Diary of a Mad Editor

To the extent that a few have disagreed with my assessment that listening to audio books cannot be defined as reading, I feel I must expand and clarify my thoughts on the subject.

While I certainly don’t think that audio books have no value at all, I think it’s a misnomer to even classify them as books or the listening of them as reading. The publishing industry and people who buy audio books like to believe that audio books are just books published by other means. Let’s think about that, shall we. What is an audio book? It’s a recording of someone else reading out loud. It’s an activity twice-removed from the action of reading. As a medium, it doesn’t bear the same relationship to a printed book that an ebook or a book printed in Braille does. It requires an inherently different cognitive process than reading a book, an ebook, or a book written in Braille. Hell, we don’t even use the same part of the brain when listening to a recording that we do when reading. Only by the broadest, most absurd definition of the word could we state that listening to a recording of someone else reading a book is the equivalent of us reading that same book because reading is much more than the mere dissemination of information. That would be like me saying that stepping on a nail is reading because I felt pain when the nail went through my foot. One (reading) is a very active, very complicated cognitive process. The other is not quite so multi-faceted.

I’m sure that, if they are recorded by a trained professional, audio books can be entertaining, but no, what we call “audio books” are reading aids for reading books, but not actual books. They can be useful tools to support those who have a hard time accessing those parts of the brain used for reading as well as for those individuals who are lazy, strapped for time or just plain don’t like to read. But notice I said, “reading aids,” and “support.” They are not a proper replacement for reading and should not be defined, qualified or championed as such.