If You Listen to a Book, Have You Read It?

Three writers walk into a bar. Steve, a philosophy professor at Gettysburg College, wonders aloud why happy hour is more than an hour and rarely joyful. Gwydion, a poet turned playwright turned creative non-fiction writer working on a book about Jewish American comedy with Steve, ignores him, because having been friends with Steve for 50 years, he knows that is the healthiest thing to do. Dan, the editor of Book and Film Globe, wonders what he got himself into. Deciding to engage, they debated the differences between reading and listening to audio books. What follows is an abridged version of their conversation.

Steve: We’re reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows in my Critical Thinking class. It’s a book that usually annoys students because it argues that their existence as digital natives has made it so that they don’t have the attention span to read books. One of them admitted he does have that problem, and he’s using the audiobook version to do his assignments. Half of the class thought that was a great idea, but the other half accused him of not really doing the reading. They argued that doing the reading with the physical book meant that they had done the work expected of a student and that he was, well… not cheating, exactly, but close. (I’ll let you guess how many of those students who were outraged actually did do the reading, but that’s another matter entirely.)

One student called the claim that listening wasn’t reading “ableist,” noting that blind people can’t read physical books, and surely we don’t want to call them cheaters. Then again, blind people have access to Braille editions, in some cases, so that seems like a red herring. Of course, there are people with learning disabilities or cognitive differences for whom reading print is difficult, and no one wants to deny them accommodations, but that also sidesteps the real question here, which does seem to be interesting: in the case of someone who could either read a physical book or listen to an audio book and emerge with the same understanding, is there a difference?

Dan: So, is listening to a book, reading?

Steve: Yes. Should we, in other words, consider both activities “species” of reading, just as chocolate and vanilla are simply different flavors of ice cream, or is reading a physical book in some fashion meaningfully different than hearing someone read it to you? Is one ice cream and the other frozen yogurt? They’re both delicious, but please don’t tell me we’re having ice cream and then dish up froyo and expect me to be fooled.

Gwydion: In both cases, reading and being read to, the same words end up in the mind. Why would those who objected have any problem with that?

Dan: Because listening is easier than reading.

Gwydion: But it’s not. Listening isn’t easier, it’s different. I will immediately concede that there are differences between reading and being read to — though I think they’re unimportant differences, even if they might be interesting — but being read to still requires work.

Steve: What, then, exactly is the problem?

Gwydion: The problem is the claim that reading is morally superior to being read to. That reading is work, and listening is leisure. The argument seems puritanical, and I find it problematic. It’s just a different kind of work than reading. Listening takes effort and concentration, especially if you want to retain what you’re listening to.

Again, though, I think the differences between listening and reading are less important than we think they are. Imagine someone listening to a book via earbuds. The voice they hear is practically inside their head at that point, just as it is when they produce that voice themselves by reading. So what’s the difference? No matter where the sound is produced, it’s still being received by the part of the brain that interprets those sounds. There are some brain studies that indicate what I’m saying. The same areas of your brain light up whether you’re reading or being read to. The differences between the two experiences are practically illusory.

Now, some people argue that an audio book narrator has more skill than the average reader. That a narrator can bring more life to a text, find more color and nuance in it, than a reader can in their own mind. But consider my wife, an accomplished actor. Her internal experience of reading is almost certainly better than if, say, I was reading a book aloud to her. So it can go both ways. Neither reading nor being read to is inherently superior. Too much depends on who is generating that voice.

At the end of the day, for me, people insisting on the importance of those differences often come across as curmudgeons. “These kids with their newfangled audiobook technology. I’m going to shake my fist at the sky because I had to have another human being read me a book in 1885, so I’m going to resent that they have that option now.” They often seem to be asserting an unearned moral superiority.

Dan: There’s no room for moral superiority here, I agree. But I still think there are two significant differences between reading and being read to.

One is that being read to is a performance. It removes the need for a reader to make decisions about the text. Your wife is, I’m sure, an amazing actor, and if she reads, she does a great job for herself, in her head. But most of us don’t have that skill. Most of us, when listening to a book, are getting a superior performance than we can manage on our own. And those audio book narrators are making a lot of decisions for you about how to interpret a text. You are not forced to make those decisions on your own.

The second thing is that reading and listening to the same text are phenomenologically different. If you’re reading a book, when you stop, the book does not progress. When listening, though, the performance goes on if you’re not following, right? So while I’m sure there are studies that show the same parts of the brain lighting up, I assume that when they’re being conducted, the subject is listening properly. Paying attention and not losing focus.

I’m always spacing out when I’m listening to things, whether it’s radio or (very occasionally) audio books or podcasts. I listen to Kevin Stroud’s History of the English Language podcast, which is fascinating, but I still find myself spacing out, and the podcast doesn’t care. It just goes on. That forward motion is effort that I’m not the source of, as opposed to reading, which makes me the guiding force moving the reading along. I have to do that.

So those are the two significant differences I see, but I would say they aren’t moral differences. They’re more like “effectiveness differences.” They explain why it’s easier to listen than to read, because you’re not doing all the work.

Gwydion: With regard to your second point, I accept that there are differences for people who are newer to listening to audio books and podcasts and for technology that’s less advanced. But people who are avid listeners, either because they prefer being read to or because they can’t read for some reason, become very adept at tapping their earbuds to pause when they want to. When they decide to meander in their minds and think, the performance doesn’t necessarily go on. It only goes on if you let it go on. It is an active choice. Listening doesn’t happen to you. It’s something you do. The muscles that one builds up for stopping and starting get more developed the more you use them.

In addition, when listening, if the voice isn’t reading fast enough for you, you can have it read more slowly, or you can have it read more quickly. You can adapt the recorded voice to the way your brain wants to process the information. You can make it read to you the way you would normally read to yourself. I’m a very slow reader and so podcast recordings of things are often too fast for me. I sometimes make them go slower.

Steve: What about Dan’s first point?

Gwydion: Audio book narrators do make choices, but not in the way we think. Their job is generally to get out of the way of the text. Most of the time, what the people who direct audio book recordings tell them is to do the least they can with their voices. To just say the words with clarity, following the rhythms of each sentence, so that they aren’t layering their own point of view on top of the text. So I wouldn’t want to exaggerate the interpretive role of the audio book narrator.

Steve: Is there a difference between an AI reader and a human reader? You seem to want to reduce the human to the AI, at least in the abstract, making the perfect audiobook reader just an organic artificial entity, dehumanized by not making the sort of choices that Dan says are going to be made by any human reader.

Gwydion: Well, one important difference is that the AI doesn’t get paid. Other than that, I’m not sure.

I do know that there’s something very intimate about listening, especially on headphones, to a voice in your head. It’s like being whispered to. It’s very personal. And think about our first experiences of being read to. Usually by our parents before bed, when we were kids, or by a teacher in school. Those are very trusting and loving experiences. Can AI replicate that?

Again, though, I think the goal of an audiobook narrator is to get out of the way of the words and let the voice, so to speak, of the author come through, and not the narrator’s own interpretive voice.

Dan: But I think that’s disingenuous. Audiobook narration is a kind of production. You can have a production that’s very bare bones and minimal, but it’s still a production, a performance. You might have a set that is completely black, with everyone on stage wearing black, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fully staged performance.

Sitting with a book in your hands is a different sort of engagement. You are physically engaged and focused on something that will not proceed without you. I can listen to a podcast when I’m running or when I’m unloading the dishwasher, but I don’t think that’s particularly conducive to focused engagement with words. I would never read a book that I was going to review in such a distracted manner. If I’m going to have some accountability towards engaging the text, I need to read it. I wouldn’t read a book that I was going to review by listening to it.

Gwydion: That’s fair. But let me ask you: have you ever walked down the street reading a book? I have.

Dan: Yes.

Gwydion: Right. And who among hasn’t sat in the passenger seat of a car or on the train or eaten a sandwich while reading? I read over breakfast every day. So it’s not like we don’t do distracted reading, just like distracted listening. Distraction is a separate question. The lack of focus and attention can come into play no matter whether we’re reading a text or or having it read to us.

Steve: Let me take us back to the question of intimacy, because one of the interesting things about this conversation is that the three of us are not only readers, we are writers. When you write, you presume a direct relationship between writer and reader. So when you bring in a performer, are you then having an intellectual ménage à trois? Is there a difference in your connection to your reader if you have an intermediary? As a writer, does that feel different?

Dan: A few years ago, before ChatGPT, writers began posting audio versions of their work. I have a newsletter, and I asked my sister what she thought of the latest one. She admitted she hadn’t actually read anything of mine for years. So I asked her what it would take to change that, and she replied that if she could listen to my work, she would. So I bought myself a good mic and started doing that as well, but I still don’t think her listening to my work is the same thing as her reading it. Anyway, that would make me two people in the ménage à trois, but that doesn’t make sense.

Gwydion: But I think we already are two people in the ménage à trois when you’re reading a book, because one part of your brain is reading, creating the noise in your head, and the other part is receiving and interpreting. You’re already two.

We don’t always have much input into who reads our work when the audio book is made. You might be given a selection of voices to choose from, but you rarely get to say “I don’t like any of them, I want that person.” I’ve talked with some writers who say, “Oh, that person totally doesn’t sound like what I had in my head” or “That person does really get it.” They seem to be hoping that the narrator mimics their own internal voice.

But when you read Moby Dick, you are not hearing Melville’s voice, you’re hearing your own voice. You are hearing his grammar and the rhythms that he put into the prose, but it’s your voice. You may be a bad reader. You may not understand the words. You may have to stop and translate them. But it’s your voice. You have to listen to your own voice.

Still, for me, I’m not sure it’s a ménage à trois. I think the real engagement is between the writer and the reader. The person who provides the voice, either yourself or the narrator, is just a humble servant. It’s really more like two partners with one person watching.

Steven: Reading has just gotten much more interesting.

Gwydion: Dan, you started to go down the road of audio books being like a staged reading of a play, and theater is where I come from. I don’t think that a staged reading is the equivalent of an audio book. The equivalent of an audio book is someone reading a script aloud to you and doing all the voices, because in a staged reading there are bodies in front of you meant to be watched. They are wearing certain clothing. They stand up at certain times. They sit at certain times. There’s more than one voice being used, because even in a one-person play there are stage directions to be read.

There are plenty of people now who are doing recordings of fiction with multiple voices. There’s a terrific podcast, Ursa Short Fiction, hosted by Deesha Philyaw and Donnie Walton, and every other episode they record a short story that’s a fully produced audio experience with each character having a different actor and the non-character parts, the exposition and narration, read by another narrator. To me, that is the equivalent of a staged reading. And I would agree that listening to a fully produced audio story is meaningfully different than reading the same story. I would compare it to radio, rather than an audio book.

Let me circle back to one to one of the points that I made in the beginning. I granted up front that there are differences between reading and being read to, but what effect do they have? William James said “a difference that makes no difference is no difference.” What does it matter?

Dan: I think that it matters in two ways, and I think they’re related. If you’re not a good reader, having an audio book brings you up to a certain level, which is a good thing. But it comes at the cost of you having made your own decisions about the text. Because you have to be both the voice in your head and the person listening to that voice, you are doing more work to engage with the book. And I think that work pays off phenomenologically. You may be lighting up the same parts of the brain, but I think those parts of the brain are doing more work and you’re doing a better job of reading.

With an audio book, somebody else is doing the interpretive job of working out what each sentence means the first time. Which is not to say that that’s always a terrible thing, and sometimes it can be a good thing, but it relieves you of doing that work, the basic intuitive work of understanding what the book’s about, and I think that helps you understand the book.

Secondly, I accept that people get better at audio reading if they’re committed to doing it in a real way. If they turn the book on and off. But you actually have to take action to mitigate the problem that’s been caused by not paying attention. It’s different :with reading. Sometimes I’ll sit down with a book for an hour and a half, and sometimes I’ll sit down with a book for 1/4 of an hour, and I’m just more antsy, right? But when I stop, I stop.

Steven: So where does that all leave us?

Gwydion: Well, I would say that while I’m not persuaded, I’m at least interested in what you’re saying, Dan.

Dan: I feel the same way, interested but not persuaded.

Steven: Why don’t we end there, then, so we can let people make up their own minds?

Gwydion: Perfect.

Dan: Agreed.

A phone buzzes and Gwydion excuses himself as he has to go home to run lines with his wife. Dan says that he, too, needs to get home to the family. Steve laments that he has a pile of papers to grade, saying “Maybe I should have them record their papers, so I can just listen to them. It would make it so much easier.” Halfway out the door, Gwydion stops and looks over his shoulder back at Steve. “No,” he says, “It wouldn’t,” and steps out.