Audio-books

There is something wrong with my brain when it comes to connecting long-term human dialogue, to a story I can follow. 

I first discovered this problem with radio broadcasts. 

As a kid, my dad always had a radio outside on hot summer days, blasting the Red Sox game for the whole neighborhood to hear. I could sit in the stands and watch a baseball game, or sit in front of the television, but I never could bring the announcers voice into my mind's eye to hear the game. 

Alternatively, my mother not only could listen and understand the broadcasts, she once told me she actually preferred listening to football and baseball on the radio. She'd get excited about some call made during a Patriot's game during a car ride, and be unhappy when I didn't know what was happening, never-mind which team it was happening too.

I made a friend, who was older than myself, but shared my love of reading. Her thing was English Mysteries. She also liked to read "whatever the kids are reading," because she had a bunch of nephews and nieces my age... She'd drive herself to the train station with one of her audio-books playing and ride the train to work with a book in her hand.

She lent me an audio book, and-- I couldn't do it. I'd catch a word or phrase here or there, but never quite enough to equal a whole story. It might as well have been static and, if I closed my eyes to concentrate on it, I would fall asleep as if I'd been hit with chloroform.

A lot of my coworkers listen to audio-books at work and are constantly raving about this audio on that app. I told them I can't, I don't, all I hear is white noise. They look at me like I'm crazy. Perhaps, I am.

But I found myself getting sick of music and sick of silence in equal doses... I needed something. I tried to get around the, "I can't hear a story," problem by trying a book that wasn't a story.

I thought non-fiction might be easier. It was and it wasn't. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry was beautifully narrated, and the parts I heard left me in awe of the universe, but mostly it left me yearning for a hard copy.

I wondered if I could train my ears to hear what others are hearing. So I'm trying again with A Promised Land by Barack Obama who has a beautiful speaking voice and an excellent grasp of the English language, two qualities that no doubt helped him win over crowds on the campaign trail. I hear a man speaking: he loves his family, he's stressed out over making decisions that might affect his marriage... But I'm missing a lot in between. I listened to five hours of audio (24hrs to go) and heard about ten sentences. When I'm done, I'll undoubtedly wish for a hard copy.

I feel like it's wrong to say, "I read them," because I didn't get as much from my ears as I would have gotten from my eyeballs. It also feels wrong to say I didn't read them because I heard more than nothing. Their words were in my ears, whispering their accomplishments and their knowledge, and I didn't have time to absorb it, page by page, word by luxurious word.

Audio-books probably will never be my thing, but I wanted to try something new to speed up the work day.

Do you prefer using your eyes or your ears to enjoy a story? And why one over the other?