When I was just starting out in September 2013, I realized that vanishingly few of the books I wanted to read were available as audiobooks, so it didn’t make sense for me to search Audible for titles I wanted to read: the answer was basically always “no.” So instead I browsed through the top 2000 best-selling unabridged non-fiction audiobooks on Audible, added a bunch of stuff to my wishlist, and then scrolled through the wishlist later and purchased the ones I most wanted to listen to.
These days, I have a better sense of what kind of books have a good chance of being recorded as audiobooks, so I sometimes do search for specific titles on Audible.
Some books that I really wanted to listen to are available in ebook but not audiobook, so I used this process to turn them into audiobooks. That only barely works, sometimes. I have to play text-to-speech audiobooks at a lower speed to understand them, and it’s harder for my brain to stay engaged as I’m listening, especially when I’m tired. I might give up on that process, I’m not sure.
Most but not all of the books are selected because I expect them to have lots of case studies in “how the world works,” specifically with regard to policy-making, power relations, scientific research, and technological development. This is definitely true for e.g. Command and Control, The Quest, Wired for War, Life at the Speed of Light, Enemies, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Chaos, Legacy of Ashes, Coal, The Secret Sentry, Dirty Wars, The Way of the Knife, The Big Short, Worst-Case Scenarios, The Information, and The Idea Factory.
I definitely found out something similar. I’ve come to believe that most ‘popular science’, ‘popular history’ etc books are on audible, but almost anything with equations or code is not.
The ‘great courses’ have been quite fantastic for me for learning about the social sciences. I found out about those recently.
Occasionally I try podcasts for very niche topics (recent Rails updates, for instance), but have found them to be rather uninteresting in comparison to full books and courses.
Could you say a bit about your audiobook selection process?
When I was just starting out in September 2013, I realized that vanishingly few of the books I wanted to read were available as audiobooks, so it didn’t make sense for me to search Audible for titles I wanted to read: the answer was basically always “no.” So instead I browsed through the top 2000 best-selling unabridged non-fiction audiobooks on Audible, added a bunch of stuff to my wishlist, and then scrolled through the wishlist later and purchased the ones I most wanted to listen to.
These days, I have a better sense of what kind of books have a good chance of being recorded as audiobooks, so I sometimes do search for specific titles on Audible.
Some books that I really wanted to listen to are available in ebook but not audiobook, so I used this process to turn them into audiobooks. That only barely works, sometimes. I have to play text-to-speech audiobooks at a lower speed to understand them, and it’s harder for my brain to stay engaged as I’m listening, especially when I’m tired. I might give up on that process, I’m not sure.
Most but not all of the books are selected because I expect them to have lots of case studies in “how the world works,” specifically with regard to policy-making, power relations, scientific research, and technological development. This is definitely true for e.g. Command and Control, The Quest, Wired for War, Life at the Speed of Light, Enemies, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Chaos, Legacy of Ashes, Coal, The Secret Sentry, Dirty Wars, The Way of the Knife, The Big Short, Worst-Case Scenarios, The Information, and The Idea Factory.
I definitely found out something similar. I’ve come to believe that most ‘popular science’, ‘popular history’ etc books are on audible, but almost anything with equations or code is not.
The ‘great courses’ have been quite fantastic for me for learning about the social sciences. I found out about those recently.
Occasionally I try podcasts for very niche topics (recent Rails updates, for instance), but have found them to be rather uninteresting in comparison to full books and courses.
Thanks!