It’s a form of immersive reading. I personally love it & do it whenever I can (borrowing both text & audio from my library). It helps me focus on the story. It’s fun when you enjoy the narrator in particular, which sounds like you do. Doing both is especially helpful to me for challenging books. Not saying this book will be a challenge, but remember that reading is a skill and, if you’re not in practice, it can be easy to let your mind wander.

Go for it and see how you like it! There’s little to lose.

Think of gifted books as giftcards to the store they came from. It’s the attitude my in-laws have (he gifts her books) and – after a few instances of “thank you, I do enjoy this, you gave this to me last year as well” – it works great.

Don’t be ashamed to be picky! If you enjoy elegant prose and fast hooks (for example), seek that out. Try r/suggestmeabook and get some suggestions that are super tailored to what you know you love to read.

You can branch out and take risks later, once your reading “bug” is back.

(Edited to correct the name of the subreddit)

The Princess Bride and Good Omens make a good pair. I should read the former, I’ve only ever seen the movie.

Perloo the Bold by Avi. I can’t explain why, but it stuck with me. I was 9 or 10.

A few years later, during a different phase of adolescence, Ready, Okay! by Adam Cadre. It was the first novel I picked out solo and purchased with my own money, while on vacation with my family. It didn’t introduce me to familial or societal dysfunction, but it was poignant and stuck with me. I was 12 or 13. I recall similar emotions towards, but lack the desire to reread, Tangerine by Edward Bloor.

“It’s ineffable”

Can you expand on this? The differences in thought processing between individuals is not limited to the ability or inability to voluntarily visualize. Some people have an internal monologue, some don’t. Some can conjure imagery, sounds, smells, emotion, some can’t. None of these are deficiencies or “conditions” to be cured, just differences in mental processing.

We’ll never be able to experience someone else’s reality, but I don’t believe that my complete lack of voluntary visualization vs. my husband’s professional reliance on his ability to visualize vividly is simply down to an inability for us to communicate about the way we think.

Whenever possible (meaning when I can borrow both at the same time from my library), I do “immersive reading” where I read and listen at the same time. It works best for my ADHD brain.

I can & do listen to audiobooks by themselves. However, I can’t listen to new (to me) books while doing other tasks. It’s not a “read while you otherwise couldn’t” situation for me. If I’m reading, I’m reading. I can’t listen while doing chores or driving, etc. I need to be immersed & focused on the story alone.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It’s been pending at around 33% finished for a few months. I’ve started and finished 25 books in the meantime. If I pick it back up, I’m going to need to start over.

I think it’s a book where I’m going to need to simultaneously listen to the audiobook in order to absorb it.

For the first half, I honestly thought this was about reading a series and whether you should stop reading it when the author dies, and I was SO confused 😅

I just recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy in about 6 days. But I’m between jobs…

I do it when I can. I don’t read much faster than if I were to speak the words myself. It helps me keep focused.

Audiobooks by themselves are still “reading a book” for the purpose of this argument. So yeah, immersive reading still counts as reading.

There’s no way to “cheat” reading a book, nor is there a right or wrong or better or more or less valid way.