On the equivalence of reading and listening to a book
The rapid growth of audiobooks has revived an unexpectedly vigorous debate about the meaning of reading. Recently, several friends have waxed lyrical and passionate about whether or not reading a book in the traditional manner is superior to listening to the same text read aloud and accessed by Audible or another similar app.
Can someone honestly claim to have read a book if they have listened to its unabridged audio version rather than turning the pages of a printed or electronic text? For some, the answer is clearly no. Reading, they argue, is a specifically visual activity that involves decoding written symbols with one’s eyes, whereas listening is a distinct cognitive skill.
Yet this distinction, although valid at one level, mistakes the means for the end. Reading is fundamentally an act of engaging with an author’s language and ideas rather than merely an exercise in visual perception. Listening carefully to an unabridged audiobook therefore constitutes a genuine form of reading, even though it differs from reading a printed page in important respects.
A useful starting point is to distinguish between the act of reading and the medium through which it occurs. Throughout history, written works have appeared on clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, parchment manuscripts, printed books, Braille, electronic readers, and digital audio platforms. These technologies differ in convenience, accessibility, and sensory experience, yet they all communicate the same literary work. The physical medium shapes the experience without altering the identity of the text. An unabridged audiobook is not a different book but simply another means of accessing the same words that appear in print.
This distinction invites a broader reflection on the nature of reading. Reading is often described as the visual decoding of written symbols, but this is merely the first stage of a richer intellectual process. The real achievement of reading lies in constructing meaning, following the line of arguments, entering innovative imaginative worlds, and engaging critically with another person’s thought.
Decoding words is a means to that end rather than the end itself. If understanding is the essential purpose of reading, then attentive listening can legitimately accomplish the same task through a different sensory pathway.
Contemporary neuroscience lends support to this broader understanding. Although written and spoken language enter the brain through different sensory systems, they converge within many of the same higher-order language networks responsible for comprehension, memory, and interpretation. Reading and listening represent different routes towards the common human activity of apprehending intelligible language. The important distinction lies not between seeing and hearing but between superficial exposure and genuine comprehension.
The debate also raises an important philosophical question about language. Words do not possess immutable meanings but develop their perceived meaning through the ordinary practices of those who use them. Ludwig Wittgenstein famously argued that the meaning of a word lies in its use within a language community. If thoughtful speakers increasingly employ the verb read to include attentive listening to audiobooks, this reflects the natural evolution of language rather than its corruption. Dictionaries generally describe such developments instead of prescribing how language ought to be used.
History arguably reinforces this perspective. Silent, private reading has become commonplace only relatively recently. For thousands of years, literature was encountered principally by hearing it read aloud in homes, marketplaces, schools, monasteries, and places of worship. The epics of Homer were composed for oral performance, while much medieval literature was intended to be experienced communally. Audiobooks therefore represent not a radical innovation but a recovery of one of our oldest literary traditions.
The history of silent reading further challenges modern assumptions. Augustine’s Confessions contains his famous expression of surprise when he observed Bishop Ambrose reading silently without moving his lips. Augustine regarded this as sufficiently unusual to deserve comment, reminding modern readers that silent visual reading was far from universal in late antiquity. Over succeeding centuries, improvements in punctuation, spacing between words, and literacy gradually encouraged silent reading to become the dominant practice. Our assumption that books are naturally read privately with the eyes reflects historical development rather than timeless necessity.
The Christian Scriptures point in the same direction. The Bible consistently emphasises hearing as a primary means of receiving God’s word. Israel’s foundational confession begins with the command, “Hear, O Israel” (Deut 6:4), while Paul declares that “faith comes by hearing” the message concerning Christ (Rom 10:17). The New Testament letters were written to congregations that normally encountered them through public reading rather than private study. Christianity itself spread for decades through preaching before the New Testament canon was complete. The Christian faith has always placed extraordinary confidence in the spoken word as an authentic vehicle of truth.
This historical perspective also reminds us that literacy has long been a privilege rather than a universal human experience. For much of history, the overwhelming majority of people encountered literature, education, and Scripture through oral transmission. The church has never regarded these hearers as somehow excluded from meaningful engagement with the biblical text simply because they did not decode written symbols for themselves. Audiobooks continue this tradition by extending access to people with visual impairment, dyslexia, physical disabilities, chronic illness, demanding occupations, or other circumstances that make conventional reading difficult. Expanding access to books should be welcomed as an educational, cultural and ethical good.
Modern research in cognitive psychology similarly encourages a balanced perspective. Studies generally indicate that attentive listeners and attentive readers achieve broadly comparable levels of comprehension when engaging with narrative literature and many forms of general non-fiction. Differences become more pronounced when readers are analysing highly technical arguments, consulting diagrams, or moving repeatedly through complex material, where printed texts offer practical advantages. These findings suggest not that one medium is inherently superior, but that each serves different purposes particularly well. Choosing the most appropriate format depends as much upon the reader’s objectives as upon the nature of the book.
Nor should listening be dismissed as a passive activity. Reading silently requires continual acts of interpretation as readers imagine voices, infer emotional tone, recognise irony, and determine emphasis. Audiobook narrators simply make many of these interpretive decisions audible. Listeners are responsible agents, able to understand arguments, evaluate evidence, recognise literary structure, and discern recurring themes. In both forms of media, genuine reading depends upon active intellectual engagement rather than the particular senses through which language is received.
Different purposes for reading further illuminate the discussion. People read for enjoyment, information, spiritual formation, professional development, academic research, and intellectual curiosity. A novel may lend itself beautifully to listening during a daily walk, whereas a complex philosophical or theological work may reward slower study with pen in hand. Many readers naturally combine the two media, listening to substantial portions before returning to the printed edition for closer examination. Rather than competing with one another, audio and print complement one another in thoughtful reading practices.
Few would argue that someone has not genuinely encountered Beethoven because they listened to a performance rather than studying the orchestral score, or that Shakespeare can only be appreciated through reading the printed script rather than watching a theatrical performance. The artistic work remains the same even when experienced through different media. The comparison with film adaptations is less convincing because films necessarily condense, reinterpret, and reshape the original work. An unabridged audiobook, by contrast, precisely communicates the author’s words in their entirety.
The essential question is whether one has entered into genuine conversation with the author. Books are conversations across time in which writers invite readers into their observations, arguments, stories, and imagination. Whether those words reach us through paper, pixels, Braille, or speakers matters less than whether we engage them thoughtfully and honestly. Reading is ultimately an encounter between minds rather than a particular sensory technique.
On the other hand, simply allowing an audiobook to play in the background while one’s attention is elsewhere is no more an act of reading than is the practice of rapidly skimming a printed book without absorbing its contents. In both cases, genuine reading requires sustained attention, thoughtful reflection, and a willingness to grapple with the author’s ideas. The defining issue is not the medium but the quality of engagement.
This perspective also reminds us that reading has rarely been a purely solitary pursuit. Families, monasteries, churches, universities, and literary societies have long practised communal reading in which texts are read aloud, discussed, interpreted, and debated together. Audiobooks extend this tradition by making shared listening once again a natural way of engaging literature. They remind us that books have always possessed both individual and communal dimensions.
Educational practice likewise benefits from recognising the diversity of learners. Although simplistic theories of fixed learning styles have not been supported by educational research, individuals nevertheless differ in experience, ability, attention, and circumstance. Providing access to books through multiple formats enables more people to participate in serious learning while allowing readers to choose the medium best suited to particular tasks. The goal of liberal education is not to privilege one sensory pathway but to cultivate understanding, wisdom, and critical reflection.
The wider context is the changing landscape of digital culture. Contemporary readers increasingly move between printed books, e-books, scholarly articles, lectures, podcasts, and audiobooks with remarkable ease. Rather than lamenting these developments, educators, authors, and publishers should ask how each medium might encourage sustained attention, intellectual depth, and careful reflection in an age often characterised by distraction. The future of reading will depend less upon preserving a single format than upon nurturing habits of attentive engagement, and this should be encouraged.
The debate about the status and usefulness of audiobooks invites us to reconsider the ultimate purpose of reading. If reading is defined solely as the visual decoding of written symbols, then listening does not qualify. But if reading is understood as entering into conversation with an author’s language, arguments, stories, and imagination, then the means of access become secondary to the achievement of understanding.
Print, Braille, electronic text, and audio each provide distinctive pathways into the same literary work, each with its own strengths and limitations. The decisive question is not whether the words entered through the eyes or the ears, but whether they were received with sufficient care, attention, and imagination to accomplish the purpose for which books are written.
Human language is, in my opinion, one of God’s greatest gifts. We learn to speak before we learn to write, we listen before we learn to read, and we come to trust the voices of others long before we recognise letters on a page. The advent of writing has extended the reach of speech across generations, while contemporary technologies now allow the written word to be heard once more.
Audiobooks do not diminish the practice of reading. Their sounds remind us that every book began its life as language seeking understanding and impartation. Whether encountered through the eye or the ear, the enduring purpose of reading is to enter another person’s mind with sufficient attentiveness that we emerge wiser, more discerning, and more fully alive than when we began.
We need writers and readers, and future generations need writers and readers. The more ways in which we can effectively encourage the next generation to engage in quality reading experiences, the better are the chances of the survival and flourishing of our species. Read on.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney. He reads a lot, both orally and audibly.
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