Quote:
Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
The only people who should get to decide if audiobooks "count", regardless of abridged or unabridged, are those that are listening to them, especially since some people listen to them because it's the only way they can enjoy the book. If you don't think they should count, then don't count the ones YOU listen to.
/end rant
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Hear, hear!
I tend to listen to unabridged audiobooks when I am driving, or at times when my eyes are bothering me and it is too tiring to focus on written pages.
Although looking at the printed page with your eyes and understanding the symbols there is probably the official definition of "reading", given current technology "listening" to an audiobook is also a legitimate way of "reading" a book today. One is not more "active" or more "passive" than another - one uses the eyes as a means of conveying the information to the brain, the other uses the ears, but it is the brain itself that processes the information. To say that one input method is superior to another makes no sense to me. That's like saying reading a Braille book is not actually reading because you have to use your fingers instead of your eyes.
As has already been mentioned, this reading challenge is a
personal challenge. Each of us is choosing what we want to read. Some people are choosing "serious" literature as their reading material of choice. Looking at my list, one can see that I've been mainly reading urban fantasy, mysteries and romances - which many people don't consider to be "serious" at all. I don't consider my choices as somehow being less valid than anyone else's, so I'm not going to consider anyone's decision to listen to audiobooks as a means of gaining the author's words as somehow being less legitimate.
I would even say that listening to an audiobook version of an author's work can even be a truer "reading" experience, because you are listening to
every single word that the author wrote. You cannot subconsciously skip of bits and pieces of the story that might not interest you (overly-long setting descriptions, overly-involved sex scenes). You are a captive to the author's words.
