Is listening to audiobooks a legitimate way to intake literature?

They're for people with ADD, women and brainlets.

I have never listened to an audiobook in my life. We are not children who need a beditme story before going to bed; if you are listening to a book, it must be a shit book, otherwise you would not be able to parse it aurally, or at least parse it properly. The written text is supposed to be much denser than the spoken word — that is in fact the whole point of it — because the author has all the time in the world to build it carefully and pack it with meaning. You are supposed to read, stop, go back, stop, think, take notes even, etc. when reading a book that challenges you — and you should ONLY read books that challenge you, of course. Audiobooks are for morons, like podcasts, or YouTube vlogs, etc. If you touch that stuff at all I guarantee you that you are 100% subhuman. I would rather never read a word again than touch that shit, and in the one or two occasions that I have SKIMMED it in my entire life, or experimented with it in any way, I only did it to investigate the latest mindless fads subhumans have invented to waste their pathetic lives.

Only when the narrator is someone like Simon Templeman and Jeremy Irons.

I listen only to audio version of books I already read, and only if I have nothing better to do on the bus.
First expirience with any work of art has to be in the original medium.

they are on the same level as watching a movie.
I particularly use them to practice my italian

Audiobook is the only way i can take DFW

People shat in the streets for thousand of years. Some still do.
Think about it.

here's your reply

cheer up

I don't like them myself, but I don't think they're fundamentaly wrong as long as you only use them for fairly simple books

No

If you have a job where you drive a lot or something, it's fine for listening to trash when you have nothing else to do. Anything that deserves more thought than none should be read though.

Well, nothing like the feel of paper between fingers.
Also, visual memory kicks in, not just the voice in your head, so you absorb better.
But you already knew that.
Audio books are for kids to fall alseep to.

I don't think so, I consider them on the same level as podcasts where you can drift in and out of concentration as you go about listening to them and as such it's an entirely different experience to reading the book.

That said, I usually have an audiobook or two stored on my phone though for when I go on long walks.

Yes, in centuries past authors would read their works to each other, and never made a distinction.
Also, I specifically remember coming across the curriculum for Oxford from several centuries back, and they said that students had to read or attend a public reading of certain books (Plato, etc)

I listened to and fully enjoyed the unabridged Brothers Karamazov and you can't do a damn thing about it.

It isn't a lesser or wrong form, just a different one.
You wouldn't consider reading the Iliad as a really bulky, long scroll any less a reading than reading it on a long hall in a tomb. They are different experiences so obviously they will feel different, but in the end you still are reading the Iliad.

Audiobooks are on the same level as podcasts of being great mindless task aides, stuff like cleaning our cooking flies by while being told a story by a suave brit

...

>First expirience with any work of art has to be in the original medium
Yeah I agree with this. The author wrote it to be read not to be heard.

Yes, because reading is physically stressful. You basically need to sit still for hours and strain your eyes and neck. Not to mention the general health problems of sitting too much.

Ideally we'd have e-ink screens on a stand, that would at least allow us to keep the head vertical or to stand up while reading.

Fucking saved

this always comes to mind when people argue over audio/paper/e-reader
youtu.be/-X5oCV7hWgs?t=51

depends on the book, but it is often way better to hear it read aloud. Especially if the reader has a trained voice . More so with poertry.

Audiobooks are only useful if you are learning a new language. But even in that case, watching a movie in that language would be abetter idea.