I Read the Novel (on Audible)

More readers are debating the question. World Magazine is one of the latest to publish an article on the topic. The boom in audio publishing is driving the conversation. The question is usually posed something like this: Is listening to an audio book the same as reading?

I understand the question. Listening to books can be done in parallel with a wide variety of other tasks. Can we claim it as reading when discussing our favorite recent titles? A brief pause to think about the question brings the obvious and correct answer. No. Listening to a book and reading one are not the same. While listening to a book is absolutely fine and should be encouraged and fully accepted, it’s not the same as reading one. The rewards and results are different.

Audio is a format which doesn’t require skill handling a text, but instead flows directly to the ready imagination at a pace set by someone other than the consumer of the story. While not passive, the initiative required is altogether different. This is evidenced by the fact that the listener can drift off to sleep, but the story keeps coming.

Reading increases your skill at comprehending a text, translating words, their contexts and subtexts into images and ideas. It is self-paced, contemplative, and solitary, while fully dependent on the reader’s initiative, capability, and capacity.

We all began with listening. Centuries ago preachers, prophets, and philosophers called us to the center of town to hear their missives. Decades ago an adult read to us. Teachers provided information from the front of a classroom. Today, newscasters, podcasters, and streamers of all stripes welcome our listening ear. Many of us go to readings to hear authors read from their work and talk about the process of creating it. Watching a stage play is immediately more enjoyable than reading one.

Many of us have progressed to reading. While we agree it would be a far less interesting world without words in audio, reading brings a lone and personal delight, a welcomed and healing quiet. In reading, the reader makes the text his or her own. The writer and reader slip into a one-on-one dialogue, an intimacy develops. The voracious reader finds the activity akin to an addiction.

I encourage you to enjoy both audio and print. And as you do, don’t confuse one experience with the other.