Why Listening to a Book Is Not the Same as Reading It
It's better. But only in certain cases.
Posted December 10, 2018 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
A recent New York Times opinion piece by Daniel Willingham addressed the question of whether listening to a book is the same as reading it. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, speaks with authority: He is a leading researcher of reading comprehension. He begins the piece with a frequently asked question: Is it cheating if I listen to an audiobook for my book club?
Willingham gives an even-handed answer, doling out points to both the written and the spoken word. He argues that theyre both worthwhile but is careful to note that doesnt mean they are equivalent. Far from it. Ive been listening to audiobooks for years now, and while it's not my professional obligation to do so, Ive also spent quite a bit of time thinking about the trade-offs with listening versus reading. In line with Willinghams notes in the article, I listen to audiobooks when I wouldnt otherwise be engaging a booksay, at the gym or while walking. Thats certainly an advantage of listening over reading. But I was surprised to find that Willingham didnt mention what I consider to be the biggest difference between the two mediums: Engagement.
The critical difference, for me, between reading and listening is that reading is something you do, where listening is something that happens to you. Reading is an act of engagement. The words on the page arent going to read themselves, which is something they literally do in an audiobook. If youre not actively taking in written information, then youre not going to make progress on the book. Audiobooks, on the other hand, make progress with or without your participation. You can tune out, your mind wandering around the subject at hand, and there will still be forward motion in the story.
Willingham alludes to this point by saying that harder booksdifficult texts as he calls themrequire more engagement. Sometimes you need to go back and reread things. That means that harder material is better suited to reading rather than listening. But Im not sure I agree with that characterization.
Rather what is better suited to reading is technical material. We would never to think to listen to a math problem. We know that in order to understand it, we have to sit there and dissect it. Similarly, if theres a step-by-step argumentwhere A leads to B, and B leads to C, and all of that implies Dwhich you really want to take in, then you should probably be reading that text, not listening to it.
But this is different than the idea of listening to difficult material. For example, Ive recently been listening to David Graebers excellent Debt: The First 5000 Years. Written for a general audience, its still a tough readlots of information, lots of evidence, lots of arguments. And I can assure you: I havent picked up on every nuance hes laid down. But that doesnt mean that Im better off going out to get a hard-copy of the book and reading it on the page.
The reason is that, frankly, Im just not going to do that. Its not a high enough priority on my reading list. Its either engage with the material via audiobook or dont encounter it at all.
And while I havent retained every piece of information that hes presented, I have spent a lot more time thinking about an important topic than I otherwise would. Theres almost no other venue in my life in which the social history of debt would come up. Yet Graebers account is totally fascinating. He makes compelling counterintuitive arguments about where debt came from and what its social function is. Im better off for having contemplated them. Ive grappled with this difficult topic for hours at this point, sustaining attention toward a problem in a way that I otherwise wouldn't. This fill-in-the-cracks nature of audiobooks is a critical advantage.
Ultimately, I think its fairnecessary evento consider audiobooks and written texts as fundamentally different mediums. Asking which is superior is a bit like asking, Should I see the movie or read the book? or even Should I read the summary article or the entire book? They are different forms based on the same work. Which one you should engage depends on what you are willing to give to it [time, above all] and what you hope to get out of it.
Perhaps the most crucial difference between an audiobook and a written text is the presence of the narrator.
A written text has no narrator besides the one in your head. And it does its best to render the author's tone faithfully. But anyone who listens to audiobooks knows that the narrator makes a huge difference, just as the casting makes an impact on a play. Listening to American Gods with a full cast versus a single narrator? Are you kidding, is that even a choice? Same with authors, especially actors and comedians, reading their own books. Trevor Noahs Born a Crime wouldnt be such a hit if it werent read by Noah himself doing all the accents and lending the narrative a this-was-my-life pathos. It builds in a dynamic that just doesnt exist in the same form with written texts.
So, no, listening to a book isnt cheating. Depending on the performance of the text, it might even be the better option. And you shouldnt just limit yourself to easy works like popular memoirs or Jack Reacher novels if your interests range beyond them. At the end of the day, time spent contemplating new ideas and experiencing new worlds is what matters. And if audiobooks open new ideas and worlds for you, then thats all that counts.