A recent article on #Quillette on #TheGreatestBooks, #books, #literature (and #audiobooks):
https://quillette.com/2021/07/28/listening-to-literature-what-we-gain-and-lose-with-audiobooks/
I felt identified with so much, that here go eight direct #quotes that I make my own, where I made just a few edits (between square brackets):
> _“I’m a devoted reader. I want to be a dedicated audience to whatever #book I’m reading. […] I want to commune with a great mind, wordsmith, soul. For the right experience, I submit myself to it willingly.”_
> _“The painful truth of my #reading life is that I read slowly. It’s not uncommon for me to read only 10 or 20 pages per night. […] [Over the course of a year, that comes to roughly [ten 370-page-long] books.](https://www.goodreads.com/review/stats/64930929-tripu) This isn’t a horribly small number, but […] I have to be selective.”_
> _“The one constant of my #reading life is that I always want to read more.”_
> _“The consolation prize of so much #commuting meant I could [read and] listen to [#podcasts] as much as I wanted.”_
> _“#Audiobooks aren’t like reading the #book. #Reading is a more intimate connection between one person and another. When one reads a book, one communes with the author. Sure, editors and publishers have some say in what goes into a book, but the roles of these people and entities are often transparent compared to the fundamental communication from writer to reader. In the audiobook form, there’s a soul obtrusively in between the writer and reader—the narrator—who takes over the role as central communicator. Even if the text is read word-for-word, the way the narrator’s voice sounds is too present and their inflections too dominant not to be the main influencer of the experience.”_
> _“Think of #audiobooks as entertainment modes in themselves. […] It’s still possible to commune with a great soul in this way, but first and foremost, it’s with the soul of an actor—nothing wrong with that, but not necessarily what I’m looking for.”_
> _“I [have] the wide world of #books to explore. I [keep] filling the holes in my literary background with what I [see] as important books I [haven't] yet read, and I religiously [tackle] [books] by the #writers [I've] been taught to believe [are] our literary flag bearers.”_