Still thinking about books and reading

And yes, I would actually like to get some of these books out of the house where they are taking up space and I cannot find things I want, and this was A Project that I had marked down to go full steam ahead at the beginning of 2020

HOLLO LARFTER.

Because I was buying books because I could. I was buying books because they were not likely to turn up in the local library. I was acquiring books for research purposes. Etc etc. In particular that second category does contain quite a lot of books that, had they been available in the local library, I might well have read, returned, and never thought of more. Though my collection also includes books I did first encounter borrowed from a library...

I have also been given to think about reading, the process rather than the accumulation of reading matter, by this: listening to a book instead of reading it isn’t skiving or cheating: I am not a purist and if people prefer to listen to a book, or that works for them, e.g. they do things which allow of listening to a book while doing, that's fine, you do you, it's absorbing texts, right?

Howqever, is this 'a steady generational shift'? Quite apart from people who had e.g. Books on Tape because of their visual issues, libraries used to have (it seems like years since I've been in a library, and surely this medium is now defunct?) cassette tapes of books? People used to listen to the radio A Lot - I was having a nice chat once at a conference with somebody about The Golden Age of Radio Drama preceding the mass presence of TV - I don't think absorbing things aurally is that new.

(Will concede that this is verging on 'Never Before In the Whole of History': dr rdrz will be apprized of my kneejerk response to that sort of statement.)

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From:

arkessian

I get twitchy if I click on something and it turns out to be an audio clip or a podcast or heaven forfend a video

This is exactly me.

From:

oursin

Y O Y???? Use your words! why did we evolve writing?

From:

movingfinger

Me too!!! Podcasts are so slooooowww and, worse, cannot be skimmed for relevance or quality.

From:

alithea

Me three! I just process info more easily if I can read it. And video is the worst because that's moving pictures for my brain to cope with as well as information!

From:

mrissa

I am like the Grinch: "All the noise all the noise all the NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE."

From:

azara1

I remember reading John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes as a child and being fascinated by the fact that the lead couple's job was writing documentary scripts for radio, since of course "nowadays" any serious documentary would be on television. Now I look at the number of people my age and younger who have their favourite podcasts to absorb while exercising or commuting and think how often things come round in a circle.

From:

mirlacca

I can't retain what I hear. I have to read it. (Unless it's music, and then half the time I can't hear the words anyway--music these days! give me a good Gregorian chant dammit!) Especially in doctors' offices, it makes me crazy when they sit down and go through aftercare stuff and expect me to be able to remember any of it at all!

From:

oursin

Not quite the same thing, but I am dealing with an organisation which was falling down on promised deliveries, and emailing them, and they eventually finally sent me an email saying messages received, and that it was really better to phone.

a) If I email, at least I have a written record to refer back to.*
b) Further to this, in connection with billing issues, I tried to ring them today. After waiting through interminable menus and hold music, I was put on callback. So far, callback NO CAN HAZ.

*When I was studying early medieval charters, apparently religious bodies wrote up backdated charters for their abbeys etc, based on the previous verbal agreements, on the grounds that they wanted something in writing to wave at monarch/local lord in case of dispute, and very sound of them, I thought. (The actual point was that you couldn't trust the date given.)

From:

ithiliana

I was so grumpy while working because students and colleagues always wanted to talk in person or by phone and not email -- but I want a record (when it came to exchanges with students in my classes, it would be by email, and then if they still wanted we could talk about it).

And yes, especially since Covid, trying to get through the phone trees and to understaffed businesses is nearly impossible.

From:

oursin

Also, I may be prejudiced by fielding enquiries in my former job, but people ringing up could tend to ramble and get off the point and be difficult to herd back onto it if there ever was one, whereas with an email one can at least endeavour to clarify without sitting there fuming for half an hour minimum.... (Not that they read the emails, the number of times people came back with queries that had been addressed further down the chain by a previous respondent.)

I am also increasingly finding it physically painful to keep holding a phone for indefinite waiting periods.

From:

ithiliana

It may be prejudice, or it may be experience/observation on how people communicate! Although I admit that I had to learn to write focused and clear and single-topic emails in professional contexts because I love a good ramble and when I speak or when I write without major editing, I go on and on (with many parentheticals) because it's all connected.

With my students, when they emailed to ask me a question that was answer in Ye Olde Syllabus, I cut/paste the relevant info with the page number and went merrily on.

Also--painful holding phone! I have worsening arthritis, so it's not only painful/awkward to hold but I drop things. Plus, it's awfully hard to hear/understand people on the lousy connections that seem to be standard these days. I always try to buy a fairly large smartphone (which I consider smarter than me these days!) because otherwise it's hard to read on it, and I have even more trouble tapping the right icon or keyboard button, sigh.

From:

castiron

I suspect the reason audiobooks are having such a rise in popularity is simply that the technology's made access and delivery easier and more convenient. Stack of cassette tapes or CDs vs. electronic file? No contest.

I don't prefer audiobooks; I get distracted enough that I'll miss bits and have to rewind. But I'm glad they're more widely availabe for the folks who do prefer them.

Also, nthing the preference for text over video. I can read the article in half the time it'd take to listen to it, and I'm not disturbing others in the room.

From:

azurelunatic

My local librarian can come through and correct, but independent of the special library for the blind and otherwise impaired in reading a book physically, the audiobooks available tend to be electronic. United States, Pacific Northwest, Washington State.

From:

lilliburlero

Surely in historical terms silent private reading is a bit of a blip compared to people absorbing narrative and information aurally?

I'm another one who prefers written instructions, though, you can take them at your own pace instead of having either to sit through or fast forward bits you know how to do already or repeatedly pause and rewind something tricky.

From:

oursin

Reading as communal act - i.e. one person reading to a group - persists well into C19th, well beyond the period of 'only literate person in village reads Pamela to the populace', though perhaps more as family ritual (with Mudie's library ensuring that no blush was brought to the face of the reader, hmmm?).

From:

green_knight

That was my thought, too: while I vastly _prefer_ reading the words myself, the experience used to be 'somebody reads to you' until literacy and book availability caught up to make 'individual sits down with book' viable. Before that, one person would read, before that, one person would tell the story.

(It is up to out imagination to decide how interesting or faithful readings were: I'm confident that some people did all the voices, and others skipped the boring or scandalous bits.)

From:

liseuse

I have started listening to audiobooks but the key for me is that I have to treat them like I treat radio drama; as background noise that I might occasionally tune into fully in order to listen properly for a while. I loved the audio versions of Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo and Lymond books, but only because I've read the books so many times that I don't need to listen properly to get the plot or the characterisation.

From:

alithea

I grew up listening to audio books on long car journeys but I don't listen to books as a general rule because I can't actually do anything else at the same time except for the most basic physical tasks because otherwise my brain starts automatically blocking out the sound! And if I can't do anything else as well, I may as well just be reading.

From:

caulkhead

"I can't actually do anything else at the same time except for the most basic physical tasks because otherwise my brain starts automatically blocking out the sound!"

This, exactly. And even if it *is* the most basic physical task, chances are my brain will still wander off somewhere.

From:

oracne

I blush to admit I've never listened to an audiobook, even of my own books - I want to do that, because there are so many great narrators, yet it just seems more difficult to wedge tiny bits of book in that way. I did try some Big Finish radio plays while putting away laundry or walking to and from work - that was pretty good because the parts were about 20 minutes long.

Side note about the Harlequin books - I managed to listen to maybe a paragraph of the first one before I freaked out because I knew the next word and the next and the next yet it was this nice lady with a British accent. Still not sure why I couldn't bear it.

From:

ithiliana

But I can't quite be doing with that, I get twitchy if I click on something and it turns out to be an audio clip or a podcast or heaven forfend a video. Give me words, words, words to read, if only because I can usually read faster than that.

This is me, so much me, although I'd say that after a very short time of twitching, it is *painful.* I have never even tried an audio book (and the idea of doing other things while listening to an audio book is to laugh--I wouldn't be able to concentrate on either). I have several friends doing fascinating podcasts on the history of fascism in the U.S. and its connections to Tolkien's legendarium, and on queer Tolkien -- and I keep making puppy dog eyes at them and begging for transcripts (which I know are a pain/take time, etc. but really! That's the only way I can get their ideas.

I suspect that these responses are connected to my autist's brain -- and go along with somehow learning to read at age three (to the surprise of my parents and grandparents, and the eventual discomfort of my first grade teacher who didn't know what to do with a student who was tested as reading at the fourth-grade level and didn't get "phonics" which was the preferred method then).I also read very quickly, as some have noted above, and see no reason why I should have to sit and listen to something that takes half an hour when I could read it much more quickly (and probably assimilate more!).

I had to develop strategies for listening to lectures in classes, and to presentations at conferences (well mostly the strategy of writing detailed notes -- or in recent years, keyboarding copious notes on my laptop balanced on my lap) and some minimal (thus not obvious to people around me) stimming.

I don't know if there is a generational component although I've seen people writing about shortening of attention spans since visual media (tv, film) became so dominant (though I really wonder how much data they have from the past), and people spending less time reading (against what data, I would ask again). I'm not saying there isn't one, but I also suspect there is a neurodivergent/neurotypical divide as well.

From:

oursin

I'm sure I've grumped before that the whole thing about fading attention-span was invoked over snippety popular journalism - 'Tit-Bits' - around the late nineteenth century but one could probably find other instances.

From:

ithiliana

The more things change . . . I have a patented snark about how Socrates thought the idea of writing anything down was terrible awful etc. but that radical Plato ignored him and wrote the stuff down! So it's been going on for a while.

From:

ithiliana

When we decided to retire and move out of Texas into a small apartment, I knew I'd have to clear out many books (especially since I had an office full of them on campus, and bookshelves in three rooms in the house--my bedroom, my office at home (presumably build as a guest room but we didn't have guests), and the big room in the center of the house which was perfect as a library. It was an interesting process: I started doing it some years before Covid hit on the grounds it would be easier to do in small chunks over time rather than all at once. But then we had things work out so that it was better to leave in Fall of 2020 than Summer of 2021, so . . .it got hectic. (We decided we'd be safer driving five days to western Washington and living in a part of the state that was not jam-packed with anti-vax, Christian nationalist, the KKK, and militias -- although I admit that eastern Washington has more of those groups).

It was easier than I'd thought it would be in part because I was so tired of the physical labor of dealing with so many books (had been buying fiction mostly on Kindle for years) and because of ongoing trouble reading physical books (turned out I needed cataract surgery which has helped!).

From:

antisoppist

I also back button out of instructions by video. I can't stand waiting for the bit I need rather than skimming to it.

But the first thing I did when I got my childhood tape recorder in the 1970s was spend hours reading my Antonia Forests into it so I feel I was ahead of the curve on audiobooks/podcasts.

I listen to a lot of radio drama while translating things because it stops me getting bored and not translating things. But that has to be a bit of a weird brain thing.

From:

silveradept

I can listen to specific things in specific situations - if I'm walking or doing something that doesn't require my full focus, that's fine. But the minute I have to start focusing on a single thing, other audio or video streams start interfering with my variable attention stimulus trait and it becomes a lot harder to focus on anything.

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It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog