Who Really Uses Audiobooks

Audiobooks, is it Cheating?

Readers of today increasingly look to audiobooks to complete their yearly reading goals. On one hand, audiobooks are particularly useful, because they fill up the dead-time that would otherwise be spent on menial tasks, such as commuting, cooking, or cleaning. For many, audiobooks are the perfect solution for doing some reading in an otherwise chaotic world. On the other hand, many people feel that they are cheating by listening to the book instead of reading it. After all, to read a book, shouldn't you actually read it? In my opinion, no

or at least, not really. In the end, shouldn't it come down to what your goal is? Unless you're actively learning how to read (in which case it might be cheating if you listened to an audiobook) the processes of listening and reading come so automatic to most people that there is practically no difference in how that information is received. In other words, whether you're reading or listening, content is content. To "read" an audiobook is not considered "cheating".

Some readers will disagree. And yes, of course there are major differences between between reading and listening, but hear me out. I'm not suggesting that reading and listening are entirely the same. What I'm saying is that for general purposes, both will get the job done. Take, for instance, journal papers. They often come with multiple graphs and figures. In addition, other researchers need to refer to each others papers, take notes, and re-read. If scholarly articles were only presented in audiobook format, it would be chaos! I would argue though, that because most readers do so for enjoyment and are not actively taking notes, there is no such quality present. After all, isn't the purpose reading to enjoy the experience? And if an audiobook makes a book more memorable, then really, what is lost here?

"It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to."

Austin Kleon Some audiobooks can actually enrich the overall experience. For example, when I listened to Life of Pi, the experience was significantly better than when I had simply just read the book itself. Life of Pi is a novel I like to go back to from time to time. It's a comfort read for me. When I read, I tend skim past, for instance the listing of the materials on the life raft, or Pi's hardships at school. The audiobook on the other hand gripped my attention in a way I can't ignore. Suddenly, it's not just items on the life boat. It's crackers, and whistles, and pencils. When you're right there with Pi, each item really matters, you feel that. When he loses them, you feel that too. As one anonymous reviewer puts it, "Rajiv Surendra [the narrator] brings Pi Patel to life in this book url"

Life of Pi | Written by Yann Martel | Voiced by Rajiv Surendra> "Some people will prefer to speak their ideas, dictating them. But spoken words are still likely to be turned into printed words (even if the print is simply on a display device), because reading is far faster and superior to listening. Reading can be done quickly: it is possible to read around three hundred words per minute and to skim, jumping ahead and back, effectively acquiring information at rates in the thousands of words per minute. Listening is slow and serial, usually at around sixty words per minute, and although this rate can be doubled or tripled with speech compression technologies and training, it is still slower than reading and not easy to skim. But the new media and new technologies will supplement the old, so that writing will no longer dominate as much as it did in the past, when it was the only medium widely available."

— Don Norman

A Practical Reading Tip

If you have access to both the audiobook and text copy of a book, try putting on both at the same time. It drastically changes the experience from one that is good to one that is amazing. You now have the freedom to follow along with the narrator, or skip a few pages ahead and go back where you left off. This strategy allows you to write quick notes on the side without being side-tracked, and you have access to many of the important illustrations that are left out in the audiobook alone.

I'm a native English speaker. Nowadays, I watch movies and shows with subtitles on, not because I don't understand what the actors are saying, but because often without even looking directly at the subtitles, I'm able to better pick up what's going on in the scene. Our brains are able to fill in the gap, so even if you're not reading every word, understanding is so automatic that you'll often know what's going on.

👋 Thanks for making it to the end!