'Audiobooks are not cheating'

[ApK]

A bit of audiobook news I saw mentioned in a PRH email today:

http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.c...-not-cheating/

Discuss amongst yourselves.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ApK

A bit of audiobook news I saw mentioned in a PRH email today:

http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.c...-not-cheating/

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Don't just link and run; what do you think?

[issybird]

OK, I'll go first. I think "cheating" is a loaded term and is irrelevant to the issue. I think audiobooks are different from books.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by issybird

Don't just link and run; what do you think?

Oh darn, you mean I have to READ it?? Isn't there an audio version I can cheat with instead?

But serously, folks...

Originally Posted by issybird

OK, I'll go first. I think "cheating" is a loaded term and is irrelevant to the issue. I think audiobooks are different from books.

Actually, that was a point in the first news article linked in the post.
There are differences: the perception may be different, you may or not be getting the same experience the author intended, etc. But the question was to address the idea that listening was somehow "getting the reward without the work." And the conclusion was, as long as you are past the 5th-grade level, where decoding visual symbols into language has now become second nature, then no, cognitively speaking, your brain does essentially the same work in understanding and processing the content whether you consume it visually or aurally.
If you are still trying to LEARN to read, and your teacher assigns you a book report, and you listen to it instead of reading it, then yes, you are missing out on the practice at the decoding part of reading, and "cheating" on your assignment. But for literate adults...no, and if your fellow book club members give you a hard time because you listened to rather than read this month's selection, then you can show them the study and tell them what they can do with it. :-)

[pwalker8]

One of the reasons that I like to both read the ebook and listen to the audiobook is that they are different experiences for me and I tend to remember/notice different things about the book.

[issybird]

I'll differentiate between fiction and non-fiction. With non-fiction, I see it mostly as an information delivery system and the means are irrelevant if the goal is achieved. But I think the book club people have a point in regard to fiction, where the listener is subject to and influenced by the narrator's interpretation of the text. This isn't always or necessarily a bad thing, but it's there.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

One of the reasons that I like to both read the ebook and listen to the audiobook is that they are different experiences for me and I tend to remember/notice different things about the book.

[spindlegirl]

I have started to like audiobooks after having volunteered extensively with CNIB - an organization which helps people with vision loss. I don't have vision loss myself, my late brother did.

I sat in on a counselling group for people who are adjusting to living with little to no vision and one of the biggest hurdles was "reading". Participants who borrowed audio books from the library were encouraged to say, "I read ....." as they are adjusting to the psychological aspects of being blind.

Librarians I've spoken with also have had to really encourage people who have difficulty seeing text to feel ok about borrowing audio books because they've encountered stern admonishment that it's not "real reading"

Yes, I know braille exists, but a) it's expensive to produce, and often costs more to buy, and weighs a lot! And not all blind people have the nerve sensitivity to read braille (depends what caused their blindness).

I will conclude with my opinion, that audio books are a kind of "reading". It is certainly not akin to just seeing a movie. The same words are read on the page so they are getting the precise same content, only one person is seeing it and one person is hearing it. (On walkie talkies we used to say, "Do you read me?" even though I wasn't reading a darn thing)

A blind friend of mine without embarrassment or apology in her voice tells me all about the books she has read.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'll differentiate between fiction and non-fiction. With non-fiction, I see it mostly as an information delivery system and the means are irrelevant if the goal is achieved. But I think the book club people have a point in regard to fiction, where the listener is subject to and influenced by the narrator's interpretation of the text. This isn't always or necessarily a bad thing, but it's there.

Unless one book club member is going do a mind meld and force everyone to read it the same way, then those kinds of differences will be present in every reader's perceptions anyway. Haven't you ever read a passage and interpreted one way, the you re-read it later and interpret it a whole new way, maybe with a change in meter or emphasis, that totally changes the tone or meaning?
Certainly the narrator will influence it, but not everyone will be influenced in the same way. For example, some people will latch on to the voice performance as "THE way" the character sounds, and others will dislike the narrator's take and actively reject that portrayal.
So I don't see a valid point. Different readers will get different things out of the same text and so will different listeners.

[JSWolf]

What you get from a book when listening to it can depend greatly on the narrator.

I do like full cast versions. I listened to the full cast version of Ender's Gameand found it to be very good.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

(On walkie talkies we used to say, "Do you read me?" even though I wasn't reading a darn thing)

In film and theater, we speak of how something visual "reads" to the audience.
For example, sometimes a large, exaggerated fake version of a prop works better than a realistic item does. A real cell phone might not "read as a phone" on screen or from the audience.

So if "read" means extracting intended meaning from a signal, then, it's all reading.

But since the experience can indeed be different, when it's relevant, I might say I "eye-read" or "ear-read" a certain book.
"No, I didn't see the illustration on the back. I ear-read that book."

[Catlady]

Reading purely for entertainment/enjoyment, who cares if it's an audiobook or text? But as far as studying/retaining information/understanding complex material, I have to go with text. Possibly text in conjunction with listening.

If you're trying to study something, you can't highlight significant passages, or easily go back to review something when you're relying on a audiobook. Sometimes even in fiction, not seeing text can make for extra difficulty--as in a book I was listening to where a character was deciphering a simple code step by step, which would have been easy to follow in text, but was absurdly confusing in audio.

I love my audiobooks; they're my preferred mode of reading at this point. But I am skeptical of any claims that they are just as good as text for learning and retaining information.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I love my audiobooks; they're my preferred mode of reading at this point. But I am skeptical of any claims that they are just as good as text for learning and retaining information.

Skepticism is, I think, good. But know that there are several cited studies (linked if you follow down in to the material) that claim it is indeed just as good.
Not that I automatically believe any claim made by anyone who publishes a study, but unless there is some stronger evidence than just one person's personal perception (and I don't doubt that a particular individual may do better with text than with audio) then I'll tend to put more weight on the studies for the general rule.

(p.s. I'm sure the specific kind of book matters, too. I will get just as much out of a non-fiction book about the history of computers in audio as in text--maybe more if the narrator is really good, but I'm not about to try learning a new programming language from an audiobook!)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ApK

So I don't see a valid point. Different readers will get different things out of the same text and so will different listeners.

Of course they will. But a narrator could easily influence a reader to interpret a text differently than the reader would have independently. I did say it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but something's lost there that you get when the reader confronts a text cold.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

Of course they will. But a narrator could easily influence a reader to interpret a text differently than the reader would have independently. I did say it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but something's lost there that you get when the reader confronts a text cold.

I recently listened to a thriller where the narrator performed a sequence with a rising sense of panic in the character. It was exciting and seemed appropriate, but I happened to notice that there wasn't any particular indication of panic from the author in the text; it was apparently the narrator's interpretation. It could have been read other ways--slowly, reflecting a rising sense of dread, for example.

If I'd been reading the words myself? I don't know which emphasis I might have given them.