Audiobooks

[DrLacero]

Howdy all.

What's your opinions on Audiobooks? I had a little search (well, 3) but was unable to find any threads regarding the matter.

A few of my friends are of the opinion that Audiobooks are for the illiterate and children, which I'm not sure I accept. I very rarely read these days due to the amount of work being piled on me, so instead of listening to music while I'm travelling to and from Uni I've started getting some audiobooks. The last couple of days I've been listening to the audiobook of The Greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins and loving it at that. However I'm still unable to listen to fiction, there's something about hearing conversations between characters read by one person that really annoys me (or worse, one person who puts on different accents dependant on the character).

So yeah, what's your views?

[Blinger1]

Fully agreed with everything you wrote. But the Harry potter series by Jim Dale is quite good. I listen to it WAAAY too much!
I listen to the books because I get sick of listening to music...

[Black_Apalachi]

I was given an audiobook once and was just disappointed that I didn't get the video instead lol. In my opinion they don't require any less effort than reading a book and I'd much prefer to have read the book.

[Inseriousity.]

I've got the Harry Potter audiobooks from Stephen Fry. It's alright but sometimes his accents go against my own judgement as to what that character sounds like. Also some of his pronunciations of spells make me go "NOOOOO why pronounce it like that?!!" cos it ruins it but apart from that, it's not so bad. I tend to walk around a lot and it's safer to listen to an audiobook on my ipod than starting to sing loudly (which if you heard my voice is not a good thing).

So yeah, they're not bad. :D

[Grig]

Reading a book develops your vocab and if you just rewad audio books all the time that won't helped. Reading it physically is a great skill to have yourself, and I'd never trade it in for any sort of audio book, even though I am much more of an auditory person than a visual one.

[MrGazet]

I'm not into audio books really

[Black_Apalachi]

I've got the Harry Potter audiobooks from Stephen Fry. It's alright but sometimes his accents go against my own judgement as to what that character sounds like. Also some of his pronunciations of spells make me go "NOOOOO why pronounce it like that?!!" cos it ruins it but apart from that, it's not so bad. I tend to walk around a lot and it's safer to listen to an audiobook on my ipod than starting to sing loudly (which if you heard my voice is not a good thing).

So yeah, they're not bad. :D

That's exactly why there is no substitute to reading the book. It's so much better to enjoy the freedom of using your imagination to create your own perception of a character and it's great later on to laugh about all the words or names you mispronounced in your head :P