{"id":3239,"date":"2014-02-19T08:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=3239"},"modified":"2014-02-18T09:38:30","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T15:38:30","slug":"audiobooks-because-you-cant-skim-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=3239","title":{"rendered":"Audiobooks: Because you can&#8217;t skim them."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I spotted a blog hosting a 2014 book review challenge &#8212; the more books you review, the cooler your bragging rights. I was keen to sign up; after all, I read hundreds of books a year (yes, 2-3 per week). But the guidelines specified that audiobooks were not allowed. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>I pouted. I got self-righteous. After all I&#8217;m legally blind, reading books in a text format (print or ebook) is not a viable option for me. And why shouldn&#8217;t an audiobook count? Am I not really a reader because the thousands of books I&#8217;ve read in the past decade were almost exclusively enjoyed in audiobook format? Did I waste all that time? Are my honest reviewer opinions less valuable because the story came through my ears rather than my eyes?<\/p>\n<p>Listen, I know it&#8217;s a different experience. You&#8217;re using different parts of the brain to access and filter the information. But different does not imply that one experience or the other has to be <em>inferior<\/em>. Some readers enjoy both listening and reading the text for an even more complete experience, and why not?<\/p>\n<p>You may think it&#8217;s easy for me to say, seeing as how I&#8217;m visually impaired. But believe it or not, it took me a long time to accept audiobooks in my life. I used to read so many books the library couldn&#8217;t stay ahead of me. And when my vision first began to fail me (16), I resisted the shift to audiobooks because of the cultural disdain. Listening to audiobooks, for me, was like surrendering to my handicap. When I first picked up audiobooks, I felt it as a personal failure.<\/p>\n<p>And yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not just a fast reader, I&#8217;m an impatient one. I might have read entire books in one sitting as a teen, but there was a lot of skimming involved, particularly when it came to long passages of description. Seriously, who cares what they&#8217;re wearing? Get on with the story! My eyes darted across the page with practiced skill, picking up on the important keywords and phrases that I knew would move the story itself along.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t skim audiobooks. There are times when this is frustrating, but in the 14 years since I seriously started reading audiobooks it has done me a lot of good. I am forced to read more of the story and the resulting picture is far more complete.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t speak for other&#8217;s reading experiences and I won&#8217;t presume to try, but I know that audiobooks have been helpful to me as both a reader and a writer. When many people ask, &#8220;Why audiobooks?&#8221; the first answer usually has something to do with how easy it is to read while doing something else &#8212; like commuting to work. And I do get a lot of reading done while I&#8217;m doing other things. But I think there are other advantages as well, and this is one that would serve the impatient reader well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My first two audiobooks are available now through audible:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.audible.com\/pd\/Mysteries-Thrillers\/Cassie-Scot-Audiobook\/B00FA89FZ8\/ref=a_pd_Myster_c4_1_1_i\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective | [Christine Amsden]\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51Mt18PfTOL._SL300_.jpg\" width=\"192\" height=\"192\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.audible.com\/pd\/Mysteries-Thrillers\/Secrets-and-Lies-Audiobook\/B00HFDO8BC\/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1392735093&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"Secrets and Lies: A Cassie Scot Novel | [Christine Amsden]\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51IcIDbYllL._SL300_.jpg\" width=\"192\" height=\"192\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago I spotted a blog hosting a 2014 book review challenge &#8212; the more books you review, the cooler your bragging rights. I was keen to sign up; after all, I read hundreds of books a year (yes, 2-3 per week). But the guidelines specified that audiobooks were not allowed. \ud83d\ude41 I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,6,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cassie-scot","category-chitchat","category-my-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3239"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3245,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions\/3245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}