Why YSK: if you don’t have the ability or time to devote your visual attention to reading, you can still engage your mind the same way as you do while reading by listening to an audiobook. Virtually any modern audiobook player will also let you select the play speed, so you can listen to books at whatever rate you’re comfortable with.
Personally I know as I’ve gotten older the number of hours I’m physically able to read tends to no longer be able to match my desire to read, so it’s nice to be able to keep going even if my eyes are sore.
Historically, this is somewhat analogous to the late 19th century lectors that worked in some factories, paid by donated workers’ wages, to read/perform popular books for bored workers. Predictably in the US factory owners tended to have a problem with their workers listening to ‘communist literature,’ leading to firings, strikes, and violent crackdowns.
ADHD doesn’t allow me to enjoy audiobooks. I tried. 😭
According to this page, that is just not true.
When you read, your brain is working hard behind the scenes. It recognizes the shapes of letters, matches them to speech sounds, connects those sounds to meaning, then links those meanings across words, sentences and even whole books. The text uses visual structure such as punctuation marks, paragraph breaks or bolded words to guide understanding. You can go at your own speed.
Listening, on the other hand, requires your brain to work at the pace of the speaker. Because spoken language is fleeting, listeners must rely on cognitive processes, including memory to hold onto what they just heard.
Also reading really activates my fantasy while listening does not, at least not to the same extent
Audio books aren’t my cup of tea but I’m extremely glad they’re picking up in popularity for those that enjoy them. Stay literate everyone!
Pure anecdote, but my personal experience suggests that reading vs listening do not activate the same part of the brain. With textbooks specifically, reading assignments never seemed to do me much good - I’d read a page, really giving it my attention, but then make it to the end of the page and realize I have no idea what it was talking about like 3 paragraphs ago.
Enter the age of digital textbooks and text-to-speech software - fucking godsend for me, even when it’s the shitty Microsoft Sam style voice. Listening to the material instead of reading increased retention quite a bit.
Taking it up another notch, doing them both simultaneously was the clear winner. If I listen to a reading assignment while following along visually reading the text, it’s like a one-and-done and ready to take the test at the end of the semester with no further studying.
I discovered this superpower near the end of highschool, and it has absolutely carried me through everything since - if you think you might be an auditory learner, give it a shot!
IIRC there’s a scene in Die Another Day (2002) where James bond visits a Cuban cigar factory and there’s a lector.
Cuban cigar factories still are employing lectors.
