Once in a while, I listen to a book as an audiobook, rather than reading it on paper or on my electronic device. Especially during the pandemic, when I was walking a lot, I loved listening to stories while walking. And clearly, for people who are dyslectic, or who for another reason can’t read easily, they are a real blessing.
But I’ve noted something weird with audio-books that I can’t quite grasp – so perhaps someone here can help me understand what is going on.
I believe that when I listen to a story, I have no problem following and remembering what’s going on. I’ve listened, for example, to The Underground Railroad, or to Educated, and didn’t feel I missed part of it. But with non-fiction books, I have a different experience. I seem to remember less well what’s in the book. It’s not a matter of not understanding (in the sense of listening to a text in a foreign language that one doesn’t fully master), but rather that for non-fiction, my brain seems to process better with visualisations. For example, I listened to Four Thousand Weeks, but I only remember its main message (that message being: life is short, much shorter than we tend to realise, so we should not waste it on things that aren’t valuable, and it’s impossible to do everything so make choices of what is most valuable for you). I cannot even remember the structure, or anything beyond that main idea that I took from it. And with both fiction and non-fiction, spending like 2 minutes browsing through the physical book, or even just looking at its table of contents for an online book, pulls out so many more details from my memory. It brings it all back. Or at least, it brings back many more details. With an audio-book, there is nothing that can tickle my memory.
Is this just me because I have a type of brain that works better with visualisation? (I also tend to visualise almost all ideas I develop for my academic work, often drawing tables, Venn-diagrams etc., to develop and analyse what are in essence just theoretical ideas). Or is this a challenge that everyone has with audio-books?
