If one were to listen to The Hound of the Baskervilles please do so on LibriVox selecting Sir David Clark as your narrator. And if you've got further time, his Count of Monte Cristo. He is a master narrator, although I am unsure of his knighthood.
What do you think of listening while reading along in the physical book? I'm less curious if you consider this "reading", and more curious about what you think of it as a mode of engaging written text. Would you consider this approach an "inferior mode of gaining information"?
I have found this to be an invaluable tool when I need to get through a book (I love to stop, consider, write notes, etc) or I am fatigued and having a hard time concentrating at the end of the day. I also enjoy the rich experience of hearing and seeing (especially with a world-class narrator).
Additionally, I teach upper school humanities at a small classical Christian school. Many students struggle to complete the out-of-school readings, so I regularly suggest that they listen to an audiobook while following along in the book. This has been a game changer, both for completing their readings and for their overall comprehension of the text.
Oh I think reading and listening is wonderful. In the school I teach at we read aloud together the major of what we read. I think we have to raise students out of the more of social media and visual entertainment of all kinds by patiently reading with them. I also recommend reading along with an audio book for students who struggle. I require my students to annotate the books we read so I can know they are engaging them.
Interestingly, silent reading is a fairly modern notion. Augustine comments on the fact that Ambrose read silently to himself as though this was really quite strange to him. Reading aloud, even alone, or reading along while someone else reads is a wonderful thing to do. It engages more of the senses in the experience.
I totally agree with you about reading. When you read you get the words at your own pace.
You are right. Reading words is much better than hearing them.
WORDS
In Social Media, how refreshing and relaxing is to find a post with only words, with no audiovisuals and no news. A rest for the eyes and for the ears. Just for the mind, like in the old days.
Words trigger the imagination. Images kill it.
No film or play ever changed the world, but texts have been changing the world for five millennia. Words are a lot more powerful than images, not only because of their preciseness, but also because of their reality. You can easily fake an image or a video, via AI and FX (special effects) but you cannot fake a word. Words can transmit the truth or the lie, and they can have several meanings, but they cannot be falsified. A word is a word.
Words are the greatest divine gift given to humanity, which set us apart from other species. Only through words, can deep and complex concepts, thoughts, feelings and emotions be expressed and understood. There is nothing more beautiful than words exposing human nature.
In the vocabulary of any language, there are not two words with the same exact meaning, that is, there are no real synonyms. Every word defines a certain concept or subject with its particular and unique nuances. Unfortunately, those nuances may be lost in bad translations.
Writing is by far the greatest breakthrough of humanity, much more than going to Mars. For the first time, knowledge could be transmitted to future generations
This is perfect. I have a "reading" buddy. I actually read, I am thorough but a bit slow. She on the other hand "reads" with Audible. She gets way more "reading" done then I do of course and she never fails to let me know. Even if she has to listen 5 times. I do not consider listening to be reading. It's hard for me to even count audiobooks on my Goodreads account. Audiobooks are wonderful for travel and allow me to keep up with the Agatha Christie book group-- still NOT reading though. When I made the mistake of pointing out that listening is not reading to the buddy, meltdown occured. Now I just tell her that I actually pick up a book or e-reading device when I have time to do so. Therefore she's in my timeframe not hers. We rarely buddy read anymore.
A couple other points- I actually detest watching YouTube for information. Too much wasted time going on. I also hate reading blogs that give a whole life history before I can get to the recipe.
Karen: “I also hate reading blogs that give a whole life history before I can get to the recipe.” — I’m with you, sister! I mean, who cares, just give me the darn recipe already!! 😆
Thank you Jacob. Here's another angle of this. I'm a deaf person, although I can hear with the help of technology. If I listen to something there's often uncertainty if I got it right and then I ask my wife to double check that message for me. In fact I will often write someone to request a response in writing because of this. So for us deaf people this is a no brainer. I guess the same could be said about blind people, using braille to read and to learn, in spite of their disability.
Great post Jacob. You make a strong case for your claim. I agree that reading requires you to be far more present than an audiobook. In my experience, I can recall written information much quicker accurately than when I have only listened to the text.
I suspect the pushback from commenters (I read your other note where you cited this post) stems from the effort disparity in reading vs listening. Reading is hard. It can be boring, the pace is too slow, difficulty track of what's happening, etc. That is, it is a more active pursuit. Listening is far more passive and requires substantially less awareness to accomplish.
I think this trend towards equating listening with reading stems from the rise of screen time and audiovisual media becoming an ever potent drug.
There are so many good comments here. I'll throw in my lot with Joe and Norm for a preference for the printed word, which I think requires more concentration and engagement than listening. Specifically, I want to hear for myself the authorial voice inside my head. I want to decide what characters' voices sound like. I want to hear in my own head the humor, the sadness, the grief in the words. I want to be able to linger over a phrase, to enjoy the interplay of words in a sentence, and, of course, mark the hell out of the text, because why not?
When I read fiction I feel that the author is talking just to me. We have a special relationship during the time a book is in my hands. Someone reading it to me is one person too many.
I've found that listening to a book the first time around works for most books. But for some I find them very valuable and worthy of study, so I buy the physical copy.
It is compelling that we've entered a time where more words than ever exist, yet the number of people willing or able to understand them hasn't kept up. AI will be parsing and reading for most.
Your point about listening being a posturing of sorts for reading is a good one. Reminds me of the boom in random garbage book sales in the DC-area during the Covid lockdowns; illiterate Feds wanted look smart during their Zoom meetings so they'd go to Goodwill and load up on whatever was available so they'd have literate backdrop.
yes! I've found some classic literature works too intimidating to attempt but listening to them opened the door for me. Some I've gone back to read in the printed book, others I've left, glad to have listened, but not interested in diving in further.
#4 Talking Books for the Blind program was an immensely supportive resource for my daughter and gr daughter for textbooks. Am so grateful a gifted speech/hearing pathologist pointed us to this much-welcomed resource.
Oh how Cool the Lord worked in putting us in this backwoods country location with a top-notch specialist 🙏🙏🙏🙏 32 yrs later, NICU gr daughter (after tons of vaxxes)diagnosed with binocular vision, deaf in L ear through disintegrated 3rd hearing bone—4 subsequent surgeries for prosthetics—and vision therapy (diagnosed by same teacher) resulted in a top-notch archer who very easily shot 278-292 out of 300!!!! God is the Master Designer of our senses, and being in the center of His will brought us from the Brazilian jungle to rural Ohio and Mrs. Peggy Zachel 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 Praise God for Talking Books and help for the helpless 🙏
Listening and watching has become a 'convenience' for reading. For awhile, listening exposed us to the rhetoric of Ted Talks for example. Not so bad. Good rhetoric can be mesmerizing in its conveyance of information. Some stories and books are worth the listen. For example, I am listening to Great Expectations as read by Simon Vance ( how did I miss this?), but I also am reading it because Dickens is deliberate. Anyway, three or more, ideas. 1) People take 'scrolling' on their phones as 'reading'. 2) Many people tell me listening to an audio book is easier because they dont have time to read. They are too 'busy'. 3) The foregoing are not good solutions or excuses.
My positive anecdote - I learned how to listen a little better via audio books. I would invariable lose my place in a story during traffic commutes, but I realized on the return trip I had synced in my head a mile marker with places in narration. So what? Well, for several years, I was a counselor. I listened to a lot of stories. I needed listening memory.
What I don't believe: social media and all its buddies, is an answer to reading 'good' books. Not so. I have difficulty understanding what sublime societal recapitulation is occurring with reading that it has become a convenience.
P.S? I love Simon Vance's voice and its timbre to communicate. And, we emotionally respond to stories read or spoken - the magic of language?
Great piece, Jacob! It’s an argument (mostly amiable) that I’ve had with my husband many a time. I’m the one siding with your position.
I have a follow-on question that maybe you address in your dissertation: do you think that listening is a superior or preferable mode of engaging with a story (ie imaginative fiction) versus more didactic literature? It’s the one context wherein I personally experience listening as the richer mode of engagement. Perhaps it has to do with being read to as a child, or because it is more “incarnational.” Also, in this context, one is not usually reading for “information.” What do you think?
That’s a great question. I definitely think story lends itself more to the medium of listening. I think on the level of just pleasurably taking in a story, listening is great. But, at the same time, the higher forms of literature (think Dickens as opposed Rowling) I think begs to be examined more closely than just listening can do well. Both are still great, but it’s easier to fully take in Harry Potter and Hunger Games by listening than Anna Karenina or some other such work.
I also think some stories are designed with medium of listening in mind (such as Homeric epic poetry) whereas Melville intends people to read his work. So that matters too.
Ohhh, now you've unwittingly wandered into my soapbox, Jacob😆! JK Rowling's Harry Potter series *is* a higher form of literature than most people realize! She's doing things not unlike Dickens or Austen, and the whole series is brimming full of literary allusions and alchemy. Case in point: Mr. Crookshanks (Hermione's aggressive cat) is meant to evoke George Cruikshank, the 19th century satirist who illustrated Dickens work. Oxford tutor Beatrice Groves has written a great book on the literary allusions in Harry Potter, including Greek myth and epics; Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain-poet; Shakespeare; Dickens and Austen, etc. (I'm planning to do my thesis at Faulkner on Rowling's use of literary alchemy in HP).
But of course, this only goes to prove your point, I think, because it's easy to miss Rowling's literary craft when you're only enjoying the HP series as a rolicking good story on Audible.
I’m a big fan of HP myself. Filch’s cat, Mrs. Norris, is also a reference to a character in Austen’s Mansfield Park. Her story is also mimicking LOTR in many ways.
Lord, forgive us that we have strayed so far as a world where people would actually become angry over a debate about reading vs listening. My sympathies Jacob. It's undoubtedly more prevalent in your world than mine.
I also listen to audio books on a regular basis, but most often I listen to decide whether or not it is a book I want to buy. I have listened to at least part of many books, particularly ones written in the last few decades, that I would have regretted wasting money on an actual copy of the book. The books that have value to me are the ones I know I will want to revisit at times to harvest the knowledge again when I need it. No matter how many notes I take or clips I make in Audible, it's still not the same as when I sit down and page through my highlights and sticky notes in a book.
One more thing, since we are on the topic of pet peeves like people calling listening reading. My similar gripe, albeit a less fervent one, is how we view a narration (audio book) to be equal to the book. Books can be donated or gifted or bequeathed, enabling my investment in knowledge to enlighten the world long after I'm done with them. Yet another false equivocation our culture has given us to merrily debate some day on Substack.
I have a huge bed against digital content that one had to purchase but still does not really own. All digital movies, books, etc., you are actually just licensing for permission to look at, you have nothing real and they can take it back if they like. Physical stuff for the win.
I appreciate your point of view. There have been times when I listened to an audiobook, but I ended up getting the hard copy of the book to record quotes or take notes. Some of my children use audiobooks to follow along with the actual book (helps for neurodivergent children). There is still a lot of value in the written word, though.
YES. Very well said—I mean, written! Ironically, I listened to this article on my commute lol
Ha!
If one were to listen to The Hound of the Baskervilles please do so on LibriVox selecting Sir David Clark as your narrator. And if you've got further time, his Count of Monte Cristo. He is a master narrator, although I am unsure of his knighthood.
I’m actually currently listening to it as narrated by Stephen Fry. 😁
Thanks for your thoughts on this, Jacob.
What do you think of listening while reading along in the physical book? I'm less curious if you consider this "reading", and more curious about what you think of it as a mode of engaging written text. Would you consider this approach an "inferior mode of gaining information"?
I have found this to be an invaluable tool when I need to get through a book (I love to stop, consider, write notes, etc) or I am fatigued and having a hard time concentrating at the end of the day. I also enjoy the rich experience of hearing and seeing (especially with a world-class narrator).
Additionally, I teach upper school humanities at a small classical Christian school. Many students struggle to complete the out-of-school readings, so I regularly suggest that they listen to an audiobook while following along in the book. This has been a game changer, both for completing their readings and for their overall comprehension of the text.
Oh I think reading and listening is wonderful. In the school I teach at we read aloud together the major of what we read. I think we have to raise students out of the more of social media and visual entertainment of all kinds by patiently reading with them. I also recommend reading along with an audio book for students who struggle. I require my students to annotate the books we read so I can know they are engaging them.
Interestingly, silent reading is a fairly modern notion. Augustine comments on the fact that Ambrose read silently to himself as though this was really quite strange to him. Reading aloud, even alone, or reading along while someone else reads is a wonderful thing to do. It engages more of the senses in the experience.
I totally agree with you about reading. When you read you get the words at your own pace.
You are right. Reading words is much better than hearing them.
WORDS
In Social Media, how refreshing and relaxing is to find a post with only words, with no audiovisuals and no news. A rest for the eyes and for the ears. Just for the mind, like in the old days.
Words trigger the imagination. Images kill it.
No film or play ever changed the world, but texts have been changing the world for five millennia. Words are a lot more powerful than images, not only because of their preciseness, but also because of their reality. You can easily fake an image or a video, via AI and FX (special effects) but you cannot fake a word. Words can transmit the truth or the lie, and they can have several meanings, but they cannot be falsified. A word is a word.
Words are the greatest divine gift given to humanity, which set us apart from other species. Only through words, can deep and complex concepts, thoughts, feelings and emotions be expressed and understood. There is nothing more beautiful than words exposing human nature.
In the vocabulary of any language, there are not two words with the same exact meaning, that is, there are no real synonyms. Every word defines a certain concept or subject with its particular and unique nuances. Unfortunately, those nuances may be lost in bad translations.
Writing is by far the greatest breakthrough of humanity, much more than going to Mars. For the first time, knowledge could be transmitted to future generations
Thanks Joe, good thoughts.
Excellent! Thank you for this, Jacob.
This is perfect. I have a "reading" buddy. I actually read, I am thorough but a bit slow. She on the other hand "reads" with Audible. She gets way more "reading" done then I do of course and she never fails to let me know. Even if she has to listen 5 times. I do not consider listening to be reading. It's hard for me to even count audiobooks on my Goodreads account. Audiobooks are wonderful for travel and allow me to keep up with the Agatha Christie book group-- still NOT reading though. When I made the mistake of pointing out that listening is not reading to the buddy, meltdown occured. Now I just tell her that I actually pick up a book or e-reading device when I have time to do so. Therefore she's in my timeframe not hers. We rarely buddy read anymore.
A couple other points- I actually detest watching YouTube for information. Too much wasted time going on. I also hate reading blogs that give a whole life history before I can get to the recipe.
Karen: “I also hate reading blogs that give a whole life history before I can get to the recipe.” — I’m with you, sister! I mean, who cares, just give me the darn recipe already!! 😆
😂 we like the Lillie Eats and Tells recipes. You should check those out.
Thank you Jacob. Here's another angle of this. I'm a deaf person, although I can hear with the help of technology. If I listen to something there's often uncertainty if I got it right and then I ask my wife to double check that message for me. In fact I will often write someone to request a response in writing because of this. So for us deaf people this is a no brainer. I guess the same could be said about blind people, using braille to read and to learn, in spite of their disability.
Great post Jacob. You make a strong case for your claim. I agree that reading requires you to be far more present than an audiobook. In my experience, I can recall written information much quicker accurately than when I have only listened to the text.
I suspect the pushback from commenters (I read your other note where you cited this post) stems from the effort disparity in reading vs listening. Reading is hard. It can be boring, the pace is too slow, difficulty track of what's happening, etc. That is, it is a more active pursuit. Listening is far more passive and requires substantially less awareness to accomplish.
I think this trend towards equating listening with reading stems from the rise of screen time and audiovisual media becoming an ever potent drug.
💯
There are so many good comments here. I'll throw in my lot with Joe and Norm for a preference for the printed word, which I think requires more concentration and engagement than listening. Specifically, I want to hear for myself the authorial voice inside my head. I want to decide what characters' voices sound like. I want to hear in my own head the humor, the sadness, the grief in the words. I want to be able to linger over a phrase, to enjoy the interplay of words in a sentence, and, of course, mark the hell out of the text, because why not?
When I read fiction I feel that the author is talking just to me. We have a special relationship during the time a book is in my hands. Someone reading it to me is one person too many.
I've found that listening to a book the first time around works for most books. But for some I find them very valuable and worthy of study, so I buy the physical copy.
It is compelling that we've entered a time where more words than ever exist, yet the number of people willing or able to understand them hasn't kept up. AI will be parsing and reading for most.
Your point about listening being a posturing of sorts for reading is a good one. Reminds me of the boom in random garbage book sales in the DC-area during the Covid lockdowns; illiterate Feds wanted look smart during their Zoom meetings so they'd go to Goodwill and load up on whatever was available so they'd have literate backdrop.
yes! I've found some classic literature works too intimidating to attempt but listening to them opened the door for me. Some I've gone back to read in the printed book, others I've left, glad to have listened, but not interested in diving in further.
#4 Talking Books for the Blind program was an immensely supportive resource for my daughter and gr daughter for textbooks. Am so grateful a gifted speech/hearing pathologist pointed us to this much-welcomed resource.
Very cool!
Oh how Cool the Lord worked in putting us in this backwoods country location with a top-notch specialist 🙏🙏🙏🙏 32 yrs later, NICU gr daughter (after tons of vaxxes)diagnosed with binocular vision, deaf in L ear through disintegrated 3rd hearing bone—4 subsequent surgeries for prosthetics—and vision therapy (diagnosed by same teacher) resulted in a top-notch archer who very easily shot 278-292 out of 300!!!! God is the Master Designer of our senses, and being in the center of His will brought us from the Brazilian jungle to rural Ohio and Mrs. Peggy Zachel 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 Praise God for Talking Books and help for the helpless 🙏
Listening and watching has become a 'convenience' for reading. For awhile, listening exposed us to the rhetoric of Ted Talks for example. Not so bad. Good rhetoric can be mesmerizing in its conveyance of information. Some stories and books are worth the listen. For example, I am listening to Great Expectations as read by Simon Vance ( how did I miss this?), but I also am reading it because Dickens is deliberate. Anyway, three or more, ideas. 1) People take 'scrolling' on their phones as 'reading'. 2) Many people tell me listening to an audio book is easier because they dont have time to read. They are too 'busy'. 3) The foregoing are not good solutions or excuses.
My positive anecdote - I learned how to listen a little better via audio books. I would invariable lose my place in a story during traffic commutes, but I realized on the return trip I had synced in my head a mile marker with places in narration. So what? Well, for several years, I was a counselor. I listened to a lot of stories. I needed listening memory.
What I don't believe: social media and all its buddies, is an answer to reading 'good' books. Not so. I have difficulty understanding what sublime societal recapitulation is occurring with reading that it has become a convenience.
P.S? I love Simon Vance's voice and its timbre to communicate. And, we emotionally respond to stories read or spoken - the magic of language?
Simon Vance is one of my favorite narrators! Wonderful to listen to!
Great piece, Jacob! It’s an argument (mostly amiable) that I’ve had with my husband many a time. I’m the one siding with your position.
I have a follow-on question that maybe you address in your dissertation: do you think that listening is a superior or preferable mode of engaging with a story (ie imaginative fiction) versus more didactic literature? It’s the one context wherein I personally experience listening as the richer mode of engagement. Perhaps it has to do with being read to as a child, or because it is more “incarnational.” Also, in this context, one is not usually reading for “information.” What do you think?
That’s a great question. I definitely think story lends itself more to the medium of listening. I think on the level of just pleasurably taking in a story, listening is great. But, at the same time, the higher forms of literature (think Dickens as opposed Rowling) I think begs to be examined more closely than just listening can do well. Both are still great, but it’s easier to fully take in Harry Potter and Hunger Games by listening than Anna Karenina or some other such work.
I also think some stories are designed with medium of listening in mind (such as Homeric epic poetry) whereas Melville intends people to read his work. So that matters too.
Ohhh, now you've unwittingly wandered into my soapbox, Jacob😆! JK Rowling's Harry Potter series *is* a higher form of literature than most people realize! She's doing things not unlike Dickens or Austen, and the whole series is brimming full of literary allusions and alchemy. Case in point: Mr. Crookshanks (Hermione's aggressive cat) is meant to evoke George Cruikshank, the 19th century satirist who illustrated Dickens work. Oxford tutor Beatrice Groves has written a great book on the literary allusions in Harry Potter, including Greek myth and epics; Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain-poet; Shakespeare; Dickens and Austen, etc. (I'm planning to do my thesis at Faulkner on Rowling's use of literary alchemy in HP).
But of course, this only goes to prove your point, I think, because it's easy to miss Rowling's literary craft when you're only enjoying the HP series as a rolicking good story on Audible.
I’m a big fan of HP myself. Filch’s cat, Mrs. Norris, is also a reference to a character in Austen’s Mansfield Park. Her story is also mimicking LOTR in many ways.
Likewise, Hunger Games is basically a twist on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
indeed
Lord, forgive us that we have strayed so far as a world where people would actually become angry over a debate about reading vs listening. My sympathies Jacob. It's undoubtedly more prevalent in your world than mine.
I also listen to audio books on a regular basis, but most often I listen to decide whether or not it is a book I want to buy. I have listened to at least part of many books, particularly ones written in the last few decades, that I would have regretted wasting money on an actual copy of the book. The books that have value to me are the ones I know I will want to revisit at times to harvest the knowledge again when I need it. No matter how many notes I take or clips I make in Audible, it's still not the same as when I sit down and page through my highlights and sticky notes in a book.
One more thing, since we are on the topic of pet peeves like people calling listening reading. My similar gripe, albeit a less fervent one, is how we view a narration (audio book) to be equal to the book. Books can be donated or gifted or bequeathed, enabling my investment in knowledge to enlighten the world long after I'm done with them. Yet another false equivocation our culture has given us to merrily debate some day on Substack.
I have a huge bed against digital content that one had to purchase but still does not really own. All digital movies, books, etc., you are actually just licensing for permission to look at, you have nothing real and they can take it back if they like. Physical stuff for the win.
I appreciate your point of view. There have been times when I listened to an audiobook, but I ended up getting the hard copy of the book to record quotes or take notes. Some of my children use audiobooks to follow along with the actual book (helps for neurodivergent children). There is still a lot of value in the written word, though.