Read or Listen?

[mormegil]

Okay so I have read LOTR and others multiple times and I just got done listening to it. The actual book on tape version not the dramatized version. I wonder what is your preference and why? They both move me but they do so in different ways.

[Mnemosyne]

I had to choose "read" because I haven't listened to a full unabridged book-on-tape version.

Reading has a lot of different benefits to it, the chief of which is the ability of the reader to skip around. Since I don't have the time I used to I haven't done a full readthrough in about three years now, so being able to look at some favorite scenes again has to suffice when I need a quick canon fix.

One option that I wish you would have put up there (since you included "watch the movies") was "Listen to the BBC Radio adaptation". Since it's a mere 13 hours but it still contains all the Tolkieny goodness a lass like me could ask for it's a good cheap substitute for a full readthrough.

So if that option were up I'd have to put it slightly ahead of "read": not because it's necessarily better, but because that's what I have time for at the moment.

[Inziladun]

Read. Every time.

[Thinlómien]

Reading beats listening, because it's more private and the characters have their own voices, not the actor's voice. (Not to mention that a bad or unfitting actor can ruin the whole story.) While reading you can go on with your own pace and check things that were said before or pause to think about some perceived or imagined incoherence or wise words uttered by the characters.

However, if "listening" includes being read aloud to by a parent or someone else close and loving, I would actually say "listening" because then it has all the magic of old storytelling and also the shared experience with someone important, if I may so without sounding all too cheesy.

[Hakon]

I voted read. I cannot listen to an audio book without getting bored. I usually end up reading something completely different when I am listening to an audio book.

[mormegil]

I have fairly long commutes so I enjoy listening to books. I think listening gives me a whole new dimension of it. It is paced and measured. I tend to speed read during the real exciting parts and I miss things.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

However, if "listening" includes being read aloud to by a parent or someone else close and loving, I would actually say "listening" because then it has all the magic of old storytelling and also the shared experience with someone important, if I may so without sounding all too cheesy.

Lommy has a point there - though I would add the great pleasure, not of "hearing" the book being read aloud, but of "reading" it aloud myself. Tolkien's narrative lends itself so well to vocalisation of any kind, and I have at times, when I had no one to read to, read the book aloud to myself (in a quiet, secluded spot, of course, lest someone should consider me crazy). JRRT's language is so wonderfully suited to speech, not just to words on the page!

[Tuor in Gondolin]

Good point about reading some aloud, like prose poetry.
Most of the Ride of the Rohirrim almost draws you
to read it aloud. Btw, doing shows you how much PJ and
friends botched the charge of the Rohirrim in RotK.
It should have started in the dark, Theoden gives his speech,
horns blow, Theoden sounds Guthlaf's horn and calls to his lads,
charges while the sun appears on his shield, then on him and Snowmane,
then all the host, with the bad guys first panicking and then charging at them
(rather like George Custer's Michigan cavalry at J.E.B. Stuart's troopers
at Gettysburg). "Come on, you Wolverines!"

[Galadriel]

Definitely reading. My mind tends to wander when I listen. When I took my TOEFL test I noticed I could barely concentrate during the listening section.

[Galadriel55]

I prefer to read, because I can concentrate better. Also, every once in a while I have the sudden urge to flip back a few pages and check on this or that fact. It's easier for me if it's written down than if I'm listening. Plus, I can reread a certain passage as many ties as I want before continuing. I have very weird reading habbits, don't I? And when I reread a book, I never do it cover to cover; a bit here, a bit there: that's my way.

[Mithalwen]

I haven't voted yet because the BBC adaptation holds such a special place in my heart as does the the Jackanory Hobbit which prolly counts as a listen.

My parents were readers but neither would have read Tolkien. My father read mainly military history and my mother was not have read fantasy/scifi. So if I hadn't heard the blessed Bernard Cribbins read The Hobbit I might never have got into Tolkien -none of my RL friends are remotely interested save one who is more of a film bod and I didn't meet him til university which was between my tolkien phases.

I was given LOTR the Christmas after I read the Hobbit but struggled and didn't finish that time. I heard the radio LOTR adaptation repeats just after I had tried again, suceeded and got hooked and so that interpretation is closely interwoven wiht my own impressions. I still prefer the Frodo and Sam thread on the Radio version. The brilliant acting of Ian Holm and Bill Nighy (with Peter Woodthorpe as Gollum and Andrew Seear as Faramir) make the bit of the book I find hardest to read absolutely riveting.

So as things stand it would be read (I have not heard the plain reading or had it read to me) but if listen to Beeb adaptations were an option it would be hard. Now if it were the Silmarillion - well Ihave CRT's recordings and that would be a definite listen save that they are only extracts. Amazing stuff.

[Galadriel]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I prefer to read, because I can concentrate better. Also, every once in a while I have the sudden urge to flip back a few pages and check on this or that fact. It's easier for me if it's written down than if I'm listening. Plus, I can reread a certain passage as many ties as I want before continuing. I have very weird reading habbits, don't I? And when I reread a book, I never do it cover to cover; a bit here, a bit there: that's my way.

Ditto. I simply have to keep checking on facts. Especially when I read Hugo (he tends to be a tad confusing ).