Unpopular opinion: audiobooks are not the same as reading

My book club fought for an hour last week over whether listening counts. I get that they're accessible but you miss things like pacing and being able to flip back. Has anyone else had their group split on this?

3 comments

3 Comments

jakewhite14d ago

My book club had the exact same fight last year and three people almost quit over it. The thing is, listening to a book changes the whole experience because you lose control over the pace and can't easily go back to check a detail from three chapters ago. A buddy of mine swears by audiobooks for road trips but admits she misses catching little foreshadowing hints that she would have caught if she was reading visually. I think the format matters less for casual fiction but for anything with complex plotlines or dense prose, flipping back is huge. At the end of the day, both are valid ways to consume stories but they're not the same mental process, so the debate just depends on what you're trying to get out of it.

ryanm6014d agoOG Member

Nailed it dude, my cousin did the same thing and thought the main villain was a mailbox.

riverdavis14d ago

Oh man, 3 people almost quit? That's like when my family tried to watch a movie together and my dad kept pausing to explain things while my mom was on her phone. Total chaos. I swear there is some secret book club rule that everyone has to pretend their way is the ONLY way. My brother claims he 'reads' 50 books a year but it's all audiobooks at 2x speed while he's folding laundry. He missed the entire subplot about the missing dog in our last book. Told us the twist was "the butler did it" when there wasn't even a butler. Maybe the real answer is just to never talk about it at book club again. Or ban people who hold their books upside down.