Audiobooks the same as regular books?

Just curious what everyone thinks on this subject.

I personally USED to be of the mind that if you were not reading the book yourself you were not reading the book. Then I bought “I am Legend” from Audible and listened to it… I LOVED it.

The way then reader emphasized the emotions of Neville, especially his obsession with the woman, gave me a much different perspective then whenI read the book myself.

Now, I am listening to Ender’s Game, and again… WOW… the readers… multiple this time, are really making the story. The way the male reader imitates the boys who harass Ender just really gives you a sense of the irritation that Ender must feel.

So, I am curious what everyone else thinks about the reading versus listening.

Discuss.

They can be very good, if the reader is right. One thing to look out for is sometimes they use an abridged version for the audiobook. To me that is totally unacceptable. Also I can read faster than the audiobook so it can make it more time consuming.

Depends. My mind tends to wander when I hear a story. I start to go off on my own tangent. When I read it’s annoying because I’ll remember what I thought up and what’s on the page. Never did well on English exams cuz of this. I am constantly going back over pages and takes me ages to finish a book. When I listen the same thing happens, but the person keeps reading and I’ll be like, “Wait. What did I miss?”

Man I love audiobooks. I tend to listen to them when I’m replaying a game. Some good ones are the Harry Potter series done by Jim Dale and World War Z by a full cast(Though it’s abridged it’s so frakkin good),

I totally agree. I have a series of non-SciFi books that I also have in audio format. They’re nice to listen to at work instead of music but you miss TONS in an abridged version.

Audio books are great and Jim Dale is the best. I recently listened to Ender’s Game also and it was amazing. When you have the ability to listen and work or play at the same time it’s a time saver. Since reading takes up all your focus you have to dedicate more time to it. Reading however leaves it all to your imagination where audio books IMO fill in some holes and take you in a slightly different direction. Movies fill all the holes and therefore let us down sometimes.
It is a mortal sin to make a abridged copy of a fiction book. Non-fiction abridged can be good educationally just like podcasts.

I haven’t listened to the Jim Dale Harry Potter audiobooks, but there’s no way they can be better than Stephen Fry’s version. Maybe I’m a little biased because I’m a huge fan of Stephen Fry in general. He’s great in Blackadder and his quiz show QI is one of the funniest things on television. Hugh Laurie and him are a fantastic double act. I’ve really been hoping for Stephen Fry to get a guest spot on House. He had a small arc on Bones, so I see no reason why he couldn’t get on House.

Yea, Stephen Fry is great. He has a amazing voice and is a terrific performer.
I would say Jim Dale has a greater variety in his voices but you can’t beat Fry’s accent. It is like fighting over which piece of pie is better, in the end it is still pie.

I’ve listened to all the “book-o’-the-months” at work, where I can listen to whatever I want to while working. Even if it takes longer to listen than to read a book, I still basically get paid while listening :smiley:

(and as a side not for those interested-Mugglecast just did a interview with Jim Dale that was really really good and gave a lot of insite into how audiobooks get made.)

Audiobooks have saved my sanity!

Podcasts and books keep me company at work, and at housework. I, too, listened to Ender’s Game, and have been working my way through the series. I am a long time member of Audible- so I was glad to hear they are sponsoring the Crew!

I have to say, I have listened to books I never would have read in print! Wow, what a mind expansion it has been!

I just don’t know what I’d do without audiobooks!

The Temeraire series is quite nice in audio, too!

I used to resist audiobooks till I had a listen to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in my brother’s car and I was hooked. Jim Dale really impressed me. I got the stephen Fry ones too but I haven’t got around to re-reading, er, re-listening to them. Heard Fry’s was the best tho.

The 1st place I really like audiobooks is on my commute, I don’t have bury my nose in a book and miss my stop and I can keep ‘reading’ while l walk… and while I check out the summer time hotties haha.

The 2nd place is when I’m going to bed, I would crank it up on the speakers and fall asleep. Like a true geek, I have glasses, so it’s nice to ‘read’ at night and not fall asleep with my specs on.

Audiobooks are like the coolest bedtime story you’ll ever get read to you. :stuck_out_tongue:

LOL! I had to stop listening to GWC at bedtime- hard to do, as I am addicted! But I was falling asleep and missing too much! ack! No more!

I have to say, I listened to the audio book and read the text for “World War Z” and while the book was good, the audio book was astonishing.

The basic premise of the book is there was a world-wide zombie outbreak, and the narrator is interviewing the survivors. In the audio book, each survivor is played by different person. Mark Hammil plays a character, so does Henry Rollins and a bunch of others. It was shorter, but there was so much more added by multiple actors that it felt like NPR after a zombie plague.

I love audio books - as I’m doing a Masters degree when I’m not in work, very often I have enough of pouring over texts, and my disability means that lots of words on a page doesn’t often prove helpful for me, reading for pleasure isn’t as pleasurable as it should be. However, my commute every day, and my relatively low level of contact with people who actually speak with real life words during my working day, means that I get through tons of audio books and radio plays, broadeining my mind in ways that would not be possible otherwise. My MP3 player is at least a quarter full of audio books, and they’re on a constant rotation - the music is a constant, but once I’ve heard a book, I’m less likely to go back and listen again for a while - however, I have several DVDs full of various stuff, I’m dying to get through!