Why I prefer reading to listening
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” - Harper Lee
and often, to watching.
Lots of my friends love podcasts and audiobooks and webinars - and if they are about something compelling and there’s no other way then I will indulge very occasionally.
But for me reading is always primary.
Podcasts and audiobooks
For some reason, even when I am fascinated, these make my mind switch off. I am prone to falling asleep in the middle. So not only do they take longer in and of themselves - I often have to rewind and listen again.
Sometimes more than once.
I did eventually discover that I do better if I am doing something with my hands. So when I was listening to the Once Upon A Time In Bennington College podcast, about Donna Tartt and The Secret History, among other things I did a whole lot of embroidery.
And I gather lots of people like to listen while ironing or doing household chores.
And yet, still, for me, it doesn’t work
Why reading?
So I’ve been spending some time thinking about this preference - which is really more than a preference. It’s deeper.
I’ve done a whole lot of reading - all my life, from being a little girl.
When I first went to school, I was promised that I could learn to read. Instead the annoying teacher with caterpillar eyebrows made me do jigsaws. I was so bored with jigsaws.
I made so much fuss about how I wanted to learn to read that within two weeks she called my parents in for a meeting and I was moved up a class early so that I could learn to read.
I adored Mrs Shepherd, not just because she had a warm smile (and non-caterpillar eyebrows) but because she taught me to read and to write.
Fiction
I can think of very few examples where I’ve preferred the TV or film adaptations to the novel (s).
Actually, I can only think of two.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was one. I found the novel unreadable - but I did enjoy the TV series. That said, if they make an adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi - which I loved - I would not watch. I would make it a good excuse to read the book again.
Game of Thrones is the other. I did read a couple of the novels before giving in and watching the TV adaptations, just before the final series. I had planned to read all the novels first… But I loved the TV adaptation, and I didn’t think the novels were worth the extra time. Plus, of course, George RR Martin still hasb’t finished the writing of…
A third example springs to mind. I saw The Owl Service on children’s television long before I read the book. It was compelling and terrifying - but when I found the novel, it soon became a favourite. I suspect there may have been age thing going on there - maybe I’d grown up enough to appreciate the psychological depths of the story more when I came to read.
Engagement
A whole lot of the pleasure in reading fiction is that sense of being connected to the mind of the writer. The more we get to know a writer, the more we can think of them as friends, if you like, as people whose minds we know and understand. We then become more and more adept at participating in the stories and characters and worlds their words evoke. In some ways we even learn to see the world in a similar way.
Of course this kind of friendship is a one-way thing. For something of a sense of how this could be reciprocal - consider how online friendships can work. (Even on twitter, apparently).
That’s done entirely through reading and writing - and in a few cases when I’ve gone on to meet in real life people with whom I made friends online - it’s clear that the connections can be just as good.
I’d like to see some research into whether people who read a lot are better at making online connections. It seems obvious to me that it would follow, as being comfortable with writing and reading - and also being able to communicate feeling and tone - is essential.
And in the past many people formed and maintained friendships through writing letters. Think of Clarissa, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novel. The equivalent now might be a chain of emails or a collection of Facebook posts - like Janice Hallet’s crime novel, The Appeal.
Non Fiction
In this case, reading is simply far more efficient.
If you are reading a long and complex article or even a whole book, it’s possible to skim.
Skim reading is an extremely valuable skill.
It saves time, enabling the reader to focus on the information which is directly relevant.
As Elmore Leonard suggested, you can skim over the boring parts. But that’s not all. You can easily go back and re-read the passages that matter most, or ones that were opaque and need more attention.
But that’s not all it does.
If you are reading a text that is very difficult, but which you do need to understand, skimming the whole text is a great way to prepare. It’s not necessary to understand in one reading - but just a skim of a text can give you just a few concepts for your brain to start working on. The second time through, you may well find that you understand far more than the first time, without every quite realising why.
(This, by the way, is why L Ron Hubbard’s advice in Dianetics is just wrong headed. To stop reading as soon as you fail to understand something and not continue until you understand it, is the worst advice ever. I mean, why would a cult want to keep people in ignorance? Be very wary of any person or any group who want to stop you from reading for yourself.)
So skimming can be extremely helpful when approaching a difficult text that you need to come to grips with.
It helps you decide which bits you need to really focus on, and which you can ignore.
And at the other extreme, it can save you loads of time as you discover that you’re really not interested at all.
That gives you time to go spend reading something else, which perhaps will deepen your understanding and give you new avenues to explore.
A recent habit of mine with non fiction books in particular - but occasionally with fiction too - is to download the kindle free sample. It’s usually enough to let me know if I want to read the whole thing or not.
In summary
Reading is simply more active.
It requires more of me. In fiction I have to participate in the creation of a fictional world, I get to know characters and I become a part of the story.
In TV drama someone else does that for me. The recent interpretation of Persuasion - my favourite Jane Austen novel shows why that’s a bad idea. Do not get me started…
It saves time - time which can be used to read those novels or non fiction books I really want to read.
None of this means I don’t enjoy listening sometimes, and I obviously am just as capable of bingeing a whole TV series as anyone else.
However, it reminds me of an old quotation that has stayed with me
If you have half a mind to watch television, go ahead. It’s all you’ll need.
(Yes, I am teasing those of you who prefer film and tv. But you can always skim over it, or better still, engage me in the comments where I will be suitably contrite)
Ann
If you would like some editorial help with your novel or memoir draft. please do get in touch and we can have a chat. Check out my Facebook Page, at The Accomplice and message me there for more details, or get in touch through my substack email.
LINKS
There are articles about this issue out there and many of them disagree with me. But that’s because they are often straw-manning skim reading
Take this one - from the Guardian - which suggests that skim reading leads to shallow understanding. Well, of course it does, if you skim read just the once! Skim reading is part of a process of gathering information, the first step before going in again, deeper…
And you know, if you skim read the same piece twice, it’s far more likely to stick in your mind. Repetition is how we learn and remember.
This one, from Medium, suggests that smart people read slowly. This wild assertion makes me want to scream. It simply isn’t true. Reading slowly and engaging on a word by word level is a sure route to loss of comprehension. Read at the right speed for you! To deliberately slow down is just daft. Most of us would gain more from skim reading a book twice, than once, very slowly.
And if you are really interested in learning, this Coursera course by Barbara Oakley is one of the better ways to spend your time - Learning How To Learn