Audiobooks, They're Just Different

I think there are a surprising number of readers who feel apprehensive about audio books. You know, the debate around it has become strangely intense. You know one side insists that audio books don't count because reading is fundamentally a visual act. You know, the other side argues that comprehension is comprehension. 

So, is listening in fact reading. It's just through an alternative route. Most of these arguments begin with an assumption about what does reading necessarily involve?

reading is fundamentally mechanical. It's about the eye scanning the text. It's about decoding symbols, you're engaging with the written language visually, reading specifically, a cognitive motor experience.

Now cognitive is defined as acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought.

I believe it's more work to listen to an audiobook than just reading. LIST BOOKS I'VE LISTENED TO

 audiobooks involve auditory processing and speech perception, whereas reading with your eyes involves eye movement, orthographic mapping and visual attention. 

 people who say that audio books do count as reading, they tend to define reading by its destination rather than by the mechanism.

 Let's look at this... once the words arrive in your mind the mental processing is basically the same. So either way your mind is building meaning, and constructing narratives, and integrating new ideas into memory. When I think of books I've read, I pull the memory the same way, but because I have photogenic memory, I can pull up visual paragraphs from the book, so I believe actually reading helps you retain more of the book. (mirror/face) 

 I can argue that Listening cannot be considered reading because if for example, Stories from the stage or a ted talk.  Listening is not inferior to reading.(What I enjoy about listening to books) Those experiences are still entertaining and meaningful. Them actually on stage telling the story is how it was intended to be experienced. It's really an argument of definitions, as to what counts as reading.

 But when you strip away the arguments, down to their core, that's what we're really arguing about. I think, it's identity. You know, who gets to count themselves as a legitimate member of the reading community. And that is an important question because reading is one of the few culturally sanctioned markers of intelligence that still survives. You know, it's a subtle form of achievement. We count books that we read. We track them. We post our numbers. And I don't mean to sound like I'm, you know, pointing fingers at anyone because I do it, too.And the reason for this is simply because you know reading with your eyes it gives you true navigational control. You can pause, you can reread, you can slow down or you can even jump back to an earlier paragraph with absolute precision and ease. The text exists in space, so you know exactly where ideas live. Your eyes can return to a sentence instantly, you know , so there's no friction, there's no guessing. Audio books, by contrast, they move in a single forward stream. So, yes you can technically rewind or you can scrub back, but it's fundamentally a different kind of access. it's temporal, rather spatial, you're dragging through time rather than navigating a physical landscape. And anyone who has tried to rewind to that one sentence, you know you rarely land on exactly where you want. So, while audio makes going back to reexamine a passage possible, print makes it effortless. And I think that difference matters. so, listening can give you the same story, of course, but it doesn't always give you that same depth of understanding. But let's be careful here. It's simply because the input mechanism is different. And that constrains us in different ways. Sometimes those differences are not necessary bad. They're just different. Audiobooks, for example, create episodic memories. You can more easily remember where you were or what you were doing, or maybe the rhythm of the narrator's voice. Printed books on the other hand, create more spatial memories. For example, you'll remember where moments sit on a page, shape and physical layout of a chapter or paragraph. Either form is inherently stronger or weaker. They just emphasize different types of recall. And something worth mentioning is that humans evolved through listening. The oral tradition of storytelling predates literacy by tens of thousands of years. In that sense, audiobooks, they kind of tap into an ancient cognitive strength we all have. Nowadays people tend to listen while multitasking, while cleaning, cooking , and walking, and like myself, commuting. The problem with multitasking, is the reduction of retention. So, while audiobooks feel easier, that ease can come at the cost of attention. But there are constraints with reading too. I mean reading demands a kind of stillness both physical and cognitive. Many people find that difficult to achieve consistently especially in this distracted modern environment. And there's one other difference between reading and listening that I don't hear too often in these debates and that is the presence of the narrator and what that presence does to our experience when we engage with a text. a narrator's voice, their tone, their cadence, their accent, maybe their emotional shading that inevitably shapes interpretation. Now, on one hand, that can really elevate a book, turning even mediocre pros into something really enthralling, but on the other hand, it can also narrow the imaginative space, or it could impose an interpretation on the text, that the text doesn't actually demand. Either way, listening introduces another artist into the process. Now, for some books, you know, that can be a gift. but for others, it can be a distortion. Either way, it does change the way that you experience the story. So either way do I think audiobooks count as reading? Well, if you're asking whether audiobooks count as part of the reading world, then I say yes, of course, they do. But the two experiences are not identical, which means they're not interchangable. Reading and listening highlight different aspects of a book. Each medium reveals certain things, but it also obscures others. so, what you end up taking away from each one will naturally vary. But if audio books help you read more, understand more, or connect more deeply with stories, then not only do they count, but maybe they count in the only way that actually matters.