It’s like clockwork, if you have a very repetitive and broken clock: Every so often, on one social platform or another, an argument kicks up about what counts as reading a book. A long time ago, people would occasionally argue about whether ebooks were real books—a line of fruitless discourse that seems almost funny now. (Somewhere, someone is probably still arguing about this. Let’s ignore them.)
The one that keeps coming around, a broken clock with a discordant chime, is audiobooks. There’s a semantics argument buried in here about reading vs. listening, but that’s picking a disinteresting nit. Audiobooks count as reading. Listening to an audiobook is no better or worse than reading a book on paper or a screen. You’ve still experienced the same story, just in a different format.
There’s no wrong—or right—way to read a book. There are just the ways that work and don’t work for each reader. Sometimes that means reading fast; sometimes it takes months. Sometimes the right way to read a book is to put it down entirely, and find it again later.
So why does this argument keep happening? The list of reasons is long, and includes traditionalists, ableism, simple pettiness, and people feeling defensive about their own choices. But maybe it’s also a little more personal than that.
Some of it is, of course, just the internet, where we fight about everything. Books are online, so we fight about them, but books are still books, and so the fight is specific. Reading is a solitary activity. It’s seemingly the opposite of the internet: a quiet place with a central narrative. (To be fair, both can have an overabundance of conflict.)
And yet we’ve created a million ways to bring these things together, from Goodreads to BookTok and everything that came before and will come after. Some of the inevitable conflict is the same conflict that plays out across the internet in every arena: forceful opinions get more traction and attention than mild ones, so everything becomes love or hate, best or worst, transformative or destructive. Nuance, no matter how much we love it in fiction, goes out the window.
Reading isn’t just solitary; it’s deeply personal. No two people will ever read a book exactly the same way—not physically speaking, in terms of where you read it, and how fast, and how old you are, and not emotionally speaking, either. Our experiences with books are our own, no matter how much some of us talk about them online.
And that deep, intimate connection—the very thing that makes books such a big part of our lives—it can be deeply weird to see it play out a different way for a different person. There are books I don’t talk about much because I’m just not capable of processing other people’s negative opinions of them. I need to keep those close to my heart and let them be mine in my own way. There are books about which I bite my tongue and sit on my hands and don’t say the critical things I want to say, because I can tell they’re gold to someone else.
It can feel, sometimes, like someone else’s experience of a book is in conflict with your own. Like one of you is doing it wrong. You’re not: there is no wrong. But that feeling happens and then we get arguments and gatekeeping, people trying to draw lines about how a book should be read and by whom, and in what format, and under what circumstances, and how of course no one else will appreciate it properly. Sometimes people do this with the intent to create a little garden where books are a certain, perfect way. It’s meant to be cozy and comforting for them. That garden, though, still has a gate.
The argument about whether audiobooks “count” is an argument that rises from people feeling protective and defensive about how they spend their time, and how they define themselves as “readers.” You can’t do much else while you read print—well, maybe listen to music, depending on how you’re wired. But you can read an audiobook while driving, washing dishes, exercising, crafting, showering, and probably a whole lot of other things I’ve never considered. For a certain kind of book person, that isn’t pure reading, and they reject it.
But reading isn’t pure. Reading is built of trees and dirt and ink and context, of feelings and thoughts and the whole of what’s inside your head colliding with a select piece of what was inside the author’s head when they wrote the book you’re reading. It’s cross-pollination. It’s chocolate in the peanut butter. And, crucially, it’s not about the object that is the book. It’s not about the CDs we used to listen to audiobooks on, or the screen you’re reading this on. It’s about ideas and words and thoughts, which swirl around impurely from person to person.
Book purists, like so many kinds of purists, should be allowed to treat books how they like. They just shouldn’t be allowed to impose those ideas on the rest of us, who are not book purists but simply readers. If you are not a purist, there is no wrong way to read a book. This isn’t just about format, but about so many implied ideas about how we ought to read. For example:
You don’t have to finish every book you start. Life is too short. There are so many books. Obligation is no way to enjoy a story. Not every book is going to click with you. And sometimes you pick a book up at the wrong moment! N.K. Jemisin is now one of my favorite authors, but when The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms came out, I kept just not reading it. I couldn’t tell you why. But I devoured the Dreamblood Duology and everything since, and now I’m doling her first three books out to myself, slowly, so I can enjoy them for longer.
There is no right or wrong time to read a book. It’s never too late. It can, sort of, be too early, but then you can always go back. (The only thing I remember from my 8-year-old self’s reading of A Wrinkle in Time is that I didn’t understand anything, and It was terrifying. I got a lot more out of it later.)
You don’t have to read the books everyone else is reading. When I was a bookseller, if there was a very popular book that everyone else in the store was reading, I didn’t read it unless I really wanted to. Why, when everyone else already had an opinion, and I could point customers to my colleagues or say that everyone else loved it? Did anyone need another opinion on Red Rising? Nah. I’d be better off finding something unsung to recommend. Sometimes you’re better off walking your own path. Learning to enjoy not having an opinion is truly one of the greatest parts of being an online person, reader or otherwise.
You don’t have to treat your books like gold. Write in them. Dogear the pages. Use bacon as a bookmark if you really want to. Or wrap them in cellophane and keep them out of the sun, and handle them only with white gloves. As Anne Fadiman once explained, there are courtly and carnal lovers of books: those who treat the objects like rare jewels, and those whose books look entirely different when they’re finished reading them. You do you. Don’t let any of those memes call you a chaos goblin unless you want to be one. (You can also be both kinds of book lover for different books. It’s kind of like being an introvert and an extrovert depending on the situation.)
Read books in whatever format you like to read them. Read them on your phone. Read them in bed. Read while eating. Go to a bar and get a drink (of any sort) and read alone. (Reading at a bar alone is one of life’s great pleasures, as far as I’m concerned.) Listen to books while you clean the bathroom. If I could keep earbuds in my ears I’d probably listen to books while running. Do whatever works. The point is the words, not how you get them into your brain.
It’s okay to skip parts. When my mom read The Lord of the Rings to me when I was 10, I insisted she read every poem and song. She resisted, but I held strong. And for the next four or five years, when I made my then-annual reading pilgrimage to Middle-earth, what did I do? I skipped all the goddamn songs. The child purist in me had been defeated by the realization that there were so many more books to read. Your experience with a book is just that: yours. There are books where you can’t skip anything without missing out considerably. But short story collections? Essays? Skip as needed. Not everything has to be for you.
You can be well-read without having read the classics. What does well-read even mean? Decide that for yourself, and shape your reading to suit.
If you’re a reader, you read. That’s all. Ideally, for me, this means reading widely, diversely, curiously, with as few preconceived notions as possible about what kind of books you do and don’t like. Just keep turning pages—or hitting play.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. You can also find her on Twitter.
Interesting post! One caveat, though–when you read only to find yourself, you miss a lot of interesting, illuminating characters and their experiences. If I read only to find myself, I’d’ve read . . . maybe three books, ever? Occasionally I’ll find a point of contact (putting off homework and having to stay up really late to finish as in Lovelace’s Betsy Was A Junior) or an ongoing situation that resonates (emotional abuse in Montgomery’s The Blue Castle and the film In the Name of the Father) and then I’m all in, but generally I’m all “What’s gonna happen to these characters and what are they like?”
Even in bios or letters I’m just reading to find out, tho’ Tolkien’s remarks about globalization in a letter certainly resonate!!!
I don’t write in fiction books, except for lit anthologies, but I do occasionally underline or write comments in non-fiction books, such as Vol. 3 of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (recommended!!!)
One “controversy” I’ve picked a side on is writing notes in books. Unless the book in question is particularly rare or otherwise has value as a unique and distinct object on its own, write all you want in books..Rather than defacing a work of art, writing in a book is creating art or at least a primary source. By writing in a book, you’ve transformed an interchangeable mass produced instance of a medium into a unique and specific artifact. The latest Danielle Steele paperback has essentially no value outside of communicating its story to the reader, it’s just one of millions, after all. That same paperback with scribbles on every page and paragraph-by-paragraph reactions is a valuable insight into how the reader responded to the story. .
As for the format wars, just enjoy books how ever you can. Life is way too short to police other people’s choice of medium.
I have to disagree. I highly recommend reading a book the first time. Nothing against audiobooks; they really help get me through long commutes! But those are books I’ve already read. This, of course, doesn’t include physical impairments that necessitate audiobooks. For those who simply prefer audiobooks, let me just make one argument: there is a lot of nuisance lost when listening versus reading. Not only that, but you’re getting someone else’s version of the book! You are bound to the narrator’s perspective. And that narrator is not the author and does not know what to emphasis and how to get the sentence across. That’s up to their interpretation. Also, it’s a lot easier to get distracted when listening and miss something meaningful or plot relevant down the line. Confusion reigns.
That’s just my opinion, of course.
@3
“a lot of nuisance lost when listening versus reading.”
Auto-incorrect for the win there. Although listening when driving can certainly make one a nuisance.
Ah, the days when ebooks weren’t “real books.” As an ebook pioneer, I had to argue that question, many, many times. I once did a seminar on ebooks and libraries for the head public librarians of my state, and the early questions were really ugly from those physical book lovers. I managed to convert them in under 3 hours. Our state public libraries were some of the first to develop an ebook system. Go, me!
Add in to the “real book” debate that many snobs don’t consider one genre or the other to be “real books.” “Why don’t you write/read real books?” was such a common question to romance writers/readers that I ended up writing a long blog with rebutals to the question.
For people who believe their minds are wide open because they read, we are a remarkably snobby group.
I discovered audio books in the past three years. My recommendation is to make an audiobook your first read. If I find value in something, I am going to read it more than once. Audio books help me get through the plot, and if I decide that the language or some other approach the author takes merits it, I’ll read it again in a physical copy to explore them at greater length. Just my take, your mileage may vary.
@1 I’ve never understood the need to find myself in books to make the reading experience valid. Heck, I wrote over a dozen novels and lots of short stories, and I never included myself in the first one, either. People need to expand their understanding of others, not coocon themselves into their own little world of likeness.
I really like this take on “reading”. I have my preferences, but I realize that they are mine and I’m not militant about applying them to others. I do get a tinge of sadness when I encounter someone who says that they haven’t read a book since they’ve left school. In those situations, I want to propose some of the other ways that you can experience writing and stories-audiobooks, ebooks, etc. As a fast reader, I have been resistant to audiobooks, but for long car rides, and with the right book, the right narrator, I have found that mode very enjoyable.
I also am glad to hear that I’m not the only one that has put down and not finished a book that everyone else loves. I do have a tic that I really want to finish a book once started, but I have been able to overcome that compulsion more recently.
Another thing about reading books is that I LOVE to reread certain books or passages from my favorite books. Of the books in my top 10 list (which is constantly evolving) I have reread all of them multiple times. Sometimes it’s as brief as a particularly evocative piece of dialog or a riveting description of a scene. Other times it’s the whole book. Once a year or so. And as in the example of the Lord of the Rings, I can skip the less than riveting portions and get to the good stuff.
I feel it is a treat to have a hardcover book, especially those of the authors and series that I follow. I’m reading more on my tablet, though and while that has been an adjustment, it has been nice during the pandemic to read library books that way.
There are as many ways to enjoy books as there are people, so read! In any form that takes.
Tom
@@.-@ – Haha, yes it did. But the autocorrect in this case would be my brain, rather than software. Get your act together, brain! You know I meant nuance.
I agree, to a point. Some people insist that listening to an audiobook is “reading” – and that’s just simply not true. One isn’t objectively better or worse than the other, it’s a matter of personal preference – but listening isn’t reading and reading isn’t listening.
@7, Exactly! I wonder if what my folks read to me when I was little, which included a book of stories from various US regions and cultures, and an anthology series of stories, including fairy tales, from various countries, had something to do with my approach. Left to myself, I continued that sort of reading when available (libraries don’t have everything!) plus biographies and history.
This post: reading is personal! Be nice and let people enjoy their own journey!
Several commenters: do things THIS way. Use THIS narrow definition!
Me:
Then there are those of us (the horriblest of the horrible) who read the ending first. Yes, even with the mysteries.
I don’t know for anyone else, but for me, I have ADHD and anxiety. I HAVE to know what happens or I can’t relax and enjoy the book. For me, it’s about the journey not the destination.
For instance, for mysteries, I like to see all the clues as I read. If I didn’t read the ending, once I knew who “did it,” I’d feel compelled to immediately read it again to see all the clues I missed. I have no desire to do that. Plus, I’d be anxious throughout the book, wondering what I was missing. There’s no enjoyment in that.
“You don’t have to finish every book you start.” Nancy Pearl, the famous “if one city read the same book” librarian, has a rule: Give a book 50 pages. If it’s not working for you by then, chances are slim it will change. The corollary: Life is short; for every year of your age over 50, subtract a page from the allotted 50 pages. So when you’re 90, a book has 10 pages to catch your interest.
Audio books are no big deal if that’s what’s preferred, but after learning to read, I don’t like to be read to, so I’ve only listened to three audio books–two because of the narrator (tho’ I did work on a crochet project I needed to get done, lol) and one because of unavailability of the hardcopy. Sometimes I do listen to ‘net stuff (reviews, commentary, or radio shows) over the ‘net while I’m working on graphics stuff . . . maybe not the same as audio books? Not sure.
I got serious about audiobooks first as a means to lessen the stresses of rush-hour traffic many years ago. Now I listen to them pretty much all the time, even when riding my bike. (Don’t worry – I am a safe rider and never listen loud enough to cover up street noises, plus I stick to mainly trails around our home.)
One comment I’d like to make is that certain narrators can enhance or, in some cases, detract from the listening experience. I’ve made it through several books that the expressiveness of the narrator made me a little regretful to finish the book.
I have a specific love of audiobooks for works of both non-fiction and fiction that have a lot of non-English names in them, like histories, when there’s a reader who gets their pronunciation right. (I find I can count on reviews to tell me who got it right and who didn’t.) I tend to imagine reading out loud in my head as I go, and stumbling over words I have no idea how to pronounce makes it a lot less fun. If my first reading got them right, I can fall back on those memories in future readings, however I may do them.
If you are not a purist, there is no wrong way to read a book.
I find Purity Testing in so so many places…”You’re doing it wrong!” is a child’s response to others being their awkward, lumpen selves. Don’t like what they say? Ignore them.
Yes, even when they’re being hateful stupid evil-souled and wrong. Nothing you can say or do will make them other than they are, and battling them might feel good but it just oxygenates the fires that you’re trying to stamp out.
I’ll show myself out.
As pointed out in the last paragraph, your mom read The Hobbit TO YOU when you were a child. You experienced the book, but you didn’t read it at that time.
The same holds true for audiobooks; you are having it read to you instead of reading it yourself.
I have nothing against audiobooks. They are a perfectly valid way to experience a book, but they are not reading.
@10: I agree with you . . .
I am addicted to stories, and I can feed that in many different ways. Nevertheless, I am a language purist for the most part, so I cannot call it “reading” when the activity is “listening.” Experience your story in whichever way works for you: decoding and comprehending marks made on a surface, which form “words,” listening to sounds we call “words,” or watching images. I can get my story “fix” using any of these methods but only one of them qualifies as “reading.”
The ghost of Harold Bloom is on line 1 to disagree with you, Ms. Templeton… /snark
You can argue semantics over how you define “reading” versus “listening” if you want but it’s perfectly valid to say you “read” something when you listened to the audiobook. Of course it’s a different experience, but it still counts as having read a book. It doesn’t quite work to call it anything else. Keep in mind that reading to yourself is a relatively recent development. In pre-modern times when most people were illiterate, written material was always meant to be read aloud. It was only written down with the idea that it would be later read aloud. There was no idea that people were sat around reading things to themselves. It wasn’t even a thing. Audiobooks are just a kind of modern twist on this old way of reading.
This idea that reading is a fundamentally solitary activity that we primarily do by silently staring at words on a page is so modern. Historically, most people listened to books, or took turns reading them aloud.
So stop criticizing audiobooks, folks, and don’t think I didn’t notice upthread that somebody carefully said that physical limitations are okay to do audiobooks but ignored all possibilities of other limitations, such as dyslexia or simple illiteracy with no underlying disability.
If you listened to someone give a speech and then went up to them afterwards and said, “I read your speech. It was great!” would that make sense? Of course not. Simply listening to something is not “reading.” Nothing against audio listeners, of course. I just don’t think you can call it reading. It’s more akin to watching a movie but without the images.
Thank you! One thing possibly worth mentioning is that the point about no right time to read a book, and getting more/a different experience when you come back to a book, also has an inverse.
I think sometimes books resonate most when you are in a particular phase of your life. I missed reading Catcher in the Rye as an adolescent, read it as an adult, and couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. But on reflection, I may have thought differently, and related to it differently, had I come to it within that earlier time window instead. There’s no way of knowing for sure, now…
Taking turns reading aloud is a great way to share a book.
@5: Oh, the “real books” crowd! There’s a whole ‘nother tangent I could’ve gone on about people who think children’s and YA books aren’t “real books,” and their authors not “real writers,” but I’d probably still be drafting this piece if I’d gone down that road.
@21: Bring on Bloom’s ghost! I’ve got more than one bone to pick with him. ;)
@25: Funny you should mention Catcher in particular— I read it later, too, and always wondered if I would’ve felt differently about it if I’d read it as a teen. But I also like having that distance from it, in a way. The experience is always different, but that doesn’t make it better or worse.
Sigh- I used to be one of those ‘love getting high on ink and paper’ RealBook(tm) purists. Then I moved several times in a handful of years, packing up many, many boxes of books each time. I also got older- meaning that the text in those books got progressively smaller, fuzzier, and harder to read. Ebooks to the rescue!
I do prefer reading to first consume a book- for me, it’s easier. I do love audiobooks for the re-read, or just the comforting voice in the background.
@5, @27 Some people think children’s books and YA aren’t real books????!!!!!!!!! I don’t understand why they’d think that!!! I still like YA (finished reading Lovelace’s Betsy’s Wedding this morning) and occasionally reread juvenile lit like works by Eleanor Estes, Sidney Taylor, Zylpha Keatley Snyder, etc.
I read The Hobbit and LOTR when I was in jr high, but might have enjoyed reading them in upper elementary if I’d heard of them then.
I wonder how many educated children in the nineteenth century read Dickens’ novels in serialized form? That isn’t my area of Victorian lit/culture so I’d have to do research but if that is someone’s area, please chime in.
@24: If somebody came up to me and said they had “read” my speech when I knew they meant they’d listened to me as I spoke my speech, I wouldn’t get on my high horse about it either. I know what they mean, they know what they mean, everybody knows what they mean – so why care?
Of course, we’re unlikely to have this conversation about somebody listening to my TED Talk, because there’s no gatekeeping there. Whereas when it comes to books, there’s always somebody ready to say that some forms of enjoying a book are more equal than other forms.
@@@@@ 10, Matthew W.
I agree, to a point. Some people insist that listening to an audiobook is “reading” – and that’s just simply not true. One isn’t objectively better or worse than the other, it’s a matter of personal preference – but listening isn’t reading and reading isn’t listening.
Some people insist that auditing the books means listening to them—and that’s just simply not true. Ask any IRS agent.
All this reading versus listening on audiobooks is besides the point. Those who listen to audiobooks are EXPERIENCING the book, the rest is irrelevant. I know many people with dyslexia and other disabilities who would find this extremely esoteric argument not worth their time. They want to experience the story, so they grab an audiobook. Reading words on a page isn’t a choice for them because they lose the experience,
I say this knowing that I must read words on a page to experience a story. My auditory comprehension can’t maintain the pace of an audiobook.
@32 Experiencing–great description! Whether listening or reading or reading aloud yourself–whatever works best for each person to experience the story! (My mom reads aloud whatever she’s reading–streaming info on tv, the newspaper, etc.–because that helps her take it in better; my dad and I read silently whatever we’re reading because that’s how we take in info).
It took me some time to realize that I didn’t have to finish a book I’d started, and that in fact if I hated it I was perfectly entitled to throw it across the room and never look at it again.
As for how I treat them, I fall more in to the “jewel” category. I try not to break spines and never dog-ear. There was one trilogy for which I simply had to notate the margins, and I did it in pencil so I could always erase it. That being said, I do read while eating and occasionally my book pays the price.
Recently I’ve had to force myself to go all Marie Kondo on my bookshelf–yes I loved that book at the time, but no, I will never read it again (heck, my library list is 7 pages long).
I’ve also come to realize the peril of saying or thinking “if only I had more time to read.” That tends to come terrifyingly true by way of abdominal surgeries with long recovery periods. Well, I guess I got my damn wish!
People who have seen the LoTR and Harry Potter’s movies and GoT TV show can claim they have read 3 fantasy series even though they havent ever touched any book in their life.
Calling listening to audiobooks as reading is also like that.
I love audio books for when I am building and painting models in my basement. I used to listen to them in the car, but I am retired now, with no commuting time to fill any more. Even more than audio books, though, I like audio dramas, with multiple actors playing the parts.
One thing I never understood is treating a book like a precious piece of treasure, to be admired, but not touched or used. In the world of comic books, I see people delighted to have bought a classic issue hermetically sealed in plastic, with a label giving an official grade of the condition. Crack open the plastic, and you invalidate the grading. I can think of nothing more foreign to me. But then again, when I buy a Funko Pop or action figure, I immediately take it out of the box.
My wife loves books on current affairs, but is too impatient to read them, and likes knitting. So I have been reading one to her as she knits recently, a chapter at a time. And I am actually enjoying the experience. I had forgotten how rewarding it is to read to someone.
Different strokes for different folks, as Sly and the Family Stone used to sing when I was young.
Yes; an audiobook counts as reading, or, rather, being read to. The book is the same, the experience is markedly different, because the narrator’s voice — whether a reording or in person — is not the same as the internal voice(s) you have in your head when reading. Full cast audiobooks are even more different in this way.
In our bookclub, typically half of the folks read a physical or ebook, and the other half listen to an audiobook. The only difference in what might be called “comprehension” I’ve noticed is that the readers are significantly more likely than the listeners to finish the book in time for the meeting. For most of us, listening is slower than reading. (I know: some people do read slowly, and that’s fine.)
But the affective difference is noticeable. The listeners seem to be moved, fascinated, bored — in short to have differnt emotional responses — to different sections than the readers. I posit that this is because of the narrator’s affective response to the text, and how it plays out in their voice.
So, yes, an audiobook counts as “reading”, but it is a reading different in kind from reading to yourself.
Speaking as a person of a certain age, when I fall asleep reading a book it’s easy enough to find my place again. Harder to do with audiobooks….
The whole point of the exercise is getting the contents of the book out of the book and into your brain. If you succeed in doing that, then you’re doing it right. It doesn’t matter if it gets in through your eyes, your ears, your fingers, or somebody taps it in Morse code on your head, so long as what’s in the book ends up in your brain. Now, can we talk about more important things, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
@35
What a crappy false equivalency. No one smart claims to have read a series of books when they’ve only seen the show or movies. Those are completely different formats, different mediums, ultimately different stories.
A printed book and an audiobook are still the same words, the same story. The experience is different, which can be said of every individual reader. The words are not changed.
In my experience with this argument, people who are pedantic about the definition of “reading” are doing it purely for a sense of superiority.
Just a friendly reminder to keep our moderation policy in mind when responding–let’s please keep the conversation civil; it’s fine to disagree, but don’t get personal, be excellent to each other, etc… The full guidelines can be found here.
IIRC many years ago Mortimer J. Adler wrote a book entitled How to Read a Book. A critic reviewing the book commented to the effect that Adler needed to learn how to write a book! Does anyone in Torland remember reading it?
@@@@@ 42, Paladin Burke:
IIRC many years ago Mortimer J. Adler wrote a book entitled How to Read a Book. A critic reviewing the book commented to the effect that Adler needed to learn how to write a book! Does anyone in Torland remember reading it?
I do. But it was many years ago. I don’t remember much. What do I remember? Alder was big on the Great Books. He made reading a book sound like a lot of work.
I can’t say he changed my desultory reading habits. Not even a little bit.
I wish I could do audio books, but I think I have some sort of weird audio version of dyslexia because I have a hard time following people’s speech. When I was a kid, I refused to let my parents read to me, which my mother told me later in life greatly saddened them. But I couldn’t follow the story unless I read it in text form myself, so I learned to read very early. Podcasts? Forget it. No transcript and I’m hopelessly distracted within minutes. But I can follow the transcripts with no trouble, and can read for hours, even switching among different sources, without ever getting mixed up. I have a hard time on the phone and prefer texting, and I’ve used closed captions since they were a thing. Maybe it’s more ADHD. I can stay focussed on a book, or even a scientific paper, but when someone is talking I…Oh, shiny!
I think there are circumstances when I wouldn’t consider audiobooks “reading” but they’re so niche and specific and mostly academic that it doesn’t matter. Same with ebooks and most of my books I read are digital now. The more I think about it, for me it’s mostly about semantics. IMO and emphasis on the “my” there. If you’re talking about a specific activity as in Last weekend I was reading a book, and you’re talking about a book on tape then my only argument is that you should be saying listening to a book. But if you’re talking about a more generalized history like Oh sure I’ve read The Baby-Sitter’s Club or Last year I read 5 books more than my goal then I take read to be more of a consume verb and it’s method agnostic. It’s only a partially formed opinion because I don’t really care that much.
I certainly think the language could use more words to describe the specific differences but I don’t think anyone should care if you read or listened. If we’re talking about what makes someone a reader it’s about the books consumed not about the manner in which they were consumed.
Interesting to see Red Rising called out because that was my first audiobook (Thanks HumbleBundle) that I listened to all the way through first time audio over text. Great experience.
@@@@@3, Austin, I gotta disagree with so much of that. There’s a lot of things that can be missed in an audiobook like say maps (which I almost never look at anyway. I’m on my like 20th reread of Wheel of Time, first in SO many years, and I still have basically no conception of how the world is laid out. I still think of the Waste as deep North and the blight as deep north but I think they’re actually deep East), icons, illustrations, special text formatting and spellings and as my parenthetical suggests that doesn’t matter to the story 92% of the time. And this is coming from someone who has an emotional attachment to a specific chapter icon in Wheel of Time. You’re functionally unaffected by missing it. If you meet someone on a dating site and you find out they read the same book as you the first thing you talk about isn’t going to be the map of the world. It’s going to be who your favorite character is, what your favorite scene was, and did the author do a good service to a minor character you respect. Things you’ll have access to in all formats, physical, digital and audio.
IMO physical is clearly the best. It’s the fastest, most comprehensive in terms of original intent. You don’t have to worry about the colors being wrong or missing out on clever spacing. But there’s certainly nothing wrong with people who have to or elect to read in the other formats. I think audiobooks are amazing when I’m doing chores or commuting somewhere. I used to take the train daily and that’s why I started Red Rising the audio book in the first place. It was awesome (for multiple reasons that narrator is fantastic). But when I’m at my computer reading email or even just playing a game I’ll become absorbed in the game for a moment and then tune out of the audio and when i come back I’m lost. That’s why I switched back to words for The Lies of Locke Lamora.
@@@@@13. Morphidae You monster! (j/k) I’ve…. I’ve never hear of this. Intentionally reading the ending of the book first? To me that doesn’t even make sense. How would you know how far back to go to find out where the ending reveals are and where the epilogue begins. It’s not offensive per se though it does offend my sensibilities. It wouldn’t make any sense. I could understanding asking someone how it ends like for instance I like happy endings and if I could find a filter that was just happy endings that would be kinda awesome. I often find I don’t care if I missed some clues in the mystery narrative the same way I don’t care if I remember everyone in a fantasy narrative where everyone has a weird unusual name and the only way to keep them straight is with name cares. I’d definitely consider that quirky and unusual but I consider my sister unusual for writing a mini novella’s worth of text in every book she reads whether she owns it or not.
@@@@@31. Fernhunter, You slay me.
@@@@@35. Aslam Shaikh, Nah. No one who saw the movie or the stageplay is going to claim they read the book. You could do a harry potter purity test (not to endorse purity testing which is how we’re here anyway) and anyone who listened to the book on tape would know anything a reader would know.
@@@@@39. The WOL, indeed. Verily much agreed.
@@@@@44. BillReynolds, You mentioned distractions and losing your place that sounds slightly similar to my experiences. No beef but have you tried audio in places where it’s monotonous like a road trip by yourself or on the public transport? Places where you have nothing else to do but sit and wait. Or even while lying down taking a read with your eyes closed (Like one might do at the park in a pre-pandemic age). Nothing wrong with your consumption but I’m just curious.
Very interesting article and comments! However, and I am NOT specifically referring to any of the wonderful commenters on this article, IMHO there is a strong streak of ableism behind the seemingly-popular belief that reading a book is a “true” experience of reading and audiobooks and other recordings are secondary or supportive at best.
Besides vision impairment, there are multiple reasons why someone might get a deeper experience of a text from an audiobook. These reasons include learning difficulties, challenges such as dyslexia, sensory processing issues, etc. To people with these and other challenges, reading a book off a page or screen is not a “true” experience – it can range from confusing to torturous.
I started including audiobooks/online readings of various texts in my college English classes, at first against my better judgement. (As someone who read at a young age and reads very fast, I was ableist in my assumption that laziness was the only reason someone wouldn’t choose to read off the page/screen.) I discovered that student comprehension and engagement drastically improved once I allowed and provided audiobooks of the readings. I had students tell me that they “just don’t get it” when they read a story on a page, but when they HEAR it, then it makes sense to them. Different people process information differently. When I insisted all my students only read off the printed page, I was unknowingly depriving many of them of the pleasure of internalizing texts.
To be very specific, I have an ex-brother-in-law who has serious adult dyslexia. He can certainly read and follow instructions in a handbook or a memo, for example. He is also an avid consumer of fiction but needs to listen to audiobooks. He once described his experience of traditional “reading;” it can take him as long as five minutes to read one page because he has to re-read many sentences multiple times. He often mis-reads words or reads them in the wrong order. And once he’s gotten through one sentence, he may have to go back and read the one before it so that he can follow the continuity of the text. He said that, to him, this is literally hellish. (In school he had tutoring and special accomodations.) I’m not about to judge him or my students for not reading “properly” because of their challenges and/or preferred method of comprehension! To me, this smacks of gate-keeping..
I have to strongly disagree with the title. If I read every single character (letter, punctuation mark, etc.) printed on every page but fed to me in randomized order, have I read the book? Even if I manage to memorize every single one of those characters, I still have no idea what the book is about.
If I listen to the audiobook but in a language I don’t understand, have I really read the book?
If I read the book while so high on psychedelics that I remember and understand none of it, is that a right way to read?
There are definitely wrong ways to read a book. Just none of the ones mentioned in this article are wrong.
One thing I can recommend if one is unsure about audiobooks. If you like stand up comedy, get an audio version of a comedian’s book! Especially if they read it themselves. It will have all their timing and I do feel it adds to the enjoyment. Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan is funny either way, but his reading of it is great.
But yeah, as a person who is reading on their computer at work, (I’m a librarian, it counts as work,) and reads on their phone in line, I do encourage people to read by whatever means they care to. Also, if you want to try out a new format, come to the library! If we have it we’ll show you how.
Also, please don’t write, dogear, or baconify library books. That’s fine for your own stuff, but I’ve withdrawn a bunch with underlined passages or a ton of dogears. Lots of coffee and water stains too, though thankfully no pork grease (yet.)
@@@@@35. Aslam Shaikh no, when you have watched a movie or television series, no matter how many times, you have not “read” the words the author wrote. When listening to an audiobook you have.
@@@@@ 15, kaci
That scene with the soldier seems to play into another cultural trope, in which heaven is portrayed as boring and stuffy, and while hell might be awful, at least it has interesting people.
Heaven for climate. Hell for company. Mark Twain
I’m pretty vocal about not enjoying audiobooks – I generally don’t like people just talking at me, and it’s way too easy to turn it into background noise instead of absorbing the content. That said, I certainly don’t judge someone negatively for enjoying books that way.
I will, however, say that they are pretty different experiences. Similar to watching a film adaptation, where suddenly your internal imagination of how a character looks and acts is overridden with an “official” version, audiobooks can have multiple narrators for different characters, different way of emphasizing phrases, etc. which is potentially more or less interesting, depending on your perspective.
In addition, when I am reading a book, it’s fairly common for me to have to look up a few words; how to pronounce them, what they mean, etc. (one of the best parts of eBooks, IMO, is how easy this is). If I’m listening to an audiobook, I would be way more likely to not follow up on it. Then, on top of that, I find it easier to bookmark a page, reference something that happened previously, or even just re-read an individual sentence to make sure I’ve “got it” with a text version.
Anyway, all this to say, 1. reading text rather than listening to a book is what works for me, 2. reading vs listening are different experiences, even if the story is the same 3. if listening to an audiobook lets you experience a cool story, that’s awesome!
My father always read the last chapter first “to know whether it was worth reading, or not.”