I feel like with audio books, I'm constantly missing a line, a remark or an important snippet of context. Then, I am having to asking my smart device to rewind '30 seconds' constantly. It makes it such a frustrating listen. I really don't enjoy it anymore.
I tend to listen to an audiobook when I am either going to sleep, driving or doing chores. I feel like when I am driving or going to sleep, my mind is in another place. With the driving, obviously my mind is on the road. So I am constantly having to rewind by like 3/5 minutes at a time just because I missed that much.
Then, when I am going to sleep, my mind is switching off and relaxing, and it feels counter productive to my sleep to keep concentration. Then I may fall asleep and wake up with the audiobook still playing like 20 mins later, and it makes me feel more awake as I don't want to hear any spoilers.
The only audiobooks I feel I can listen to these days are memoirs, true crime, podcasts and more comical stories – the sort of listens where it doesn't matter if you lose concentration and dip in and out.
It's frustrating as I used to love listening to them.
Been getting massively into reading again recently, and I've found on so many occasions, I've been retuning audiobooks and ordering the physical copy instead!
I used to love switching between the two formats as well. So reading by day, listening by night or on the road.
Side note: I suppose it doesn't help that I am currently reading hard boiled detective novels, either…but damn Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels are insanely good.
by AngryGardenGnomes
9 Comments
Have you played around with the speed? I found one issue I had was audiobooks read *way* slower than I read and that caused me to get distracted. I usually speed them up to match the speed I would be reading.
Falling asleep while listening to one isn’t great because you’re going to be in and out. I save this for re-listens where I already know the story so I miss a part I don’t need to go back.
I usually reserve my audiobooks for when I’m doing fiber art, going for walks or cleaning. Those are activities I know I can focus more while listening.
I great audiobook I enjoyed is called conversations with god by Neil Donald Walsh ..very interesting to listen to ..also my brother wrote an amazing fantasy book that I’ve read 3 times ..I really would love for others to read it and give there feed back
Maybe take a break for a month or two and come back to them
Btw The audio book I mentioned is free to listen to on YouTube
It sounds like you need a break to think instead of listening to books all the time. I sometimes just drive in silence. I can’t be bothered with any input some days.
I can’t do audio books either. When I read, I totally immerse myself in the material, I can have music or the TV on and don’t even hear them, my family can try to talk to me and I don’t notice. With audio books my mind wanders almost immediately.
I have a nearly identical experience every now and again when other aspects of life are stressful, or I’m not sleeping as well, or have a lot to keep track of. I end up either sticking with junk food books, rereading something I am familiar with, or switching to different media for the times I’d usually listen to books (music, mainly). Eventually I get back to a headspace where I can focus again and pick back up with the more complex books.
Listen to audiobooks you can check in and out of. Really slow novels, dense non-fiction, etc.
I have a hard time with audio books, they always put me to sleep unfortunately