# Do Audiobooks Count as Having Read a Book? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 20, 2024, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-audiobooks-count-as-having-read-a-book/1010480 "2024-11-20T02:29:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 19
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-audiobooks-count-as-having-read-a-book/1010480/19 "2024-11-21T22:23:22Z")
A couple of things, if you’re asking ME, I’d say it does, as long as it’s Unabridged. Many abridged versions are good, don’t get me wrong, but if I want to talk to you about the book itself, and the version you’ve read is cut for length, well, then we may not be able to speak about the details. Second, as mentioned upthread, there’s the quality of the performance. A really poor performance causes me to tune out, and no, I’m not paying attention to details, any more than when I skimmed a novel for class. I had “read” the novel, and could talk to major themes and characters, but I lost out on detail. Not proud of it, but I’ll own up to it. Lastly, we have a recentish (May 2022) prior thread running parallel (heh) to this one, with a very similar OP (in both senses!) > [@How Do You Define having Read a Book?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675): > > I’ve been perusing book channels looking for reading suggestions, and I’ve noticed some of those YouTube host saying things like, “Yeah, back then I was reading a book a day”. One guy claims to have read 164 books in a year, so that works out to a little over a book every two days, chain reading style. I gotta wonder, I usually need something like a couple of weeks to read a fair sized book end to end. And that’s how I define having read a book, end to end. I never claim to have read Return … --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-audiobooks-count-as-having-read-a-book/1010480)._