Another Harry Potter bites the dust!

On Friday, while walking home from work, I finished listening to Harry Potter i Więzień Azkabanu (the 3rd Harry Potter book in Polish). This is the first one where I had both the text and the audio. I tried doing a couple of things with this:

1. Simultaneous reading and listening.
2. Listening then later reading.
3. Switching off, doing which ever one I feel like at the time.

#1 turned out to be waaay harder than I thought. I read at a different speed than the actor read the text. I kept wanting to pause the audio so I could catch-up. This turned out to not be very enjoyable for me. #2 worked great, although it was a little boring at reading time. There would sometimes be a word or two that I failed to catch in the listening that the later reading would clarify, but nothing that ever changed my understanding of the text.

#3 was just right. Sometimes, especially at night, reading text off the page was more relaxing. The actor would move so briskly and sometimes I wanted to move more lazily. However, all in all, I ended up doing more listening than reading. I purely listened to the last 1/3 of the book. This may be because its more easily merged with other tasks (ie. walking, eating). Or that I enjoyed listening to the way the actor put emotion into the text. Or maybe because it was easier to gloss over words that I didn't know. ;-)

I've already received the next one, Harry Potter i Czara Ognia (both text and audio) from Quo Vadis, a Polish bookstore in Chicago. I always order online, but I'll be in Chicago next week for YAPC::NA, so I may get a chance to stop in there in person. The 4th book is enormous, almost twice as long as the 3rd, weighing in at 768 pages recorded on 18 CDs. Whew! This one may take a little longer.