I listened to the audiobook, which was probably a mistake (despite an excellent reading by the narrator). This book deserves a close reading, but has others have said, the language is overly wrought, and too florid for the ear. This is not the kind of book you can put on and let wash over you. I had to stay still and listen closely (a waste of the audio format!), and used things like www.litcharts.com/lit/imagined-communities to actually understand each chapter. A quick extract for illustrative purposes:

The cosmic clocking which had made intelligible our synchronic transoceanic pairings was increasingly felt to entail a wholly intramundane, serial view of social causality; and this sense of the world was now speedily deepening its grip on Western imaginations.

One thing I definitely do understand is how important this book is. I knew it was a classic, and I can see why. Anyone interested in politics and/or publishing needs to at least understand the argument of this book, of the role of print capitalism as a foundation of the development of modern nationalisms. The democratizing power of vernacularisation and its resultant divisiveness (which can bloom into virulent nationalism) seems a social constant that we see acting on today's society in the form of mass distribution of technology, the seizing of the means of publication, and the resultant isolated communities of imagined conspiracy, governmental or medical.

I very much appreciate the wide span of "philosophizing" of this book, and its grand ideas. I just wish it was put in a more vernacular form so that many more could absorb its concepts.