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I find it almost impossible to make time for reading these days. My saviour is audiobooks. I get a LOT of "reading" done while driving and commuting.

One unexpected consequences of COVID has actually been that the number of books I read has decreased drastically due to less time spend commuting.




I find audiobooks okay only for nonfiction. Having to follow the plot and imagery of fiction while I'm doing something else is a bit too much for me and I frequently lose focus and have to rewind.


I'm sort of the opposite. Fiction is easier for audiobooks, for me.

Nonfiction is where I often miss a number or something (like a statistic) and I have to back up and re-listen to it, and also if the point is good, I want to make a note of it to refer back to later, and I can do that more easily with a Kindle book (by making a highlight), than by digging out a physical pen and transcribing.

If I miss something in a fictional audiobook I can usually infer from the context of the next few sentences, or it's just fiction anyway, no big deal if I miss a few little things in the massive story, chances are good I'm going to forget everything but the broad beats in a month or two anyway.


I tried to listen to "Tractatus" and basically gave up after 30 mins or so. To be read definitely .. not heard.


Well maybe Wittgenstein would take bronze or silver in an "impossible on audiobook" contest? But Plato is a brilliant listen, unsurprisingly.


I guess that it depends on the type of nonfiction too. I would never try to actually learn stuff in audio format.


Personally, I just can't "handle" when the narrator does voices for characters. Overly-developed fremdschämen on my part, I guess. The only fiction audiobook I've listened to all the way through is The Lord of the Rings read by Rob Inglis, and even there I had to skip forward when he started singing.


Funny, there the number of books has increased drastically due to less time spent commuting. All that time is now available for other stuff such as reading.


May I ask which audio book service you use?


I'm not the OP but I have been using Libby with my public library's access (I live in Vancouver), and they have an incredible selection of books you can borrow for 3w. Few people know about this, but it's really worth checking if your library has something similar




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