This is the age-old question, right?

My whole family don’t believe it counts, because listening to a story is a “different skill” to reading it yourself.

It completely infuriates me. I’ve tried talking about ableism and stuff, but they just don’t listen (ironically). Like, I get what they’re trying to say, but I still think it counts as reading. It’s still consuming the book, absorbing the story or the information that has been written by the author.

I used to listen to a lot of audiobooks a few years ago. Even as a child I remember enjoying them (even though they were super expensive back then).

From my point of view, if you listen to an audiobook then you are still consuming the content. I don’t think the authors care too much how readers consume their work, so long as we are enjoying the content of the writing.

Realistically, if you are tracking your reading then there is no reason why you can’t separately track physical books, audio books, and ebooks. You might even find it interesting at the end of the year to be able to see the variety of reading you have achieved in the year

I think the only real struggle I have with audiobooks is getting along with the narrator’s voice. But I guess that is very similar to getting along with an author’s writing style. Everyone has their likes and dislikes. No one way of narrating or writing is going to suit everybody.

But I’d honestly like to get back into audiobooks. The main reason I don’t listen to them these days is because I have so many physical books to get through (but if you’ve seen my previous post then you’ll see that I have a plan on how to tackle this in 2025).

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try finding audiobooks of books that I own physically and read them together. I don’t know if that would make things a bit easier, or if it would just stress me out that I can’t match the speeds. Haha.

Do you listen to audiobooks? What’s your opinion on this debate? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Until next time,

Love, Bobbi. Xx.