I can’t do audiobooks at all. I get distracted and lose my place.

I’m an ELA teacher, and the thing about reading text is that we don’t just run our eyes over the text one time from start to finish and instantly comprehend it. Reading is an active process where you’re frequently needing to stop, think, reread, look back, and look up words in order to comprehend. You HAVE to be able to stop, think, and reread in order to fully comprehend what you’re reading. Seriously, try it - pick a paragraph and read it by scanning your eyes over it one time, beginning to end, one word at a time, without stopping or going back at all. Then stop, reflect, and see how much you understood…

A lot of my students would use audiobooks to support while they also read the text with their eyes - that way, the audiobook does the work of decoding the text, but they can still see it, and if they need to pause to comprehend, they can easily do that without losing their place. I hope someday there will be high-quality apps that combine ebooks and audiobooks so people can do this very easily.

I also hate having to watch videos or listen to speakers to get information - I much prefer to read it at my own pace. It’s so much easier and faster for me to make sense of information that way.

I don’t think Sparknotes has any spoilers for future chapters of books.

Carver reminds me a bit of the Imagist poets in that way.