Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, the meme moved to another host, Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

The original topic for this week is the Mid-Year check-in, but since I did the Mid-Year Freakout tag recently, I found it a little pointless to do another check-in post. So, I decided to pick a past topic I’ve missed. This week, I’ve chosen the topic for January 3, 2020 which was suggested by our host Aria. It’s all about audiobooks and if they count as reading.

Prompts: Do you consider listening to audiobooks as reading? How do you feel about audiobooks? Is listening to an audiobook the same as reading a physical one?

I listen quite a lot to audiobooks. They therefore definitely count as reading for me. However, i notice a difference in quality between the Dutch audiobooks and the English ones. I feel like the production of English audiobooks is way ahead of the dutch ones. However, the Dutch production is catching up rapidly though. Sometimes I don’t like the narration, but that often has to do with not really liking the narrator.

I think audiobooks are a good way to read whenever you can’t read a physical book. For example, whilst driving or doing chores. I’m mainly listening to music when doing the latter, but that’s my personal preference. When falling behind on your reading challenge, audiobooks might be a good solution for you. The downside is however, that it takes longer to finish an audiobook compared to a physical book. The upside is on the other hand that audiobooks work better for certain stories. Let’s take Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid for example. This book is written like an interview, something that would have truly annoyed me if it wasn’t for the audiobook. I would probably have DNF’ed the book if I was reading the ebook. Therefore, the audiobook made me able to get and enjoy the story since there are different narrators for every different character and therefore it’s a real interview.

I believe that listening to an audiobook is a whole other reading experience than reading a physical book or even an ebook. However, audiobooks are not for everyone. If you loose your concentration quicker when listening instead of reading, you might miss parts of the book and you have to rewind a lot. Then, audiobooks are not for you. Myself, I’ve listened so much to audiobooks that I simply can not stand the standard 1.0 speed anymore. I really need to listen faster. I still invest time in a story, so in my opinion, audiobooks definitely count as reading.

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Do you listen to audiobooks? Do they count as readig for you? Do you think the experience is different when listening to an audiobook compared to reading a physical book or ebook?