I wonder if there's any cognitive difference between reading a book and listing to it.

Who cares anyway, just found out that Breaking Bad has a companion podcast the length of each ep it corresponds to, so I won't be sticking my nose betwixt pages any time soon.

/vodkaramble.

Will do, Cap! And that's a good question, Witty. With a book visual memory is involved, and an audiobook is pretty much just like listening to a friend/lecturer speak... not sure how that changes anything, cognitively speaking, but I often remember lots of stuff I listened to because of what I was doing at the time (i.e. driving in a certain avenue here in Brasilia reminds me of William James' Essays in Radical Empiricism).

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Originally posted by stren I've stopped reading since discovering audiobooks, don't know if its good. I enjoy good voice actors though. Audible is crap, I downloaded their client, and 1 audiobook, I'm not sure how to transfer it to my mp3 player, its got some weird format

That's exactly why I hate it with passion. It works marvellously as long as you own a "mainstream" mp3 player, but it's nearly impossible to listen to anything if you've got an ordinary one.

I downloaded an audiobook last year to try their services and I had to burn 7 CD's in order to transfer the audio to my mp3 player (a genuine Sony player, no less). It gave me so much headache I vowed never to buy anything from them ever again. Then I got an iPod and it accidentally found the files: it was stupidly easy to transfer the files to the player this time, and even the chapters are neatly divided.

It's quite tempting to start buying from them now, but given Amazon's bad reputation with e-books, I'm reluctant to choose Audible over piracy. At least then I can listen to my files wherever I want.

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Originally posted by stren Librivox sounds very amateurish , so I don't really like their stuff.

I've got to agree with you, I only listened to books that I really - really - wanted to listen. But, since they only read books that are already in the public domain, I usually just have Ivona Reader (a Polish program, by the way) do the reading job. Some voices are so natural and the quality is so good, I'd rather listen to it instead

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Originally posted by stren And I don't have any other legal sources of audiobooks

Oh

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grab the BBC radioshow adaptations of books. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an excellent series to start with. it's not available for free as far as I know, but worth the buy.

I get them from the local library myself.

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Originally posted by Lira Ivona Reader (a Polish program, by the way)

heh, I know Ivona, its a popular for creating meme videos here in Poland

I would laugh too hard, if I would use it for books, I just associate that voice with those ridiculous videos

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The only audiobook that I have is Decision Points by (including read by) George Bush. It's worth it.

I used to listen to them in high school when I couldn't be assed to do the reading in english. worked great.

any other audio book sites to recommend?

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Originally posted by Ted Promo The only audiobook that I have is Decision Points by (including read by) George Bush. It's worth it.

'Rumsfeld Rules' is another good one.

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Originally posted by Trance O Matic I used to listen to them in high school when I couldn't be assed to do the reading in english. worked great.

This whole education system is going down the toilet: We should be learning Mandarin and Maths, not English.

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