I got an e-mail too, but it contained a link to unsubscribe, which seems to have worked.
luckily I would normally check the source, wondering if it was spam, but this is the SDMB and when someone gives you a post for some quiz I don’t expect to pay, especially if they have 1000+ posts. Luckily though, I used my spam email address. What a fucking joke though. They expect me to pay for a 20 question internet quiz about something that I don’t even care about?
Add me to those who don’t understand how listening to an audiobook is cheating. Who are you cheating? Unless it is a requirement for a class or something, but even in that case, if you were blind you could reasonably be expected to listen to it.
Being read to is one of many people’s earliest childhood pleasures. I love a good book, but I also love being read to. I don’t think it is akin to watching the move, since you still use your imagination to visualize the people and places. I honestly have trouble remembering that I haven’t technically sat down and read many books; it doesn’t seem to make a difference if I read them or listen to them.
One of my absolute favorites is the Harry Potter series. I know I’ve lauded the audiobook in the past, but I still can’t remember that I haven’t actually read any of the books. Jim Dale reads them all, and in my mind, the characters speak the way he voices them, rather than the way they do in the films. I think he’s been nominated for a grammy 4 times and won once for the series, as well as getting into the Guiness Book for creating the most unique voices (139!) for one of the books.
Anyway, another vote for audiobooks, especially the long unabridged ones.
Lifelong reader here. I definitely like reading more than audiobooks, in general. But still, audiobooks are great. Some books I could just never get through without the audiobook version.
And nowadays I pretty much have to listen to books, since I have trouble reading … stupid vision.
I just wish I lived in Canada, because as far as I can tell the Canadian Institute for the Blind has a really large selection of “amateur-read” audiobooks you can download from the Internet, many that are unavailable in audio format otherwise, but you have to be Canadian to make use of the institute’s services. 
ETA: I definitely agree about Jim Dale and the Harry Potter audiobooks … he’s probably the best reader I’ve heard so far. Man, he’s good! Even better than the guy who does the British versions of the Harry Potter books, whose name I can’t recall … Steven Fry or something. Anyway, Jim Dale also does the Ridley Pearson / Dave Barry prequels about Peter Pan, Peter and the Starcatchers and Peter and the Shadow Thieves, and does a great job on those too.
It may be an advantageous use of your time, but it’s cheating. It eliminates the need to imagine the characters’ voices, the pacing of dialog and text, and the intonation and inflection of speech, among other things. A book on tape is somebody else is doing that work for you. When somebody else does your work for you, it’s cheating.
Not cheating. I can only listen to them in the car, at home I’m too distracted, can’t concentrate on them, and don’t stay in one place long enough. Plus, not having a discman, I can’t take them to the pot with me. For me audiobooks are free, in the sense they don’t have to compete with library books or my thousand unread sf books. Therefore, I listen to fiction I might not want to read. (Our library’s collection is all too limited.) I listened to a great novel about a water engineer for the aqueducts around Pompei at the time of the volcano, but I scrapped a nasty one about Stonehenge.
Would anyone consider a kid hearing a book from a parent not reading? (Sure, they should read also.) The important thing about reading is not processing words on a page, but getting information, entertainment, or a boost to your imagination.
My mother was never interested in reading.
Then, a few years ago, she was diagnosed with dyslexia. She started getting audiobooks from our state’s Library for the Blind. She became an avid reader.
She once told me that, for the first time in her life, she understood how Dad and I could sit with our nose in a book for hours on end.
It’s not cheating, but it’s less of a workout for your brain. It’s like having a one sided conversation with a fascinating storyteller, only you can’t ask them what an unfamiliar word means (I guess you can learn from context, though). I tend to look up a lot of unfamiliar words when reading and it certainly helps your spelling.
Now that I think about it, I’d probably learn a lot more about pronunciation of unfamiliar words, so maybe there is an advantage to audio books. I’m a notorious mispronouncer of words.
I don’t really think “cheating” is an accurate word. It’s not quite the same experience as sitting down with a physical book and reading it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s cheating.
I do both. I love, love, love to read. The librarians in my hometown missed me when I went away to college – I think I was their most frequent customer.
Lately, though, I don’t have much time to read. I work, and I keep a house, and I spend time with my husband, and I socialize with friends, and it all takes time and energy. Audiobooks have been a great thing for me. I can put headphones on and listen while I do housework, which I find supremely boring, or while I paint or stain a piece of furniture, or while I’m driving somewhere. I can “read” books that I’ve heard about while getting the other things done that need to happen.
I still love to read a physical book, and I don’t think that will go away in my lifetime. But I’ve grown to appreciate audiobooks, too. Whatever works for you, man.
Still, Darryl Lict, a lot of my pleasure reading is fiction, particularly fantasy. I read not to really give my brain a workout and necessarily learn new words and such, I read to get a story. You still picture the same scenery and action whether it’s told to you visually or audibly.
There’s really advantages to both reading and listening. I agree it’s not the same experience, but neither are really inferior or superior to the other, just different.
Count me in the “I do both” category. I have an hour commute. There’s nothing like listening to a good book while driving. Some books are great (I recommend Jim Dale’s readings of all the Harry Potter books!) and others suck, when listening to them. Just like there are others that suck when reading, but come out ok when you have the right person reading them aloud. Like someone else said, some of them are written to be read aloud.
I also try to listen to History books, biographies, and such like things when I’m in the car. There is No Way In Hell I’d ever read these, but listening to them is great. Allows me to learn something I wouldn’t have time for normally.