Posted on 03/16/2018 5:18:40 PM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Americans are spreading their book consumption across several formats, and the use of audiobooks is rising.
About three-quarters (74%) of Americans have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2012, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January. Print books remain the most popular format for reading, with 67% of Americans having read a print book in the past year.
And while shares of print and e-book readers are similar to those from a survey conducted in 2016, there has been a modest but statistically significant increase in the share of Americans who read audiobooks, from 14% to 18%.
(Excerpt) Read more at pewresearch.org ...
Mostly young people, would be my guess! They've not learned to read while still graduating from high school. The dumbing down of America. One student at a time!
Not nearly as many calluses on her fingers. ;)
I hate it, it has my voice! I hate my voice!
For four plus decades, I mostly listened to conservative talk radio when I was in my car. But when programming in my area came to be dominated by Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, neither of whom I can stand, I started listening to audiobooks.
Today, I was substitute teaching in a high school considered one of the better ones in the district. One US History class for junior over which I presided was taught by a student teacher. However, when she asked the students if someone would define double jeopardy, not a hand went up. One kid sitting next to me remarked that he thought it was some sort of game. I told him that he ought to know what it is, since protection from double jeopardy is one of the rights he enjoys because he's an American.
The teacher explained the concept of double jeopardy and chose some good examples. However these kids, who will reach voting age in mere months, appear to have a lot to learn before they can vote intelligently.
I am currently listening to Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy (New York: Putnam, 1986)
Some of the readers on LibriVox are just incredible. I'm thinking specifically of John Greenman's reading of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
If you haven't got the Hoopla app, it's even better than LibriVox. It's free if you just put in your library name and library card number. They have a lot more free recent books than LibriVox which is mostly free only for works in the public domain. Hoopla has everything - audiobooks, ebooks, movies, tv, etc. and an enormous selection.
The only disadvantage of Hoopla compared to LibriVox is that LibriVox audiobooks are broken down into chapters while Hoopla's aren't. I'll read and listen to some long books and it's a lot harder to find your place in Hoopla than LibriVox. That's one of the great things about audiobooks is that (especially if you combine it with the physical book) it enables me to read long books like Cryptonomicon that I'd put off for years because I didn't want the huge time commitment as a slow reader.
I’m listening to Grant by Ron Chernow, about Ulysses S.
My grandmother who is mostly blind gets free audiobook cassettes and a player for them from this great service.
Blueprint for Armageddon is incredible. I’ve listened to the whole thing twice and will probably listen again later this year.
I’ve also listened to Blueprint for Armageddon twice. It’s his best stuff. King of Kings and Ghosts of the Ostfront are good too.
For whatever reason, I started to get bored with King of Kings. I think Ostfront is not free, but I’ve read that it’s supposed to be really good. One of these days I’m going to go spend the $50 or $60 or whatever it is to get his older stuff.
Apparently Im disabled, my laser has never worked properly.
I tried to listen to podcasts for awhile but the subjects I was interested in didnt seem to have any hosts who knew more than I did or they were clearly just talking about something that they had only read about.
TY for this resource. Ive tried to get audiobooks in the past but all I could ever find were fictions and I just dont really like listening or reading fiction. I cant believe how many non-fiction options are available here!
Im also a fan of Dan Carlin.
Wait, Burke wrote books? Ill have to check that out.
“:^)
I have a very hard time checking what I’ve written, because I essentially read sentences rather than words. I know what my thoughts were, and the thought returns to mind sentence by sentence, and I don’t see the individual words.
That’s been the case for me also.
Great. It’s been a while. Not sure if I’ve heard that one or no.
We did that when the kids were smaller - lots of tales entertaining for both the kids and the adults!
I was out at a site last summer. One of the engineers was walking around recording GPS data and monitoring instruments. I could hear something else - and asked them what sort of device that was.
“Oh - it’s an audiobook.”
I thought that was a bit odd to be working and listening to a book at the same time. But they were my client, so....
“”Me too!””
It must be an Irish trait but after today I am being ostracized because I totally forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day and didn’t buy the usual fixins’ for dinner. I won’t fight the crowds at the grocery store on a Saturday so I will just “pretend” next week that it’s St. Patrick’s Day and buy them then.
When I shopped on Wednesday, I noticed the cabbage when I walked through the veggies but told myself I wouldn’t need any and in the meat department, there weren’t any HINTS to remind me to get the corned beef...
Has never happened before but at this age I am sure it will a few more times. The days seem to be taken up with keeping track of my husband’s doctor appointments and getting to/from those.
Have a good St. Pat’s.....
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