I really like audiobooks now
For a couple of days, I refused to pick up The Power Broker. I was in the midst of a particularly uninteresting section of the chapter on the barons of Long Island (chapter 9, for those reading along). Robert Caro's lists are great, but this one did nothing for me. Wealthy people who owned large estates on Long Island may interest some, but after the names Morgan and Vanderbilt, my eyes glazed over.
Enter the audiobook. The slightly sped-up voice enabled me to power through the dull middle of the chapter, all the way through to the other side where, with Robert Moses finally reentering the narrative, the chapter picked up steam and headed towards a powerful conclusion, narrated spectacularly by one Robertson Dean.
I've seen arguments that claim listening to audiobooks is not reading, not even close to it. To me, it doesn't feel like a substitute; it feels like a supplement.
When I was stuck on this chapter, I found no easier way to get through it than to have someone read it out to me while I was driving. It felt like a podcast, but I got to continue the book I was reading that morning and make progress. I have to admit, I definitely did not retain all the information from the narration. I missed names, I couldn't grok some of the spellings of things, and I zoned out to a paragraph while trying to get away from a particularly slow-moving but dangerously close 18 wheeler.
Once I got back, I actually read through that section of the chapter again on my Kindle. I found that I actually did remember most of it. And this time was far easier to get through, considering I already knew what was coming. I had "spoiled" the chapter for myself, which allowed me to avoid fussing about the what and better understand the why. It's the equivalent of re-reading a section, but the different modalities give me a sense that the information is already there, latent in my brain, which I could retrieve when reading the section on the page.
And now, an unpaid shill for Spotify Premium. I thought its merits were limited to skipping tracks, but the sheer number of available audiobooks is staggering. The other books I'm currently reading - The Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger and When to Rob a Bank by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt - both have audiobooks available on Spotify, with excellent narration too.
This is a gamechanger. I'm going to read everything this way. Next up, the audiobook for Effective Modern C++.