I'm listening to the first audiobook I've listened to since I got my Kindle in 2009. I've only listened to a few short stories since then. Prior to that I listened to them a lot.
The audiobok is "The Untold Story of Talking Books" by Matthew Rubery. Here's a link if anyone is interested:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer ... =202083830
It seems that when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, but before they were in production, the New York Times published a lengthy piece about it saying that it was almost certainly going to replace books. And they weren't complaining. They assumed that with someone who was an expert at elocution reading the book to us it would be far more useful and meaningful than the less expert voice we read in our heads.
The reaction to this article was a lengthy discussion in newspapers and magazines and among English professors and teachers and literary critics and celebrities who liked to read, mostly agreeing with the Times article. For a time America thought a huge leap in literary quality was at hand.
Edison, who saw the phonograph initially as a kind of dictating machine, was delighted with this idea and set up a new company with the goal of publishing talking books. And the books everyone was talking about initially were the books of Dickens, who was probably the most popular writer in history at that time, and was still actively writing new books. Since America didn't have to honor British copyrights at that time Edison's plan was to publish Dickens' books, which would be hugely popular and there'd be no royalties. Did Edison also invent piracy?
This all came to nothing when it was realized that there was no way to make recordings long enough to be useful as books. It had been assumed that there would be ways to do that. None were found and the topic was dropped. But, according to Rubery, that discussion was a lengthy and active one.
So some of you might think audiobooks are inferior to printed books but Thomas Edison and many of the leading intellectuals of his day disagreed. They saw this as the the biggest advancement since the printing press and many of them said just that.
I began listening to audiobooks years ago when I had cataracts and doctors refused to operate due to an eye injury I'd had as a child. So, always an avid reader, I listened and saved what reading I could do for work related stuff. Then when my sight got so bad that they had to operate they did. I was able to read again but audiobooks became a habit that stayed with me till I got a Kindle. I've been reading ever since. I bought this audiobook about audiobooks because on the day I found out about it only the hardback and the audiobook was available and I've never liked reading hardback books. Also on that day the audiobook was a lot cheaper. This is a pretty expensive book. Now there's also a Kindle version.
All this stuff about one format being better than the other is, to me, simply personal preference treated like knowledge. I think we can all agree that media does effect our perception of content but no-one has the slightest idea how much or in what way. That's all speculation and guesswork with no real basis. We like what we like and that's that. I prefer visual reading. So what!
Barry