Does Listening Constitute "Reading" ?

[BCFD36]

These days, when it is not raining (and there hasn't been much of not
raining since Dec 27 around here) I try to walk down to the San Lorenzo
River and back. It averages a 14% grade so I really don't have to walk
that far. Whilst on these walks I like to listen to books on Audible. I
also like to listen to them in the car when doing organlegger work.

I have listened to "I Robot", "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep",
some Terry Prachett (not a fan so far), Andy Weir, "Ready Player
One/Two", some classics (The Big Sleep, Kidnapped, et. al), a bunch of
mysteries, a bunch of Lee Child, as well as a bunch of short story
anthologies. There about 70 books on my phone.

Does listening count as reading? I have mixed feelings about this. On
the one hand, I was exposed to the words as the author wrote them,
although doing something else at the same time. On the other hand, I can
give my mostly undivided attention to the written page when actually
looking at a book.

--
Dave Scruggs
Captain, Boulder Creek Fire (Retired)
Sr. Software Engineer (Retired, mostly)

[Titus G]

On 21/03/23 08:25, BCFD36 wrote:
snip

>
> Does listening count as reading? I have mixed feelings about this. On
> the one hand, I was exposed to the words as the author wrote them,
> although doing something else at the same time. On the other hand, I can
> give my mostly undivided attention to the written page when actually
> looking at a book.
>

I am biased as I do not enjoy audio books because when out walking I
like to enjoy the peace and serenity of nature only interrupted by bird
song or animal noise and when at home I read far more quickly than a
book can be spoken so am easily distracted because of boredom. However I
suspect that for many people, listening does provide the same result as
reading.

[pete...@gmail.com]

I'd say yes. However, you need an app with skip back functions that let
you repeat something you missed.

I listen mostly to podcasts. Some technical, some current events, some SF
(forex 'Escape Pod'). A few, such as 20,000 Hz, which is about
sound design, I'll listen to at x1 speed, but most I'll listen at 1.5x or
1.75x.

One of the few drawbacks to working from home is that I don't
have 90+ minutes a day of drivetime to listen.

Pt

[James Nicoll]

In article <3c33d558-bd71-47e3...@googlegroups.com>,

pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>One of the few drawbacks to working from home is that I don't
>have 90+ minutes a day of drivetime to listen.

I tend to listen to old radio plays and it's odd how episodes
seem to be calculated to take one errand's duration to play.
Or maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe it was design.

--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[Charles Packer]

It depends on how good the narrator is. In discovering audio books
when I had a 40-minute drive to work, I also discovered that the
quality of narration of literary works was so uniformly high
it just about ruined me from ever wanting to read fiction again.

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, March 20, 2023 at 1:25:24 PM UTC-6, BCFD36 wrote:

> Does listening count as reading?

Listening to an audiotape of a book is one way of finding out what the
book says.
But, as you note, sometimes people leave an audiotape of a book playing
while doing other things.
Also, listening to an audiotape of a book is not proof of literacy... or
eyesight.

So shall we say that not counting listening as reading discriminates against
blind people whose Braille isn't very good?

To me, it seems like this is not a question you can ask other people, and then
find their answers, at least if those answers are either "Yes", or "No", to be of
any use whatever. Listening to an audiobook may, or may not, share any
particular attribute of interest with actually reading the printed book instead.

So the question that can be answered is always, did listening share _this_
attribute with reading in _this_ particular case, and never is listening the
same as reading, period. *That* answer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA4mlUPrdl4

Enjoy.

John Savard

[Harold Hill]

It does depend. My library had (most) of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin novels narrated by Patrick Tull, and I loved those. I am similarly very fond of the Discworld books narrated by Nigel Planer (yeah, they have more done by Stephen Briggs, who is OK, but not my favorite). But, to bring it back to SF, I tried _The Stonehenge Gate_ by Jack Williamson, narrated by Harlan Ellison. I felt the story was bad, but Ellison's narration made it so. much. worse. ("Little Momma's ... <i>Hell</i>") It haunts me to this day.

--
-Harold Hill

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <e7d1757b-b6f0-4002...@googlegroups.com>,

I find that my kindle's AI voice works very well without getting in the
way with any "personality". (Of course there was that odd little
experience where it rendered Buroker's habitual "Hmm." as "hectometers",
which I took to be a mild swear word in the setting..).
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[pete...@gmail.com]

I recall one occasion where a reference to a woman's 'assets' was
expanded to 'Doctor of Divinity'.

Pt

[Lynn McGuire]

Yes, if the audio book is the full and complete version of the book.
Many of the older audio books are abridged.

I love listening to audio books if I am driving to Oklahoma, Florida, or
California from Texas. Especially the action books by Jack Higgins or
Tom Clancy. They keep me awake.

Lynn

[Robert Carnegie]

On Tuesday, 21 March 2023 at 01:09:08 UTC, James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <3c33d558-bd71-47e3...@googlegroups.com>,
> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >One of the few drawbacks to working from home is that I don't
> >have 90+ minutes a day of drivetime to listen.
> I tend to listen to old radio plays and it's odd how episodes
> seem to be calculated to take one errand's duration to play.
> Or maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe it was design.

Maybe you have radio-show-length errands. Beyond
a certain point of old, radios were not really portable,
I think. Maybe as luxury. I've heard a modern "Saint"
adaptation set in the 1930s where as scene setting,
Saint and Pat pick up an actual fascist broadcast on
the car radio, but it might be an anachronism. My point
is, would a show broadcaster have travel in mind?

BBC advice has recently changed from "drive safely
to your destination, then stay in your car to listen until
the show ends", to, "You can play the rest online later."

Radio shows may be an odd length with advertisements
taken out. At the BBC again, they remade 1932 Groucho
and Chico Marx scripts of _Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel_
from 1990. BBC uses shows of about 28 minutes and
I think these shows were shorter in their original form.
Some were padded with content of other episodes I think,
more often they had "Groucho" or "Chico" sing a song
in what maybe would have been advertisement time.

I think they also get through "TED Radio Hour" in
around 50 minutes.

[Robert Carnegie]

Charles Dickens used to go around reading his
stories to people - I mean in theatres, not if you
met him in the street - so I think he'd say that
it counts. But it's something other than reading.
Is it too goofy to call it a storytelling experience -
an experience that you participate in by listening.

If I don't misremember this, the day that I got the
first Harry Potter book for Christmas also was the
day that BBC radio agreed to the author's slightly
awkward condition and broadcast an unabridged
reading by Stephen Fry non-stop for ten hours.
Taken that way, it's strongly "misery memoir"
until Rubeus Hagrid shows up the second time.