No, but I can tune out some noises better than others. There are some noisy situations in which I simply cannot get through even a single sentence.

I need complete silence for stuff that require precision and concentration, working and reading are the main ones. I could read manga or something in a not so quiet environment but that’s it.

Yes. And even then I struggle to concentrate. This is what modern life has done to us.

How else would I hear the narrator in my head?

It depends on the book. I think it works better with horror or books that are focused on music to have a playlist in the background.

This isn’t quite what you’ve asked, but I’ve found two things over the years:

• Familiarity matters. I remember that as a kid, I didn’t listen to music when doing homework. I couldn’t understand how people could manage. Later, I used music on headphones in a work environment to drown out noise that was more-distracting, and it wasn’t an issue once I got used to it, could write software without problems with music. I remember reading that some people say that they can’t concentrate when it’s too quiet, if they’re accustomed to being in a noisy environment, because the silence becomes a distraction.

• The type of noise matters. I don’t require white noise, but in terms of how-distracting something is, I’d say that my ranking is something like silence > white-noise-type stuff > “ambient” sounds like waves or wind > lyric-free music > music with lyrics > speech > half of a conversation.

  By “half of a conversation”, I mean a conversation in the background where I can only hear one end. This usually comes up when someone is talking on a cell phone in a public place in the background. I think that what’s going on here is something like that we’ve trained ourself that if someone says something and then there’s no response, it means that they’re talking to us, and so we’ll say “huh?” and look up. It’s good that that happens. Unfortunately, that’s also the effect one gets when one can only hear one side of a cell phone conversation. Just a constant series of attention-grabbing events for me. I’d rather have two people talking to each other near me than one person on a phone, even though it’s technically more speech.

  Generally, I prefer “lyric-free music or better” when doing something that requires concentration, but can live with music with lyrics.

I have an album associated with nearly every book I have read. Music is a must while reading.

Uh, really depends on the type of book, what kind of noise it is, and how concentrated I am. I don’t think I can do it early in the morning or after a long day. I have some amount of tolerance when my brain is still well off. But there’s certainly a limit. And it’s different on each train. The people who commute to and from work are often considerate. But once I’m directly in between a group of people who talk to each other, I put away my book and switch to music, or doom-scrolling on my phone.

It might be auditory processing disorder. The second more than one person is talking (and books count) I begin to crave death.

I actually need some kind of unobtrusive noise. I usually pick some ambient scene off YouTube that has a fireplace and rain or rain with thunder.

I need not voices to read fiction.
But loud non-speaking noises don’t interfere.

Oddly, articles, Wikipedia, and websites, I can read much more easily while people are talking.

I love listening to solo piano or ambient music while reading. Any other type of music is too much for my brain to handle.

It’s an adjustment I had to make when everyone started working from home in 2020, and I find it works well on transit too. Might just be that I’ve trained my brain to go into focus mode when I hear that type of music.

I need white noise or I need to listen to the audio book while I read along

I have tinnitus that makes concentrating on anything in complete silence absolutely aggravating. The tiniest bit of background noise makes it so I don’t notice it anymore, so I generally have an instrumental playing when I need to focus on something like homework or reading.

I need silence to read, or at least consistent noise, like the sound of a vent. The same applies if I’m trying to sleep. My mind isn’t very vivid, so I guess speech overrides it easily.