DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Even Greener Pastures
HTML https://evengreener.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Found on the Internet
*****************************************************
#Post#: 11368--------------------------------------------------
Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening?
By: Aliph Date: January 13, 2019, 5:40 am
---------------------------------------------------------
According to the Guardian, audiobooks are having more and more
success. An actor who participates to this boom thinks that it
is even a new form of art.
HTML https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/01/edoardo-ballerini-narrator-of-133-hour-audiobook-on-his-evolving-art?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Do you like audiobooks?
A friend who lives in a city where commuting by car is a long
journey, reads/listens to many audiobooks while on the go.
Another friend who is blind “reads” this way like she says. She
chooses the books according to the narrator more than to the
writer. She doesn’t like big interpretation, professional actors
who put too much emphasis since she wants to make up her mind
independently.
I prefer a traditional way of reading. If I listen to an
audiobook (even in a foreign language) I usually fall asleep.
What about you?
#Post#: 11371--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Alharacas Date: January 13, 2019, 7:30 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm not convinced it's a new art form, but otherwise I
completely agree, Sofia. Audio books are brilliant, for all
sorts of reasons - provided you can stand them.
Wasn't it the woman in the TED-talk about listening (the one we
were talking about the other day) who said that we can speak at
about 250 words per minute, but that we can process words at
about 500 per minute? Maybe that's why I either fall asleep or
find I haven't been listening at all, after a while.
#Post#: 11372--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Aliph Date: January 13, 2019, 7:51 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Alharacas link=topic=768.msg11371#msg11371
date=1547386232]
Wasn't it the woman in the TED-talk about listening (the one we
were talking about the other day) who said that we can speak at
about 250 words per minute, but that we can process words at
about 500 per minute? Maybe that's why I either fall asleep or
find I haven't been listening at all, after a while.
[/quote]
Maybe that’s a coherent explanation. I had to struggle to follow
that short talk! I was thinking why I can’t follow even short
videos on YouTube and avoid listening to TED talks but read for
hours and enjoy going to the movies.
Though I am very sensible of the beauty of certain human voices,
especially of men. I (mostly) immediately recognize a voice on
the phone, even after years.
So it is weird not to like audiobooks, radio listening and any
sort of podcasts.
Probably we are impatient. Aren’t we? I surely am. And reading
goes so faster.
#Post#: 11375--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Alharacas Date: January 13, 2019, 8:17 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Sofia link=topic=768.msg11372#msg11372
date=1547387497]
Probably we are impatient. Aren’t we? I surely am. And reading
goes so faster.
[/quote]
Yes, I think that's it.
I'm curious - have you ever tried listening to an audio book in
a language you aren't really fluent in? I haven't, but I have a
friend who says she acquired her - pretty good - English by
listening to tons of English audio books.
#Post#: 11376--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Susan Date: January 13, 2019, 8:51 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I definitely prefer reading. Just around New Year I was sick
and not sleeping well. So instead of trying to sleep with my
husband, who had also been sick and was snoring badly each
night, I decided to buy a couple of audiobooks and listen to
them everytime I woke up. I can´t recommend this as a way to
enjoy Isabel Allende´s ¨La casa de los espiritus¨ but it worked
fine for the non-fiction book. The non-fiction book, read
clearly by a male was easy to understand. The book by Allende,
read by a female who talked fast and I believe had the accent
from Chile, was much harder to understand, especially because it
has male characters in it with the same first name. I was not
understanding the plot very well even when I was fully awake and
I was dozing on and off-- missing critical pieces.
I really have not found any classic Spanish literature that I
like and listening to one as a means of taking your mind off
illness in the middle of the night is probably not a good test
of whether I could ever enjoy Isabel Allende. However, I went
later and looked at the Spark Notes in English--- the plot is
just wild and all over the place! Do any of you actually enjoy
her books?
#Post#: 11378--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: the lost minion Date: January 13, 2019, 9:46 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm not a big fan but I listen to audiobooks while driving or
doing chores. I also prefer reading to listening.
BTW, if the speed is a problem, most apps let you increase it -
even up to 2 times.
A bigger problem I have with audiobooks is concentration - most
people are not Buddhist monks and can't keep their focus on the
recording all the time. We lose concentration. But reading a
book, we have much more control on the input - if I start
thinking about something else I either stop reading altogether
or notice that I don't follow the book and just get back to
where I dozed off. Anyway, it's natural and normal, and happens
to anyone. We also adjust the speed of reading - where the ideas
get complicated, I sharpen attention, slow down (or speed up -
if it's something exciting), reread the passage, stop to think
about it etc., as I believe most people do.
And this kind of adjustments is either hard or impossible to
implement when listening to an audiobook. Listening, you are
being fed the text: you are not in control anymore. So it goes
against what is so valuable in reading: being an active consumer
who is largely in control.
#Post#: 11379--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Alharacas Date: January 13, 2019, 10:18 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Thanks, Susan! You made me snort coffee all over my keyboard
(fortunately, I take it without sugar). :D
Actually, I'd have said being ever so slightly delirious with
fever would be the perfect state for reading "La Casa de los
Espiritús". When I first read it, I kept thinking my Spanish
must be even worse than I'd thought - why else would I be under
the impression that the heroine had green hair? ;)
That said, yes, I did enjoy the book, much more so than her
later books, some of which are a gruesomely realistic account of
living under a dictatorship. Maybe you'd enjoy "De Amor y de
Sombra" more than Allende's first book?
#Post#: 11381--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Aliph Date: January 13, 2019, 10:33 am
---------------------------------------------------------
@ Alharacas, I think that a spoken text can help someone who
isn’t fluent to improve his competences in the language he is
learning. I think it is easier for Europeans to improve their
English or their Spanish than their Arabic, Farsi, Finnish or
islandic.
For Arabic, I bought on Audible, three audiobooks. They offer
graded stories for adults learner. I listen to them now and
then, but they are limited in their vocabulary and easy to
understand.
With a B1 level I am not able to understand literature if I
haven’t worked on a written text.
@ Susan, I hope you recovered. I read two books of Isabel
Allende. La casa de los espíritus and la hija de la fortuna. It
was a long time ago. I am not very keen about the realismo
magico and preferred the second book. Indeed Allende’s books are
quite complexe. Not everyone is Gabriel Garcia Marquez who
masters magic narrative very well.
I found this website with lots of free audiobooks in Spanish,
including “La hija de la fortuna”.
HTML http://www.laaudioteca.com/hija-de-la-fortuna-isabel-allende/
@ Marmolada, concentration indeed is a big problem with
audiobooks.
@ to everybody, I love to read books in foreign languages on an
ebook-reader. I adore my Kindle with his several built-in
dictionaries.
#Post#: 11386--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: NealC Date: January 13, 2019, 8:57 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I love my kindle too!
I can get dictionaries in other languages? Please let me know
how!
#Post#: 11387--------------------------------------------------
Re: Audiobooks: the big success. A new form of art/ of listening
?
By: Kseniia Date: January 13, 2019, 9:39 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
TL;DR: I think it really is a form of art (not sure if we can
call it new, though). I can't say I prefer audiobooks to
traditional books — but I can't say the opposite is true. I
think they're just too different.
___________
I started listening to audiobooks at my first job: it was mostly
manual labour and there were not too many people to talk to, so
I decided it would be a good idea. I tried 20 narrators in the
first two days I think, then left two of them and finally only
one. It took some time to tune into it and to understand how to
deal with the concentration problem, but I found the narrator so
great that these were really minor issues. Plus I realised how
much nuance I had been missing out because of the speed reading
habit so it was an important experience. In fact, at the time I
felt like a slightly crazed neophyte because it coincided with
my interest in philology, and I was in constant and blissful awe
("how beautiful the Russian language is, how well it sounds and
how it resonates with what you think when you listen to
different stories"). Thankfully, I couldn't put my feelings into
words properly, so I didn't bother other people too much back
then.
Anyway, it's hard to explain, but for me listening to audiobooks
is in some way similar to listening to music: if you know how to
read musical notes, you might be able to imagine what every
orchestral instrument sounds like and play the whole symphony in
your head — but if there's a musician I like who can play the
same symphony brilliantly on the piano, I might want to listen
to their performance instead (or as well). I'm actually fine
with not being in control when someone who is in control is
really good at what they're doing. Same here, and sometimes
(unfortunately, not too often but still) a good narrator can
make a book better than it would be in my interpretation. The
opposite is also true: no matter how good the book is, in some
people's hands (or, rather, voices) it may become irritating or
soporific noise. It's all a bit different with audiobooks in
other languages actually but that's another story.
*****************************************************
DIR Next Page