Do you class listening to an audiobook as reading?

[Andy]

Obviously in technical terms it isn’t but if somebody asks you whether you’ve read a book and you’ve actually listened to it, what’s your answer? Do you say that you have, you haven’t, or explain that you listened to it?

 

[Quagmire]

Yes I do

I often jump between the two

I've also seen studies (though not sure quality) that listening to books activate the same parts of the brain as reading

 

[Ben]

It's not, technically. You could be completely illiterate but still listen to a book without even having the ability to read.

But it does engage your own imagination to the same degree, in ways that television or other visual mediums don't. You're still left to decide what the characters look like for yourself, even if given a very specific description. Your brain still has to hallucinate an identity for something/someone and flesh out all the details around them. If you just watch a movie, you don't have to imagine anything, it's just given to you.

Like, two people reading Lord of the Rings in the 90s would come up with entirely different ideas of what Gandalf looks like. Even with a very accurate description. But if you read Lord of the Rings now, I'd imagine even someone who's never watched the movies would still gravitate towards imagining Gandalf to look like Sir Ian Mckellen. It'd be pretty hard not to.

So, no, I don't think it's the same as reading and it presents a lot of potential for someone to not fully comprehend the material but just get shuffled past it instead of critically thinking about it or re-reading something. Bit it's still more engaging than entirely passive viewership.

 

[turkey]

if you were to lie about it/be misleading, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

It would never come up in conversation with me… I’m uncultured trash.

 

[Fire Queen]

i've never listened to an audiobook (attention span is too shot) but i think it counts as reading. like if i'm asking my friend "have you read [book]" and they've only listened to an audiobook of said book i think they can answer yes and it not be lying

 

[Kat]

If someone asks if you've read a book, what they're generally interested in is whether you're familiar with the story because they want to talk about it. The story is the same whether you read it or listened to it, so I'd say you can simply answer "yes". Personally, I'd clarify that I had listened to it just because it'd feel technically untrue otherwise, but I wouldn't care if anybody else answered in the affirmative without further detail.

Now, if I asked you something like how many books you've read that year, and you had read zero but listened to a dozen, then I'd expect you to give more detail in your answer than "a dozen".

I don't personally enjoy the experience of someone reading to me, and I do enjoy the act of reading. I will read the transcript or subtitles of audio-only media rather than listen to it because I so strongly prefer reading. So more generally, no, I don't consider listening to something to be the same as reading it. It's not in the sense that it "doesn't count" because it's inferior, it's just a different method of consumption.

But it does engage your own imagination to the same degree, in ways that television or other visual mediums don't.

I've never actually listened to one, but I assume good audio books use tone of voice for dialogue and maybe different voices for different characters, so there'd be less imagination there.

Getting off topic a bit now, but I don't visually imagine things as I read them (yay aphantasia). I remember stories I've read much better than ones I've watched, though. I've watched entire movies and not been sure if I'd seen them before. However, I was watching the new series Dark Matter the other day and got so confused because I was sure I had seen it before, even though it'd just come out. Halfway through the first episode, I realized it was based on a book I'd read maybe a decade ago.

I imagine I'd remember listening to a story even worse than watching one, based on how little I retained from college lectures. So if that's true of you, then that should affect your answer if someone asks if you've read something.

 

[Andy]

I can’t just sit around and listen to them. I do it when walking the dog, running, or driving because I can just focus on them without distractions. Perhaps shouldn’t be the case with driving admittedly

 

[Quagmire]

I can’t just sit around and listen to them. I do it when walking the dog, running, or driving because I can just focus on them without distractions. Perhaps shouldn’t be the case with driving admittedly

Same, I am always doing something when I am listening to an audio book, if Im just at home doing nothing, I will read or maybe put them on if Im grinding in an rpg