As a person who loves reading but recently has little time for it, I tried to switch to audiobooks. However, I keep catching myself losing attention while trying to concentrate on the audiobook. I find myself scrolling back on the recording to catch up on things I missed, and it’s highly frustrating. It puzzles me because I can easily read a physical book in a public place, but I can’t seem to listen to an audiobook in a public setting.
Has anyone else experienced this problem with audiobooks? Do you consider it a good alternative to a physical book when there’s no possibility or time to read a book?
I wouldn’t suggest audiobooks for anything that needs to be read or that needs full concentration. Most of my audiobook listening is on commutes and are books that are just fun and require minimal effort to “get them”. By that I mean if my mind wanders for a minute or two whatever was read most likely won’t ultimately make a difference to my overall experience of the book. Yes there are times where I have to rewind but once you get used to not requiring every word to be heard to enjoy the story you should be fine.
Same goes with reading. When reading you are painting a mental picture in your head and sometimes the picture in my head doesn’t need any of the filler like the author describing the way one character is standing or other details and you can almost skip over sentences or paragraphs. Yes sometimes you pickup a few lines later and the picture the book presents may no longer “fits” with your mental picture and you have to back track but more often than not if it all fits then you missed nothing.