by
Scott D. Parker
A couple of weeks ago on NPR, I ran across an article entitled “Is there a right way – or wrong way – to listen to an audio book?” and I gave it a read. The article spotlights a TikTok video from Audible where various celebrities discuss their preferred speed of listening to content.
What surprised me was the number of folks who think 1x (i.e., normal) speed is the only preferred method. One person even commented “I think people who go real fast are - I don't want to say psychopath, but...” I have to admit it irritated me.
I am an avid listener of audiobooks and podcasts. Of the 34 books I got through in 2024, 31 of the were audiobooks. Basically, if there’s a book I want to read, I see if there’s an audio version first. When the guys from my SF book club make their picks, I instantly download the audiobook. Side note: I love when my friends pick the books because I can download the audio and just push play, having never read the book description, a habit I call Reading into the Dark.
When There's Not Enough Time
When it comes to those SF books, sometimes they're long and, depending on what other book I may be listening to, there may not be enough days in the month left to finish the assigned book. If the book is not good, I pull the rip cord and just stop listening. But for those books I'm enjoying yet I'm running out of time, it's time to bump up the narration. I ended up listening to the most recent novel, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, at 1.4x. Fast enough to hear and digest everything but also speedy enough to complete the novel.
When The Narration Is Slow
Sometimes, an audiobook narrator makes a decision to read the book slower than I'd like. My default is about 1.2 to 1.25x. This is a nice, natural pace for my brain and ear. It has the effect of shrinking the silences between sentences.
Sometimes, the faster tempo of my listening brings a little bit extra to the experience. There have been more than a few books in which a faster narration lends itself to more punchy dialogue, especially for those romances with two witty characters.
The Always-Natural Narrators
Scott Brick is my favorite audiobook narrator. Whenever I get a book with him--like Brad Meltzer's novels and histories and the works of Clive Cussler--I listen to Scott naturally.
Ditto for celebrities who read their own work. Dave Grohl, Henry Winkler, Ron and Clint Howard and, as of this week, Alton Brown. I know how they sound and I want to hear them naturally.
You Read More Books
When you speed up narration, you finish books faster. And then you can read the next book. Who doesn't like that?
This Shouldn't Even Be a Thing
When we buy a book or download an audiobook, that piece of content is now owned by us. It has left the writer's keyboard and brain and become either an ebook, a paper book, or an audiobook.
And we readers and listeners can do with that product whatever we want. When I read, I annotate like crazy, especially non-fiction. I underline passages and make notes in the margins. Heck, I even do that for ebooks.
Plus, readers read at all different speeds, so there's no natural 1x speed of reading. So there shouldn't be a "norm" for audiobooks.
You consume at the speed you want, and don't let anyone say anything differently.
The Drunken Version?
By the way, all this talk of bumping up the narration leads to another question: anyone ever slowed down an audiobook to 0.5 speed? It's kind of fun. The narrator sounds drunk, something I learned while listening to The Ralph Report podcast (where host Ralph Garman slows down rants by co-host, Eddie Pence, to make Eddie, a non-drinker, sound drunk).
Anyone want to hear a "drunk at the end of a bar" tell you a story?
