading and the ones that are real heavy duty, if that makes sense. I've never listened to a book - guess I'm old fashioned like that - I even write in cursive some times - just to piss people off.

This post was edited by card_sultan on Sep 3 2015 12:21am