Substack Essay Released — Listening to Audiobooks = Fake Reading
As educators and students have returned (or are shortly returning) to schools, I am releasing one of my earliest Substack essays from 2020: Listening to Audiobooks = Fake Reading. I have even more arguments than the ones that I made in this short piece. If I write about the subject again, I will go into more depth about how the fictitious “learning style” theories have helped to fuel a lot of the intellectual laziness behind the elevation of audiobooks.
The rise in popularity of the audiobook is an interesting 21st century development. However, the audiobook ought to be appreciated for what it is. The audiobook is a medium via which people can obtain information from books without reading. Audiobooks are consumed; they cannot be read. The simple fact of the matter is that listening to someone reading a book can never be considered the same as reading. The insulting pretense that listening to someone read and actually reading are the same demonstrates that the world has been turned upside down.
