(warning-random shower thoughts incoming)
Can you say to someone you have “read” a book if you’ve just listened to an audio version of it, do you actually need to have run your eyes across a printed page to qualify?
What if you’re blind and you have no choice but to listen to an audio book? What if you are normally sighted but listen to an audio book with your eyes closed does that count
I don’t have the source to hand, but about a year (or maybe two) ago there was a study that said that regardless of reading or listening, the same centers of the brain were activated. That was enough for me to remove any concerns I might have had about audio-books ‘counting’
As for personally, I do count audio books as reading. My reading is split fairly evenly between audio and hard copy, with a slight edge to audio books due to commuting time. I find some books far better suited to audio than others. I not only made it through Great Expectations but enjoyed it on Audiobook versus the last time I tried to read him and wanted to scream “Do you have to make it so obvious that you were paid by the word!!!”. Other books are too complex for me to multi-task driving in traffic and listening.
I probably wouldn’t say, without qualifying the statement, that I had “read” a book if I had only listened to it, not because I think it doesn’t “count,” but in the interest of strict accuracy: the word “read” means something that I didn’t do.
Related thread: Do audiobooks count? In that thread I opine that the only reason they might not count is if they’re abridged, or if “if you, personally, have trouble absorbing books (or a particular book) in that medium.” I might add that listening also wouldn’t “count” if your purpose in reading is somehow to practice reading—to become better at decoding words on a page or recognizing correct spelling or something like that.
Are you asking whether the word “read” should apply to “absorb linguistic data that has been written down through auditory rather than visual channels”? Or are you asking if there is some conceptual difference between reading with your eyes and reading with your ears?
“Count?” In what way? With whom?
I say it all the time. When I tell someone I read a book, I’m saying that I know the contents of the book. What method I used to transfer that knowledge into my brain is irrelevant.
Yes for all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing.
Good question. I was trying to consider if there is a difference in the way one might absorb data reading vs. other means. To me it’s easier to read something as you can re-read and flip back pages much easier than playing back an audio recording. But some people have no choice in the matter.
I was also trying to question the “kudos” one might have, the supposed superiority of one who has “read the book” so to speak.
Eg. “I watched The shining the other night”
“I’ve seen it too but the book was so much better” (says the person who listened to the audio book only).
I think that’s legit, because the audio book is exactly word-for-word the same as the book. Sure, you don’t get to use your imagination in terms of how the characters sound, but the events that happen in the book are *exactly *the same. Part of the point of a book being better than a movie is that you don’t like how the director “interpreted” the book; for instance, you don’t like which parts of the book the director chose to emphasize or leave out. A book narrator doesn’t have the freedom to decide that sort of thing.
Though to contribute to the discussion of reading a book versus listening, I absolutely prefer reading. In addition to what you said about flipping back to re-read, I also like how in a written book you can skim over a paragraph if the description goes on too long, or if not much is happening to advance the plot and you want to hurry up and see what happens next. (This is for fiction books. Nonfiction I usually want to skip ahead if the author is belaboring a point for too long, or talking about some aspect of an issue that just doesn’t interest me.)
I also am not a big fan of different nationalities being read in different accents. I just find it distracting, and harder to follow the story because I think in my native tongue, not in a hodge podge of foreign accents.
Over dinner I’ll tell my gf, “I talked with my daughter today”, even though our communication was via text.
Another advantage to reading is that, even without skimming, I can read about twice as fast as I can listen.
And conversely, I know people for whom listening is a lot easier than reading. I’ve had multiple coworkers whose reading skills were actually fine but who disliked reading due to mild cases of dyslexia; some who brought material they had to study for work to me so I could tell them which parts to focus on*. They just didn’t trust their own eyes, but they trusted someone explaining or reading to them.
My daughter has had two concussions and she is currently listening to a required reading for an English lit class because she is more prone to headaches now especially when dealing with small print.
Audio books brought a new dimension to reading for me than I ever had before. It helped me understand (almost) everything being said. I don’t read fast. I can’t read fast. And when I read, if I don’t pay attention, I will start to scan words, paragraphs and entire pages because I’m glazing over the print. I feel like I’m just a little ADHD. The block of type becomes a block of concrete. And yet I used to read good histories, but it was always a chore unless it had, what I call, very compelling prose. Even then, I have to read, go back and read again, passages over and over, until I finally feel I have what the man said. Enter audio books. For the last 6 or 8 years of work, driving 45 minutes to an hour and a half up the 5 Freeway (one way) I switched to audio books to pass the time to quell the yammering on the radio, and this is what happened. I started to read, sorry, listened to: Faulkner, Hemingway, Vonnegut, Orwell, Dos Passos, Denis Johnson, Pynchon, Stoker, William Kennedy and, among plenty others, The Autobiography of Mark Twain (4 volumes), and a whole lot of other great literature. I found, especially with CDs, that I could go back over and over when something distracted me and I would say, wait, what did he say? But I would continue until I got what was written/said. I know most of you don’t read like that, but I like to thoroughly process, said compelling prose. So did I read them or not? You tell me. I fully absorbed a bachelor’s degree in literature’s worth of reading. I started enjoying my morning trip up the 5.
Well, think of a child being read to – that would count as “reading”, wouldn’t it? I think so.
(Didn’t read the whole thread.)
Audiobooks definitely count as reading. I usually read my book club books that way. Also, having an entire book read to you would count. If you’ve been exposed to the entire contents of the book in some way, to me, that is functionally the same as reading it. Seeing the movie, however, does not count.
Thanks, I’ve grappled with this. I’m addicted to audiobooks. Mostly because, if I wait until I have enough free time to sit down and pick up a book, I’ll be waiting for days. But I can get a couple of books a week “read” while I commute/vacuum/draw/workout.
Now, if someone asks me "Did you read The Zero Game?", do I stop and explain that well, y’know, I had Scott Brick read it to me instead… and derail the conversation into a whole separate discussion with “Fred” about audio vs. print books, how Fred tried to listen to a Tolstoy book once and maybe if he worked out more he could listen but he gets distracted blah blah blah… and we never do get back to The Zero Game.
See, I’d be saying that every day. So I’ll just stick with “read”.
“Yeah, I read that. Really liked how they switched protagonists on us, and loved the game that Matthew and Harris were playing, without really understanding who was running it.”
So I assume you button a phone number and drink a plastic of water if the container is not made of glass. Technology gets ahead of language sometimes.
I’m not surprised. After all, children who are actively read to become better readers themselves.
I consider it “close enough” that I don’t feel the need to append “I only listened to it” if discussing a book I’ve heard unless I want to make a comment about the reading itself. And, really, if the options are “Listen to the book while commuting to work” and “Not reading the book”, the former is obviously much better.
I usually say I “listened” to a book.
It makes a difference, because different versions of audiobooks are significantly different - if I’m talking about a book with someone, it is usually to recommend it (or not), in which case the version may be important (as in, “I listened to the version of Lord of the Rings by Phil Dragash. They were awesome - they do the sound effects and everything”).
In contrast, assuming you aren’t reading abridged versions, typically different versions of books aren’t different if they are sold by different printers.
Drinking water out of glass or plastic fundamentally doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t change the experience, so it is immaterial that one says “I drank a glass of water”. Reading or listening does matter, because different audio versions are different , so adding the qualification adds something useful for the person you are talking to.
An analogy may be to books in translation - where a simple statement (“I’ve read The Master and Margarita”) may well be qualified (“in such-and-such English translation, as I don’t read Russian”). The reason: often different translations are significantly different.
In the case of audiobooks, “listened” rather than “read” invites the question as to which version.
To me, at least, there is a difference. My mind tends to wander far more often when listening to a book than when I’m actually reading, so I tend to get much more out of the latter. OTOH, if I had listened to a book and someone asked if I had read it, I’d probably just say “Yes”.