#i heard it in an audiobook I'm proofing

[accidentalmistress]

Are you seriously telling me "nares" is pronounced like "nair-eez" and not "nairs"??? Nares rhymes with sneeze??!

[the-busy-ghost]

Benefits of audiobooks- I can listen to them while I work, and I am forced to hear and consider every word, rather than read at my usual flying pace, which means I don’t miss things as much and get a deeper and more sustained enjoyment from a really good book

Disadvantages of audiobooks- When there are emotional details they aren’t blunted by the fact that my uncontrolled eye is already skimming the next passages and there are some Emotions that are not appropriate for working hours

[rigelmejo]

I have listened to the first 5 默读 audiobook chapters!

1. Im so hype! That was 1 hour and 15 minutes I just managed to follow the main idea of!

2. I understood the main idea of every scene I heard! Which is a big accomplishment for me. Even reading the chapters ahead of time like I have, in the past it would take me like 5 re-listens to understand what scenes I'm listening to. I did relisten to chapter 1-2 maybe 3 times, then the rest I just listened to once.

3. I understood more details as I listened more. I think partly this is due to my rusty memory (from 6 months not studying) getting jogged so I am now remembering words I knew before, and partly words I knew/know how to read already. I don't think I learned many new words, if any, but listening to the audiobook does gradually seem to be dragging my listening skills up closer to my reading skills. Which is the goal anyway. I want to be able to LISTEN to the audiobooks of things I can read, so I can listen to audiobooks instead when that's what I feel like doing. And there are some pretty awesome chinese audiobooks! Like modu's? They have music, sound effects, crowd noises, atmospheric noises, different voices for characters (all read by one narrator but I quite like the narrator's main voice and range of voice choices: luo wenzhou and fei du in particular i like a lot, but tao ran also sounds level headed, and ma xiaowei sounded so distinct it fit him well, or the slurring messy zhang donglai voice!)

4. I'm seriously so excited. I could tell most of the details when Tao Ran got flowers, and when Luo Wenzhou told him what Fei Du wants isnt friendship, and Tao Ran saying he knows but if... and luo wenzhou telling him to shut up. And the scene where Fei Du tries to pick Tao Ran up and Luo Wenzhou shuts it down and Lang Qiao smells something going on. Also surprisingly I think the part where Luo Wenzhou yells at the citizens (for taking statements) was easier to follow in audio, because you can tell when he's making the call, and you can guess which words are proof/apprehend/previous crime record a bit easier based on how its being talked about. The Ma Xiaowei part also was almost easier to follow in audio, because the voice emotions and sound effects helped convey the descriptions going on. This is, hands down, the best I've understood a chinese audiobook. There were still many unclear details/sentence phrases I did not understand. Dialogue was still the easiest to understand most details in, followed by actions (slammed walked etc) and descriptives using actions (hit the table, paused a moment, glanced at the other, glared and cut in). But in the bigger picture, being able to generally follow which scene I was listening to and the plot was huge. To me.

5. It makes me excited to listen to more. Also it makes me want to listen to the Modu audio drama, since I think I can grasp enough now to follow that too - whereas in some times Ive tried before I couldnt follow dialogue enough to place all the scenes. It also makes me want to listen to the Zhenhun audiobook again - since i tried like a year ago and used to have to relisten a LOT to grasp most scene main ideas of chapters Id already read (and not even all scene main ideas). I bet I could grasp nearly all scene main ideas now, and maybe more details (not all, but more).

6. Advice for my future self: listening more does work, as far as bringing listening skills up closer to reading skills. Since I've started my "listening study" kick about a month ago, I've probably only listened to 15 hours of chinese or less. Like 2 hours mdzs (multiple relistens of chapter 1-3), 4 hours sci, 1.5 hours on modu audiobook (counting the initial chapter relistens), 4 hours chinese spoonfed audio, 3 ish hours listening to modu chapters with TTS as i read (which has text to help me), 1 hour qi hun cdrama. Yeah so like 15.5 hours. And in that short a time I've already remembered a lot of words I knew before, and started recognizing more and more words I know from reading. If that's only 15 hours then how big a difference might 100 hours make? And that's just listening. No special effort. Nothing particularly hard. Maybe relistening, if I feel like it, which I suppose could be slightly hard if I don't love the repetition lol. But sometimes I'm fine with it. Only chinese spoonfed ausio was hard cause i felt bored and couldnt motivate lol. In the big picture its quite fun study and fun to see progress just by having fun. It would be cool to see it pay off too, and make other audio books and audio dramas easier to listen to in the future.

7. Just kind of interesting to me. It kind of feels like being 7-8 and having my dad read stories to me, in that I follow the story but dont know all the words. Or like being a child watching a movie, like at age 4-5. A lot of kids watch their favorite movies like a hundred times, or for years straight, i did. Maybe the first times we watch movies as kids we dont understand all the words. Maybe we just get the gist, and love the story so much we keep watching it again and it gets clearer and thats probably exciting - to understand even more of our favorite movies as kids. Thats kind of what listening to an audiobook feels like now - hearing a story where i get the main idea gist, already know i love it, and so each time i understand a bit more its fun to realize im understanding more.

[acephysicskarkat]

Oh hey it's my old blog name, wasn't expecting to see that again today

and apparently it's proof I don't read books, so that's good to know

Some Books I Can't Recommend Because According To Some Elitist Dipshit On Twitter I Haven't Read Them

Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie is, at least in my imagination because I don't read books, a really good writer who combines a complex grasp on significant topics with an enjoyable tone, and basically everything of hers I've bought and never touched again would most likely be great. I wasn't amazed by what I've been told is the ending to Translation State, but that might just be a me problem because of course I don't read books.

Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries - The opening paragraph of the first story would be the best introduction to a character in fiction if I'd read them, which I haven't. I assume I would like the autistic robot main character if I'd actually spent any time reading about it.

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth - One of the best-paced enemies-to-lovers storylines in modern media, combined with a fascinating and complex world combined with amazingly well-integrated daft memes, or so I've heard from friends of mine who, unlike me, read books.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal - The entire Discworld series is worth reading and I've been not reading them and pretending I have since I was like 10, but the redemption of Moist von Lipwig would be tremendous fun, I assume, based on its tvtropes page

Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - I've been informed by people I trust that this is an engaging little story about the growing relationships of a spaceship crew. Couldn't say it under oath, though, because as we've discussed I do not read books

NK Jemisin, The Fifth Season - Big ol' trigger warnings on this one, but the worldbuilding and character work are top-notch, or so I've heard. I still need to get to hallucinating that I'm reading The City We Became though.

Misha Handman, Shadow Stitcher - Fun romp in a noirish 50s Neverland. Also the author is a friend of mine, which is why I'm giving him a shout out even though I haven't read his book, or any books. (Have just realised I forgot to order his second book, but I do get paid on Wednesday...)

And I'll give an honourable mention to Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic, although that one I legitimately haven't read because I got the audiobook instead, so I more had it read to me. Tremendous fun though.

[meimae]

19/06/21

Finished the first volume of 本好きの下剋上 司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません yesterday!

感想

I was initially only going to test out reading the first volume since the series is overwhelmingly long (26 parts!), but I quickly realized that it's a pretty good book to practice reading words I already know. Natural SRS, hurrah!

Of course, there are still plenty of words to mine, but if you read my overview last month, I wrote that at the very least I don't have to look up too many words compared to the other stuff I've read, so it's pretty relaxing and I can just concentrate on reading and enjoying the story.

I'm a self-professed bookworm and this book, with its title alone, caught my eye. I've always loved to collect and read books, and would absolutely choose the library or the bookstore over most social interactions, and if I can, whoever's with me is immediately required to check the book selection, too! 笑

The protagonist, マイン, however, is on another level. She does not only throw a tantrum when she could not get her hands on a book, but she's dedicating all of her energy on making all of the materials to make one herself. If that isn't dedication, I don't know what is.

I've heard some mixed reviews about this character; how she is especially whiney in the first volume which turns a lot of people off. But you gotta hand it to her. This poor girl who's only dream is to be a librarian (aside from getting buried and dying under a heap of books), wastes away and gets transported to a bookless world, into a pitifully weak and feverish body, and she constantly has to deal with the inconveniences of an undeveloped world. Of course she's going to complain!

This 異世界 is quite interesting, since it doesn't exactly rely on world-building, but more on showing what common modern things are not available yet. Sometimes, I can't help but think that it can be kind of historically inaccurate, but then I think again and remember that, of course it won't be accurate to real world history: it's literally a different world! 笑

Her effort to take the first steps on making paper and writing materials is very admirable, and I'm excited to see where else it will take her.

STATS

Ah yes, the most interesting part of the process, stats and graphs time! I love making these little edits and graphs at the end of every good reading session. It really reminds me of how far I've come, and shows me exactly where I can improve my approach in immersion. Also, it's a great amount of proof that, yes, I absolutely can read and listen to Japanese media by just, well, reading and listening to media!

I also listened to the audiobook equivalent of 本好き, and it was so fun to listen to since the voice acting was really good, and because I read it first, it was just as comprehensible. Definitely will be doing the same with the next volumes, and with other novels as well!

Total Characters: 161,544

Total Time Read: 18:23:04

Ave. Chars per Hour: 8,807

TIME SPENT READING & SPEED

(Includes everything including the あとがき, because why not)

I was consistently reading anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour (average 38 minutes), which just shows you that the shorter chapters of light novels are easier to consume especially while using the timebox method, and that this particular book (and potentially the rest of the series) is very comprehensible material for me, and is great reading practice to solidify previously mined words. Still intensively reading as always - looking up every word I don't know the meaning or reading of, including the occasional grammar point.

This Characters per Hour graph is shiny and new! I have been holding off from posting it until I finished another book. Was finally able to gather the data I needed (number of characters per chapter/time spent reading) to make it. It was tedious, but the result was worth it since it very clearly shows improvement with every new book I start and finish.

My legend is arranged by start order, my first couple of finishes being NHKにようこそ! and　ノルウェイの森. If I had known back then that I was improving every step of the way, I wouldn't have felt as bad as I did for taking 9 hours to read a 75,000 character chapter (which by the way, is a pretty normal chunk of time for a beginner to consume such an amount). But also, please ignore anything above 10k/hour from the first two books, as I am sure I switched my Yomichan to an English-Japanese dictionary setup instead of the normal J-J-J-E dictionary setup that I use now, since at the time I desperately wanted a book finish, and so the speed I was reading in seems quite unbelievable.

Still, judging from this graph, my speed seems to have settled at around an 8k starting point to a 10k-ish ending point. Not terrible, but definitely indicates that I need to read more, as a better ability to remember readings and meanings on the fly means better comprehension and eventually, better speed.

-☆-

That's all for this update. I'll be either looking into finishing the other books I've put on hold or maybe I'll pick up the next volume of 本好きor a different book instead.

Catch you all later!

[psychotic-psypport]

I escaped a pagan like cult a few years back. Was brainwashed into believing that there was a war in the astral. That "God" was trying to kill me and my friends. That no where was safe. It was the constant text book cult abuse with there always being a crisis and losing sleep and never having a moment's peace. Now that I'm out it's safe. But a coworker was preaching Bible shit and how the crazy weather was proof the end times were near and I panicked and heard high pitched angels all night (1/?)

I worry this may turn into some form of Schizophrenia as it runs in my family. That that lie and abuse will become my reality. Because I kept hearing the angels until I took enough tranqs and slept it off. I know the world's not ending and I'm Satanic now and don't believe in the Christian God I just feel so fucking scared because of what the coworker said and the hearing the high pitched ringing (I hear it now) is proof they didn't lie. It was real and I'll be killed for being a traitor. (2/2)

You’re not a traitor, you’re a person who didn’t allow yourself to be abused and lied to. I’m sorry that your coworker triggered this for you, but you don’t have to believe him. You went through something traumatic and this brought it back to the surface. You’re safe and nothing is coming to kill you. You don’t have to believe or repent in anything as you have done nothing wrong. You don’t believe in the Christian God, hold onto that, it can ground you. You’re safe, you got out. It’s going to be alright. Sometimes I deal with hallucinations with loud music or audiobooks, if that helps at all