This prompt was submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews:
If you are listening to an audiobook, do you follow along with the print version?
Gah! No. That would drive me nuts. Granted, the last time I tried that was when I was a little kid—I had a few of those “read along” books that had the super-flimsy and square vinyl records in the back (I distinctly remember one that went along with The Empire Strikes Back, but I had others, too) and one or two on cassette (the only one I can remember is a Disney’s Robin Hood that included a possibly-abbreviated version of “Oo-De-Lally”). But even then, I would read faster than the record/tape and it was too complicated to synchronize.
I had the same problem in school when we’d take turns reading paragraphs/pages out of a book as a class—I’d tune out my classmates and end up a few pages ahead of everyone and get in trouble when I didn’t know what to read when it was my turn. Which has nothing to do with the topic at hand, it just came to mind.
Reading speed aside, if I’m listening to an audiobook, I want to take in the characterizations and voice of the narrator, if I’m reading a book, I want to be immersed in the words and the way it “sounds” in my head. I’d end up spending too much of my mental RAM comparing the audio/print experiences to get anything out of it at all.
I’ve also never tried the whole Whipsersync thing where you bounce back and forth between a Kindle and Audible version of a book. I think that’d throw me—if I start in one format, I’m going to finish in it.
I’d like to see why someone would read along, specifically what benefit they get from it. Hopefully, a few people responding to this prompt do it. It’s such a foreign concept to me, but I’d love to see what it looks like in someone else’s shoes—er, headphones.