Why YSK: if you don’t have the ability or time to devote your visual attention to reading, you can still engage your mind the same way as you do while reading by listening to an audiobook. Virtually any modern audiobook player will also let you select the play speed, so you can listen to books at whatever rate you’re comfortable with.
Personally I know as I’ve gotten older the number of hours I’m physically able to read tends to no longer be able to match my desire to read, so it’s nice to be able to keep going even if my eyes are sore.
Historically, this is somewhat analogous to the late 19th century lectors that worked in some factories, paid by donated workers’ wages, to read/perform popular books for bored workers. Predictably in the US factory owners tended to have a problem with their workers listening to ‘communist literature,’ leading to firings, strikes, and violent crackdowns.
This is interesting and I’m glad to see this. I’ve always been an avid reader and until recently, I could read words on a page for hours on end but really could not sustain my attention to an audiobook for more than a few minutes, and always felt like my retention was very poor when I tried listening to books. But that was always a me thing.
My brother and wife have both been avid audiobook readers for a number of years and I always picked up on them feeling mildly insecure about it, as if they weren’t “really” reading when it was an audiobook.
Oddest of all, in the past year or so, my brain has completely flipped and now I mainly read via audiobook and text on a page can’t hold my attention for long.