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I began listening to audio on Caedmon records in the 1950s. They weren't complete books but plays and stories and poems. I loved them.
I was always a heavy reader of books and I never really saw any reason that one was a better format than the other.
Then sometime in the 1970s I began to get cataracts and they limited my reading. Due to an earlier eye injury they were considered inoperable till they got really bad. So I reserved what reading I could do for work and began listening to audiobooks. Given my early experience with Caedmon that was a natural.
I finally got cataract surgery in the 1990s but by then I was enjoying audiobooks and saw no reason to change until I got my first Kindle in 2009. I stopped listening and began reading.
In recent months I've begun to listen again. I'm doing both. Listening and reading; sometimes the same book and sometimes I listen to one and read another. I'm enjoying both.
I've done a lot of both over the last few decades and with one exception I can't see that either has an advantage, at least with respect to reading novels. I think I'd prefer reading non-fiction to listening although I haven't really tried that much so I'm not sure. The one advantage I think ebooks (or paper books) have is greater availability. Pretty much everything is available in print. The selection of audiobooks is very good but not nearly as great as the selection of print.
Another issue is the importance of the narrator. If the book you want to read is narrated by someone you don't enjoy listening to that can be a problem. However, if you're like me and most of the time you just look for something you'll enjoy, there are plenty of good books by good narrators so there's no real issue.
The one thing I am absolutely sure of, at least in the case of novels, is that anyone who says one format is good and the other one is bad is only talking about their own tastes, although they might not realize that.
Barry
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