Audiobooks are a great way to increase your book intake considerably. "Reading" while washing dishes, other house chores and commuting can easily get you through 2-3 extra books a month (depending on the length of the commute :)
Especially now that (more often than not) you can attach Audible books to your Kindle books for a fairly trivial price, and whispersync for voice means you can hop back and forth between reading and listening. Now, any time I'm using my eyes and hands, but not my ears and mind, I'm listening to books--increased my reading rate by a lot.
I've listened to 2 or 3 Audiobooks and nearly every one of them (short of Wheaton reading his own "Just A Geek") was unbearable to listen to. I don't know what the percentage of readers interject their own "emphasis" outside of just reading the words, but it's too many for my tastes.
I don't want a robot to read the book, but I also don't want the reader adding "color" by reading some characters with different voices (or - as i've heard in some cases - multiple readers each "in character").
James Marsters reads the Dresden Files books and he is amazing. It really is a performance by a good actor and (IMHO) adds to the book. He does use "voices" for different characters and it works really well. Most other readers will try to do this has well. It can be hit or miss.
A really good ensemble book is World War Z by Max Brooks. The cast is incredible (Alan Alda, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, and more)
I just finished listening to "am I being too subtle" by and read by Sam Zell. Initially I was slightly put off by the authors raspy Chicago tones but by the end it really felt like the author had been telling his stories to you personally with the colour and character that one would pick up in person and I was glad to have heard this telling rather than as you say a 'robot'
E-book readers like Kindle are another neat trick. In my case, it increased the amount of reading sixfold, because it's just so convenient to read on an e-book reader during commute, waiting in queues, or just going down the street.
Benefits of an e-book reader over a phone or a tablet include a better screen for reading, and it being a dedicated device that doesn't distract you with notifications or the ability to start browsing random shit on the Internet.
Since I mostly read non-fiction I find 1.5 a bit too fast if I want to really comprehend stuff without hitting replay all the time, so I just hear all books at 1.25 and it works well for me.
Yea it can be. But really depends on both the book and the reader. And what you're trying to get out of it.
Some readers are excruciatingly slow, so 1.25 just makes them sound normal. Other readers speed along, so 1x is like 1.5x on other books.
Some books need to be played at 1x if you're gonna follow the intricacies. Others with neither dense logical argument or thick, nuanced soul, like bestseller nonfictions where you have a sequence of little stories to illustrate "what studies have shown", can profitably be listened to quite fast, especially when also allaying their boringness with a Geometry Wars or Kingdom Rush addiction. (You might say, why read them then? Personally: as an excuse to play Kingdom Rush.)
If I'm not too into a part I'll even go faster than 2x to pick up the gist unto it catches my interest again.
Really, it's just like normal reading. Any displined reader has different speeds depending on the how much time the material is worth (Adler's How to Read a Book gives a nice model).
Sure, if you can maintain comprehension. It's a combination of 1) most audiobooks are narrated very slowly so that people have no trouble comprehending them, and 2) audio speedup algorithms have gotten really good.
Yes, and all the more enjoyable knowing I can fit more reading in at such a clip.
I've also noticed that the ability to comprehend spoken words can be trained; I started off at 1.25x speed and have gradually built up to 2x. Now when I listen to audio at 1x, it is just so slo-o-o-w. Anecdata, but I don't think my comprehension or enjoyment have gone down as I increase speed.
This is probably just me, but whenever I start a book at 1x, it sounds okay, if a bit slow. Then I increase speed to ~1.5x for a while, and, when I listen on 1x again, it seems unnaturally slow, to the point where I wonder if audiobook producers slow the recording down a bit on purpose, just to make it clearer.
However, the fact that I usually notice it after listening on 1.5x makes me think that it's really an illusion. Does anyone have any "insider" info on this?
I read about 1-2 books per week... but I also have a 45 minute commute by train each way, so I get a solid 90 minutes of reading in. I'm also a fairly fast reader, though, and I love to read more than just about anything, so maybe that contributes.
I also have a 10-15 minute walk in the commute for podcasts, which, combined with walking the dog and running, gives me about an hour of listening in. I haven't listened to any audiobooks in the last few years, but it's definitely an option for if I suddenly lost my commute or had to drive myself (and thus couldn't read).
I regret starting the routine of reading before bed. I think I've conditioned myself to sleep anytime I read something more than a couple of paragraphs long.
Oh man, I always read before going to bed, and now I read a bit after lunch but I must take a break after 20 pages and take a small nap. I never thought before that reading might be a trigger for me to sleep.
I started this year the 52 book a year challenge, one book a week. I'm actually at 29 books this year (one behind because I read Les Misérables) and I must say it's very rewarding. You just need to take a bit of time every day on some not essential task (tv, facebook etc..) and replace it by reading. I read 1h a day and it's enought to read a book a week.
1) Keep a book open on your work machine (pdf, epub, .txt in a terminal with "less", whatever) and every time you would read HN or FB or Twitter any other time wasting Internet BS, read some of the book instead. DO NOT let yourself do anything else when you want/need a distraction. It has to be the book, or else you keep working. Physical book might work too though it might be a little weird, depending on your work environment—maybe put paper over the cover if it's especially not-related-to-work looking. I don't know, I haven't tried this.
I have to say, that definitively wouldn't work for me. I take breaks when I need to de-focus from the problem and let my mind work on it unattended, so I can't do anything mentally demanding during them.
I read(listen) 4-5 books a month without dedicating time to this activity. I almost exclusively listen through Audible during my commute(biking). I've "read" over 100+ books in the past 2 years and I find it very refreshing.
Although, coupled to listening, I highly recommend taking short notes after every listening session to better sediment the content.
My dad reads about the same level as you do. My wife reads about the same speed as she speaks. I am probably half the speed as my father at my peak. I have found out that my dad really isn't a details person. Sadly I am more of a global view first then details and I have to process stuff into that global view all the time. Being a Theological student in grad school I would have about 2,000 to 12,000 pages of reading per class. UGH took me forever to learn how to up my speed and my retention.
It used to be a huge concern for me as well. I realized that the more I read, the faster I read. So if you are worried about reading speed, don't. Just read, and it will get better. With no extra effort from me, my reading speed increased by at least 50% since I started reading books seriously.
Near continuous 56 hour weeks at work (structural steel workshop) has me at under 1 a month the past couple years.
I used to read a lot more books ... but over the past couple years I've achieved intermediate levels of rock climbing and skiing a built a mobile coffee trailer, so there's that.
I have read 4-6/month basically consistently for the past 3 years - I don't believe in audiobooks because you don't retain the same amount of information as you do from read words. I live in NYC and read about 2 hours a day
> I don't believe in audiobooks because you don't retain the same amount of information as you do from read words.
Huh, I'm the opposite, but I think it depends on the subject matter and how much you're reading. I have read about 70+ fantasy and science fiction audiobooks in the last year, but only each one once, and remember most details of all the books. Some characters from some series I've no doubt forgot their names, but soon as I listen to passage from the series my memory is brought back and I remember the details.
Non-fiction on the other hand I don't do too well with audio books. e.g. listening to an audio book on programming is never going to happen for me.
im a die-hard believeer in spaced repetition - i use it for everything (languages, books, code, etc.) it's basically impossible to use for audiobooks.
my bet is if you test yourself on a book you listened to two years ago you will not remember 99% of it, and if you read it it's probably more like 95% percent of it.
then again, everyone's mind is different, so maybe you retain voice more than audio
I have been using spaced repetition for the last 11 years to remember things, and I totally love it. I don't really like reading books, I prefer to listen to them. My solution for not being able to make flashcards while I'm reading a book is to listen to the audio book, when I hear a passage that I want to recall or think about, I write it down in a note taking app on my phone (I just use the default Notes app on my iphone), and then review my notes every couple of days and make flashcards of the stuff contained in notes.
1-2 a week when the mood strikes. Last year, the goal was to read 52 books - fell well short at a shade under 40 but it brought back my reading mojo. I'm back for round two in 2017.
One work book (read before work or weekends) and one self help book (read before sleep). Each highlighted, and then a second pass to type the highlights into a document, and a third pass to organize the document into a summary with key ideas broken down with quotes. And about 7h/wk of podcasts while jogging.
Since moving to NYC and not driving to work, probably 2-4, a mix of technical and fiction. I'm actually reading them, not listening to them. Before that, in NC and Florida, maybe one book every two or three months. Usually I read a technical book, then a novel to keep things interesting for me.
I read primarily fiction but a bad year for me is around a 100. So 8 or 9 per month. More realistically I tend to binge so the number is never consistent. I might do 15-20 in a couple of weeks and then not read again for a month.
I'm in the same camp. It's hard for me to focus on an audiobook, even though I listen to plenty of podcasts and am able to focus quite easily on those. I really do want to read more, it's just finding the time ):
Depends on what I'm reading. Pop sci or detective novels take me days but a thousand-page history book or epic will take more like a month. And there is a lot in between and on both sides of those examples.
I'm curious, how much do you actually get out of each book? Even at my pace of 1-2 a month I'm barely able to retain anything. I can't imagine reading ~8 a month and being able to remember what the book was actually about.
8/mth really isn't that much. If you go to grad school for history or something you have to learn to crush whole libraries. It's a developed skill like any other, hard but achievable. Personally I closely read one dense, rich book a month or so, then alongside that another dozen or two with varying levels of thoroughness. For example, I spent about two afternoons on Happy City, but it took me several months for just Vol 1 of Schopenhauer's Parerga and Paralipomena.
Personally I've found over the years that this balance between reading a very small number of books closely and a whole lot casually has worked well and has led each set to complement the other.
I'd not worry about "retaining" in the sense of being able to mouth all sorts of facts and figures and arguments and story details several weeks later. Sometimes this stuff is important, but for me anyway I only "retain" in this sense when I take the further step of taking notes after finishing a chapter, etc. Most books aren't worth that IMO given you can just pull them off the shelf when you need to look something up. But books can affect you in other dimensions, especially in slowly enlarging your perspective in ways you hardly even notice.
(But I mean, if you literally couldn't talk -at all- for a few minutes about a book you read last month, that's a different story!)
I started doing it in 2016, so while I seem to come up with various facts that I read from the books in conversations when something related to what I have read comes up, I don't know how much of each book I actually remember. To test this, I am planning to re-read some of the books from 2016 when I am done with my 2017 list.
Love this idea! I'm going to try that too. Very soon, I'll be quitting my day job and should have a bunch free time which is currently taken up with busywork. Time to re-read and get more out of my books.
