Cloud Support: Are Audiobooks a Cheat?

Dear Cloud Support: "I listen to a lot of books on audio. It works for me. But certain more literary friends of mine say it doesn't quite count as reading. Part of me wants to read more, but I find it much easier to listen. What do you think? Should I care?" -Easy Listening

Dear Easy, I wouldn't put too much stock in what your "literary" friends say; they sound like bores. When it comes down to it, people who think about reading in terms of what "counts"-those who piously log their daily reading metrics and tally up the titles they've consumed on Goodreads-don't seem to actually enjoy books all that much. Their moralistic gloom is evident in the extent to which reading has come to resemble exercise, with readers tracking their word-count metrics, trying to improve their speed, and joining clubs to keep them accountable.

While some disciples of this culture are quick to dismiss audiobooks as a shortcut, they cannot seem to agree on why, exactly, listening is an inferior form of engagement. Some cite studies that have shown people who listen to books retain less than those who read them, which is bound up with how tempting it is to do other things while listening. (As easy as it is to multitask with audiobooks, the form does make it harder to return, after a spell of distraction, to the passage where your mind started to wander.) Others insist that audiobooks eliminate the reader's responsibility to interpret things like irony, tone, and inflection, given that the person recording does the work of conveying emotion. According to this rather tenuous logic, listening to audiobooks is inferior precisely because it is easier because it lacks the element of suffering that is incontrovertible evidence of accomplishment, the same way soreness is proof of a real workout.