Recently, I listened to an audio book for the first time. I have always wanted to listen to one. The book was Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster which is an epistolary novel in children's classics. I downloaded the audio book from LibriVox. LibriVox is a website from where we can legally download free audio books. All the books have been narrated by volunteers from the general public. There are a lot of other websites from which you can download free audio books legally and illegally. You can also purchase them from various sites. These are my observations about audio books from my experience; do feel free to add anything else that I may have missed.
Pros:
Final verdict - This is my personal opinion and cannot be generalized. Preference of audio books is based on personal choice and level of comfort. I think a few books with simple language can be heard as audio books specially while commuting or completing some chores. Otherwise, for difficult books or for books that I want to devour (including the cover), I prefer hard copies/e-books.
Pros:
- The narration of the book with voice modulation makes it very interesting like listening to a play on the radio.
- One of the biggest advantage is that we can listen to audio books while we are engaged in some other activity like travelling in a bus, cooking, cleaning the cupboard, etc.
- It saves a lot of time because we can multi-task easily and do not need to keep aside a specific time for reading.
- Portability is definitely one of the plus points of audio books. Most of us will not go anywhere without our phones and earphones so we don't need to remember to carry a book.
- It is indeed a new experience to hear the words and sentences out loud. Everyone should listen to an audio book at least once.
- When we read, we do not give much importance to right pronunciation. Sometimes, we might know how to spell a word and its meaning, but we may not know its pronunciation. So audio books will help us in this aspect.
- A lot of people do not enjoy reading books. They are not against books itself, but do not enjoy the exercise of reading; so audio books might be a boon to them.
- One of the difficulties I faced is that I could not look up difficult words easily as I was not able to deduce the spellings from the pronunciation.
- The availability of audio books is also a matter of concern. Only few book are made into audio books thus limiting the number available.
- The quality of the narration also affect how much we like an audio book. If we do not like the way it is narrated, it is difficult to take a liking to the book even if the theme is interesting.
- In addition, we may find it difficult to comprehend certain accents and if the book has a lot of difficult pronunciations, we may not enjoy it.
- When a book is narrated to us in a certain way, our imagination will be limited to that particular voice modulation and tone and we may not be able to interpret it differently.
- The kind of book is also a very important factor. Those with dialogues would be more interesting than third person narrations. If the book is in the form of short notes, letters, etc. with date and time specified or contains tables or illustrations, then this technique cannot be used.
- Something that happened to me many times while I was listening to audio books is that I was losing focus. We need to concentrate on the audio to understand the book completely and in depth. Sometimes when we multitask, we tend to not concentrate enough and may miss out on important information. We may have to rewind and hear it again. Also our thoughts might wander and we will miss out on the narration.
- Even though we learn the pronunciation of words, we will not be able to expand our vocabulary for writing, as we will not learn new spellings.
- Good quality of the audio is vital for a hassle-free experience. Using earphones will give greater clarity and avoid unwanted disturbances. If the audio quality is not good, we may not enjoy the experience and it may turn into a difficult chore.
- There are different types of readers - some like to read quickly while others may want to devour the book a little longer. But in audio books, the speed is predetermined. Changing the speed of a recorded audio does not yield satisfactory results.
- If you are an avid reader and absolutely love books, chances are that you may mark or underline quotes or sentences or even paragraphs that you love. A few people also write down their favourite lines. This cannot be done in case of an audio book.
- A lot of readers collect books and maintain a library of their own. These readers will not prefer e-books and audio books. Also, many readers love the smell of the books and the feel of the pages, so audio maybe a disappointment to them. Surely, beautiful covers - hardcovers, french flaps, etc. is what draws the attraction to the book at first sight. With audio books, it is difficult to visually attract a larger audience.
Final verdict - This is my personal opinion and cannot be generalized. Preference of audio books is based on personal choice and level of comfort. I think a few books with simple language can be heard as audio books specially while commuting or completing some chores. Otherwise, for difficult books or for books that I want to devour (including the cover), I prefer hard copies/e-books.