Audio book related woes.

So... audiobooks.

Great, right?

But...

With a normal book if you fall asleep on a given page you can start the next day from the page where you nodded off.

With audio books I regularly fall to sleep or enter semi sleep state and lose track of where I am in the story.

This means I have to re-listen to loads of parts again and again to pick up what I have missed and I generally have no fricking idea where I am in the story.

Have geniuses invented an audiobook reader that helps you keep track? If so, what do you use?

Any other tips would be appreciated.

I'm almost getting sick of listening to part 11 of Inherent Vice every night and only realising when part 12 starts that I have heard part 11 10+ times now just it's not in my memory bank in the same way as part 2 is.

Fucking audiobooks how do they work.

haha, that's a terrible problem, and a business opportunity. Maybe there are ereaders that have a text to speech function where one only has it read the current page. I don't mind text to speech voices, i was using the function on gizmag (not fucking gizmodo) to read articles for a little bit a while back, just for fun, and surprisingly didn't find it too jarring.

could break the audio into 5 min pieces and config the audio player to stop after each piece, but then it's kinda annoying pressing "next track" every 5 mins.

this might help though: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.atrant.shake2playnext&hl=en

I usually only listen to audiobooks of books I've read a billion times before (usually Stephen King) so I can play it in the background while I'm getting stuff done.

Also, if I am feeling tired I write the time where I'm at down somewhere.

  On 11/2/2014 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

haha, that's a terrible problem, and a business opportunity. Maybe there are ereaders that have a text to speech function where one only has it read the current page. I don't mind text to speech voices, i was using the function on gizmag (not fucking gizmodo) to read articles for a little bit a while back, just for fun, and surprisingly didn't find it too jarring.

They're really starting to sound realistic. The thing you don't get with them is dramatic emphasis on words and voice changes for different characters(although this can be really corny if the voice actor sucks)

The audible app has a 'sleep mode' where you shake it to indicate you're still awake but I won't be using a smartphone, and my android emu doesn't have a shake button I don't think.

1st world as fuck.

Yeh, they are usually split into loads of different files but it's really difficult to remember wtf is going on when you're half asleep let alone find a pen / paper to write something down.

Maybe my brain will adapt and make itself a series of neural pathways that make this easier as fuck knows how you can technologically sort it.

P.S. I hate the fact that so many apps don't have native OSX/LINUX/Windows versions, wtf, smartphones are hell, but so many cool softwares are smartphone only.

  On 11/2/2014 at 1:03 AM, hello spiral said:

I usually only listen to audiobooks of books I've read a billion times before (usually Stephen King) so I can play it in the background while I'm getting stuff done.

 

 

I'd be happy with that [or books that I didn't care about too much] but this is Inherent Vice, I think I own the only copy of it in Cambodia, and it was stolen, along with my bike, I had just started reading it, wanted it done before the movie came out.

I MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS.

Maybe I will drink coffee and do the whole thing in one setting today, it's only 14 hours long... Sunday world solutions.

another problem with audio books is that sometimes the narrators are FUCKING DIRE, and make a good book unlistenable. it's too much effort finding good ones does any1 hve any recommendations??

I haven't heard any particularly bad voice acting yet...

  On 11/2/2014 at 9:21 AM, AAAAh said:

another problem with audio books is that sometimes the narrators are FUCKING DIRE, and make a good book unlistenable. it's too much effort finding good ones does any1 hve any recommendations??

Stephen King's Hearts In Atlantis read by William Hurt is really good.

Oh yeah and Kathy Bates reading Misery

Have you all never learnt to read or something?

missing the point.

Being read to is a luxury.

I usually read.

The voice actor for Inherent Vice is awesome, the voice actor for Dr Sleep is amazing.

I listen to audiobooks if I can't get the book and out here - it's hard enough to find a copy of life of pi let alone a Pynchon novella.

And it is awesome to fall asleep too an audiobook with a nice voice actor. Dr Sleep gave me terrible nightmares that way, even though I have no idea what happens in the plot, only my subconscious heard it.

What app doesn't have a sleep timer? So primitive.

The best audio books are those separated in chapters, where every "track" is a chapter. This way it's much easier to know where you were last time you stopped. But I mean, if you want to fall asleep listening to an audiobook, that's the best way to loose track of where you are. It's like listening to an album to fall asleep and then, next morning, you want to know exactly when during the album you fell asleep. Impossible. :)

Yeh proper page or chapter separation would be wicked.

My memory remembers stuff like 'you got to chapter 17 , oh i remember the start of page 3.'

First world problem:

The audiobook I was listening to [inherent Vice] I stole online, and, it was ordered out of sequence. I got to the end about 1/3rd of the way through [30 out of 90 mp3 files all ordered sequentially] ... I wondered wtf was going on. Some crazy bastard fucked this up either on purpose or by stupid.

Unless the book is like this?

Anyway I'm now half way through, listening to the second quarter, which is in order atm.

Is it supposed to be like that lol? Pynchon world problems.