Reading

I read an article recently questioning whether audiobooks were in fact reading. I offer my views here.

Firstly I would like to point out that I read a lot of books. This year I am up to 60 books, according to goodreads, and most of them are in fact books – books in real paper, books on kindle, but mostly actual hardcopy books. However, I also like to listen to audiobooks, so some portion of my total are audibooks – via my subscription to Audible or the library. If I had to estimate, I’d say probably 20-25% are audio.

I count them as reading.

My rationale for this is that I pat attention, I concentrate, I follow the story or the content (i listen to both fiction and non-fiction), so it engages my brain. If I just had an audiobook on in the background while I was doing something else and only partially concentrating…well, then I’m not sure it would count as reading. I can’t sit with a physical book and multitask, so I don’t do so with an audiobook (other than driving).

The last excellent audiobook I listened to was in fact non-fiction, by Arundhati Roy. I learned a lot, about her, her family and about India. I am now listening to a 29-hour romance novel from the 1300s in England. It’s called Katherine and I read about it recently – published back in the 1950s. It’s different from anything I’ve listened to previously, but it’s engaging.

I don’t feel like audiobooks are cheating…though I might if i ONLY listened to audiobooks and never picked up a physical book. maybe.