On audiobooks
I started listening to audiobooks during Covid. I was taking long walks every evening and soon got bored of listening to the same music playlists on repeat. I tried podcasts and found the lack of structure too annoying to keep up. Then I turned to audiobooks. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century was my first. It was dense with information and the ideas were stimulating. Learning something while walking or doing house chores felt like a productive use of time. But when you read, you can pause and contemplate. When you listen, you need to keep up with the narrator. My thoughts would drift and the voice in the ear would start interfering. Sometimes the books are verbose and repetitive. Then I tend to speed up the audio to 1.3x - the same way I'd skim through the pages and only linger on the engrossing parts. Besides the contents of the book, the narration plays a big role. When you read, you interact directly with the written words, your own voice in your head doing the reading. In audiob...
