Bookish Diversions: Do Audiobooks Count?

Treating all audiobooks equally is a mistake. Audio books are a transformation function applied to physical books. Asking whether they count as books is asking the wrong question. The more important question is: "what am I trying to get out of reading this book? And will an audiobook help me to do this better?"

The answer to this question will be unique to every person and every book. I read quite a few books for the entertainment value they provide - I like getting lost in a good novel occasionally without having to reflect too seriously on each passage. Audiobooks provide a convenient means of enabling me to enjoy the book, especially if driving, commuting, or performing some other task. However, if I am reading a nonfiction book, I want the book in front of me so I can double back to certain passages, check references and footnotes, write in the margins, skip to chapters and pages. I want more control over the reading experience. The audiobook forces me to trade all of that for an experience it provides.

I think for some people, audiobooks can end up like podcasts. People will sometimes listen to podcasts with intelligent people in the hopes that they learn something from the podcast. Maybe by listening to interviews with a famous mathematician or startup founder, one can learn some crucial aspect of becoming a successful mathematician or founder. However, the main value one gets out of podcasts is entertainment. Because you typically engage passively with a podcast, you are less likely to retain some useful bit of information that you hope to get.

I think there's a distinction between the activity of reading a book with the activity of listening to a book. That's pretty obvious to me. If I was listening to an audiobook, I would never say "I'm reading right now", any more than if I was reading a book, I would never say "I'm listening to a book right now". Both of those cases seem so incorrect as to be confusing.

But if I am going through the list of books I "read" in the last year, I would include both printed and audio books in that list. In that sense, reading is used more like "consumed" or "studied" or "spent time with". It's not confusing to me in that context.

I think it's safe to say that some of this comes down to people's sense of shame or fear of being judged. There should be no judgment attached to reading books or listening to them, they're just two different activities. It still counts if you listen to it.

Listening to audiobooks is reading, end of story. Quit gatekeeping, free time to sit with a book & do nothing else concurrently is a huge luxury.

FWIW, recently I've started listening to audiobooks of nonfiction books while also reading along with the physical copy. Sometimes I pause the audiobook to jot notes down in the margins. I listen at about 3x speed so this helps me go a LOT faster than I could read myself and I also get the benefit of being able to write as I go, which imo makes a much bigger difference in retention than anything else (plus I can look back at my notes later). For fiction I just listen, usually while doing jigsaw puzzles at the same time.

I can’t listen to fiction as audiobooks. I get very easily distracted in my own thoughts and, in most of fiction, if you miss anything you miss everything. While reading, that one line saying which character entered the room is enough context to understand the dialog of the next few pages. On audiobook, it’s very easy, for me, to miss that line. So I am all the time thinking of something else, miss those lines, and realize I am completely lost. If I were to listen a fiction audiobook I would have to rewind 15 or 30 seconds every two or three minutes of book.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, but interviews, journalistic storytelling, humor. Those are either very redundant, a lot of the context is being reminded in a conversation, or it’s just doesn’t matter all that much if you listen to every single thing is said in the podcast.

Depends on the type of book.

Airport thrillers, supermarket romance novels, pulp horror, Agatha Christie mysteries, and so on along such lines -- these don't really require any reader participation. They're the print equivalent of film and TV; they pull you along a narrative, and you're a passenger for the duration. These sorts of books work very well as audiobooks.

Anything that requires thought or reflection -- and this includes "hard" science fiction, as well as anything of a technical nature -- is very difficult for me to consume in audiobook form. I frequently lose track or zone out, and then I find that I've missed something important. Also, I can't take notes in an audiobook.

I like audiobooks for nonfiction. Especially anything business-y.

I like to let the audiobook flow through me on long runs like a guided meditation on a topic. The end effect is like having the book’s lessons embedded deep in your subconscious. There’s a special magic in engaging with a single topic over several focused hours that I’m too distracted to reproduce with a physical book.

If I need details or quotes from the book, or if I want to use it as a lookup reference, I like to then get the physical book. Now my audio read serves as a fast lookup table that helps me find the details.

Shakespeare on tape really rocked my world. I read the texts only here and there, seen the plays, but hearing them, a multiple times each, is amazing and lets you really get why the Bard is the best, and really get the rhythm and rich poetry of the language, and the wisdom. Probably seeing the plays multiple times would amount to the same or better but isn’t as practical. Also, you get a healthy dose of director mixed in.

Other books on tape also fine. Some better than others depending on the person who is reading them. Some are amazingly good. But for the most part, to really grok a boom on tape (or other medium), you have to listen multiple times. Reading is often better quicker. But like I said, shakes on tape is amazing.

Spotify etc. helped curb piracy because it was convenient. Ebooks should be convenient, but are not. The experience is much worse than physical books and barely any cheaper. It pains me everytime I try to buy one.

Then came the ipad, and while the ipad is terrible for long reading it isn't obvious why an ebook would be better so most dismiss it right away.

> In terms of dollars, ebooks represent less than 7 percent of the entire U.S. book trade.

This is surprising to me given the quality of e-readers out there now. The experience is quite nice, and you don't end up taking up a bunch of space or making a mess with physical books lying around.

Sidenote: Book publishers seem to refuse to embrace digital.

I just love going to my local library to "rent" a digital book on my Kindle only to be told that there's no availabile "copies"

Is love to read more on Kindle or other book readers if there was an actual good platform that was embraced by both national and international authors. Same with audio books for that matter. It's even worse than streaming somehow

Conversely, does it even count if you merely read Shakespeare, rather than experiencing a performance, as intended?

I appreciate how the author brought up scripta continua as a response to those who dismiss listening to audiobooks as not reading. If you're not struggling to parse out the words like the ancient greeks and romans did, are you really doing all the work that could be done and getting the full experience?

I "read" a lot of non-fiction via audiobooks. Sure, it's not the same thing as visually parsing a line of poetry and figuring out how to say it, and then how to say it again with a totally different meaning. That's not the point of most non-fiction. You're learning about stuff. You are being informed. To "listen" to an entire book on a subject you're interested in, to learn many things about it, and then claim you "haven't read the book" is nonsense.

I would agree that, sometimes, you can tune boring passages out, but you can do that when reading a dead-tree book too. How many students have stayed up late, reading their course textbooks only to re-read the same page again and again because their mind is past its ability to absorb? Just as realizing you've tuned out and turning back a couple pages is a thing with books, so too is hitting the rewind button with an audiobook. Just as sometimes you have to put a dead-tree book down and think for a moment, so to does it pay dividends to hit pause on your audiobook.

I'd argue that there's a bigger difference between being an active vs passive listener/reader than there is between listening and reading.

The one thing I would concede is that there is some information audio just isn't up to conveying. Any book that is heavy on pictures, diagrams, or equations is not going to be possible to convey via pure audio.

I like listening to The Great Courses on Audible. They’re long and interesting, but they’re nothing I’d take notes on, they’re not anything that would change my life. I have used credits on a few nonfiction books, gotten 1/4 in, and bought the physical book because I wanted a better understanding of the material.

To answer the title's question: yes.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks, but quality and the amount of focus required varies a lot. Sometimes I put on some lightweight audiobook or podcast while playing games or doing chores. For most lightweight content I crank it up to somewhere between 2x and 3x playback speed and still follow along just fine.

Other times I'm dialed-in with an audiobook playing as I read along with the book. Most recently I've been doing this with Unsong, by Scott Alexander. The book is very engaging and detailed, so I'm fully immersed. For this book in particular it's useful to have an audiobook because I don't know how many of the references would be pronounced.

Anything more challenging or technically-focused usually requires me to physically read it in order to fully process the content.

Audiobooks are a transfer from 2D to 1D. You can't skip boring lines, reread a passage.

Oral texts aren't written texts. Different rhythm. Different style.

Note, the Torah is at least as old as the described texts, and has separations between words.

Audiobooks don't count as book in any modern sense. But the sense of a text, yes, they are that.

Reading or listening isn't a very important distinction outside of personal preference, with the exception of illustrative figures and diagrams which just don't come across that well on audio.

What really matters is whether or not one absorbs the material. Inattentive reading is perhaps less likely than inattentive listening, and it's easier to reread a difficult paragraph visually instead of stopping the audio player, going back and finding the beginning of the relevant section, and listening to it again.

Reading a book exercises a part of the brain that listening does not. And that same part of the brain, the quiet focus, is necessary to solve hard problems and reflect on your choices in life.

I listen to a lot of audiobooks at work, and it is definitely a different experience from reading a physical book, but there is a great deal of overlap.

There’s also a limitation to the books that can be put in audio format… not sure how House of Leaves would work in audio with all the footnotes.

The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Andy Serkis’ Lord of the Rings that came out recently. Before that the best a reader could do is make me not think about them, but this one rose to the level of a great performance.

Audiobooks make it possible to partake of books - non-fiction as well as fiction - while doing 'dumb' work. When I built the bathroom in our house I listened to The Gulag Archipelago. This is as long book so it was a good thing that the job involved lifting one corner of the (log-built) house using 2 20-ton hydraulic jacks to replace some rotten beams, rebuilding the floor beans and more of such. Some 5 years later I listened to the same book while installing PV-panels on the roof of the barn I built the year before. I listen to them while turning hay on the tractor, while running the snow plow, etc. I tend to have a mix of netcasts and audio books on the go so I can switch between them depending on what I'm doing and what I feel like listening to - currently 'Neuromancer' next to an interview with Eylon Levy (Aron Flam's Dekonstruktiv Kritik, a Swedish netcast) and The Corruption of Stakeholder Capitalism (New Discourses netcast).

Veni, Audi, Vici

If you're not writing with a quill and ink, is it really writing?

This article is long, is there an audiobook version?

For more fun, do a booktube search for "do audiobooks count".

Seems we're fairly divided here between "audiobooks are for fiction" and "they work great as learning resource".

How about a slight tangent / challenge: Try to give a few examples of "which" audiobooks/podcasts/lectures are in Your own personal Top 3 or so (and maybe why).

My personal kickoff (I'm mostly in the fiction / "I need narrative" camp):

1. "The Poet's Corner" by John Lithgow (narrated by himself). This book probably converted me to even prefer audiobooks over regular paper / ebooks. Lithgow is a wonderful actor and in case of poetry, interpretation matters as much as the text itself. And the selection of different actors he brings in would be hard to beat even if it was done by a major Hollywood studio.

2. Bobiverse by Dennis E. Taylor, narrated by Ray Porter. If You like SF and haven't yet tried anything that's been narrated by Porter, please do yourself a favor and check his name out. I'll wait. The list is worth it.

3. Postwar by Tony Judt, narrated by Ralph Cosham. This one convinced me that what I need in an audiobooks is a narrative, but it does not necessarily need to be fiction. I'm a bity of a history nerd and reading one of the major works of 20th century in an audio form was the final straw that convinced me that audiobooks work great even for some non-fiction cases.

Basically, whenever I see I have a chunk of 30+ minutes of time when I "can" get away with running on autopilot and devoting part of my attention to listening (in my case - whenever I am cycling / running training, commutes, highway driving etc.), I now have the option of reading at the same time.