Audiobooks and Why I Avoid Them

(Crossposted from the 5NerdsomeWriters)

In a comment on Hilary's post from last Friday I mentioned that I have some deep-seated issues with audiobooks, but that I have been listening to them for school anyway. The only reason I do this is because I am currently taking six English courses and that makes for a lot of reading, reading I don't necessarily have time for; so I listen to audiobooks while I drive to make use of my 35 minute commute to school. Were this not the case, I'd continue my boycott of audiobooks.

Why? Well, for one, I feel they strip the reader of the experience of reading. If I can quote Rupert Giles here:

"Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a whiff of smoke, can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer… has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um, smelly.”

Reading is more than just a story, it's the simple act of turning scratches on a page into ideas, images, and memories in your head. There's something to be said for the small and the feel of a new book, an old book, a borrowed book; no two books are exactly the same.

Authors do a lot of cool things with text that you don't get to see when listening to an audiobook. We wouldn't get the same sense of anger or excitement from Junior in Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian without his random sentences in all caps. I fear that the majority of the magic (and horror?) of MT Anderson's Feed would be lost without the distracting "pop-ups." Shape of paragraphs is nonexistant. Heck, some novels even use certain fonts for a specific reason (like Westerfeld's use of Futura in So Yesterday).

Short story: some audiobooks just suck. A lot of how a reader/listener reacts to an audiobook has to do with the reader. I know Korianne has been listening to Stephen Fry read the Harry Potter books for class and that he really makes the story come to life for her. Hearing Sherri Crowther read Emma was good, but it took me a long time to be able to concentrate on her soft voice. Oppositely, Ruth Golding (Wuthering Heights) has a very rough voice and she tries to keep the reader interested by changing it slightly for each character, but this only makes it harder to listen to her at points. Honestly, I have no idea what she's saying whenever Joseph is talking.

Audiobooks can be read differently than you would read them. The reader may put emphasis on different words or read in a different tone than you would had you been reading the book. I find this is true when my creative writing teacher reads our work out loud to the class. I hear my poem and I recognize it as mine, but the tone is all wrong, that's not how I would read it at all. I want to tell him he's wrong, but essentially, he's not, he's just reading the text in front of him, albeit differently than I would. It's the same for audiobooks and because of this a listener can understand the book very differently had they read it for themselves.

Plus, they can be pirated so easily and it's part of what's killing the book industry.

So give me my paper and ink, when I have the choice. Or better yet, provide me with a way to read while driving or get me a chauffeur. A 25th hour would be nice, too, while you're at it. Thanks!

Related: My post on audiobooks/ebooks vs books in sales

Girls and Breaking Out of the Boxes

I don't normally post anything personal here, but I don't think this is just me and I feel like I should address it somewhere. Here seemed as good a place as any.

My friend Jordyn, of Ten Cent Notes did a piece awhile back that was printed in Red: Teenage Girls in America Write on What Fires Up Their Lives Today and was afterwards interviewed by Bitch Magazine, which you can read here. I have yet to read Jordyn's piece (no worries, I soon will), but the interview struck a chord with me.
This part especially:

On the biggest misconceptions about teenage girls in America: The idea of "pretty or smart." Many girls are both, but everyone gets lumped into one category or the other in spite of it, and sometimes that holds girls back. A lot of times it's hard to step out of the box others put you in, even if you want to, and I think it's especially difficult for girls, because the lines are firmly drawn.

I spoke briefly with Jordyn after she posted that, telling her how I liked that bit and we had this little interchange over twitter:

Jordyn: I've had guys tell me that I "look smart". I kind of figured that was code for "boring". lol
Me: I've gotten both, but never at the same time. I'm either smart & boring/nothing special, or I'm pretty with nothing to offer. And I really hate that. I want someone to think I'm pretty (even when I don't) and to tell me I'm special (even when I'm not).

And, honestly guys? I don't think that's too far off from what most girls want. This is also something that I believe most girls have dealt with in life, too, and not just in high school. From the time we are young we, as girls and boys, are taught a duality for how women are to be perceived. It's something women have fought against for a long time, but has become so engrained in our lifestyles and in the media that it's hard to break free from it. There are the pretty girls, and there are the smart girls. But do we ever look at a pretty girl, say, the homecoming queen, and think "wow she's so intelligent"? Or look at a really smart girl, the bookworm in your calculus class with the glasses, and talk about how gorgeous she is? I don't see a lot of that happening around here, to be honest.

As I mentioned in the quote above, I've been perceived as both pretty and smart, but never can I think of an instance where it has happened at the same time. I have had guys come up to me and hit on me without ever having spoken to me, because they think I'm pretty (and for the record, I hate that). I'm more than my looks, and I want people to see that. Or sometimes I write something really great, or give a good speech, and someone tells me how smart I am. Like Jordyn, I feel that the word "smart" can sometimes mean "boring." Smart girls aren't exactly known for having fun or being fun, and in the media especially, they are rarely portrayed as pretty.

So we get put into boxes, like Jordyn says, and we feel like we're stuck there. Sometimes, we are--but that's only because the girl accepts her fate to remain there. A "smart" girl gives up on her looks, why should she bother if no one is going to notice? A "pretty" girl gives up on her studies. Why does it matter when everyone tells her she can get by without them? It's a cycle spurred on by those very same girls who are trapped within it.

I'm not saying we can start a revolution here, because that can't happen overnight. What we can do though, is start with one girl. Maybe it's a guy telling the bookworm she's pretty, maybe it's telling the model that something she said had depth and meaning. There are girls like that out there, most girls are not one or the other, despite which box she's been thrown into. All a girl wants is to be accepted for all that she is, not for one quality or the other, and we should be able to see that in them. Not only that, but we should tell them, because sometimes they've been in one box too long to see that they can break free. The pretty girls don't always think they are pretty, and the smart girls don't always feel so smart. Sometimes, all a person needs is someone else to remind them of how great they are. That's not such a hard thing to do. It's a start, anyway.

Thoughts on the subject? Experience with it? Share them in the comments please!

NaNoWriMo 09: Zenith, Favourite Lines Chapters 1-9

I've been posting my favourite/oddest sentences on my tumblr & I thought since I never update here, I'd share them all with you folks as well.

Chapter 1
“So, Rob Mason, what do you know about hobo-eating alligators?”

Chapter 2
She didn’t understand potatoes the way they did.
((I spend an awful lot of time talking about that silly potato))

Chapter 3
That one message, twelve lines long, had broken the strong old man.

Chapter 4
Everything was traded for safety. It was the one thing they had in abundance these days, if nothing else.

Chapter 5
“The price of convenience,” she said scornfully. “Everything is so convenient and so fast, and we lose sight of what’s really important anymore..."

Chapter 6
“Ah yes, those ever important minutes we’re saving with everything these days,” she commented. “Pretty soon we’ll have one thousand four hundred and forty of them, all to ourselves, to do whatever we wish.”

Chapter 7
“Do you remember that day?” Risty asked suddenly. She sat down in the clovers and continued staring up at the clouds.
“Which day?”
She turned her head quickly and looked him dead in the eye. “The day the sky fell.”

Chapter 8
Sometimes sharing a loss made it easier to lose, even if you had just met the person you’d be sharing with. They both needed something, and maybe the other one could help with it.

Chapter 9
It had a thermometer, barometer, seismometer, and every other kind of -ometer a man could have need for, and a screen to monitor them all from.