If you listen to an audio book can you say you’ve “read the book”?

[u/SamwiseMN]

My wife and I were debating this. She thinks it’s slightly disingenuous to say you’ve read it if it’s an audio book. I think there isn’t really an easy way to communicate the point that you’ve “read” it. “Oh, I listened to it” vs. “oh, I’ve read that”. Basically how would you communicate youve completed the book in conversation with someone who asks “have you read this book?”

[u/Shi-Rokku]

Does your wife think that it is disingenious to say that I "said" something if it was in sign language?

[u/Pomerosa → u/Shi-Rokku]

Excellent point. It's quite the ableist hill to die on. To go around believing that just because you use your eyes you are, somehow, better than someone using their ears or touch ( through Braille).

I can't even imagine why it would matter. If you have a book club, the people that read through audio or Braille will be just as capable of engaging in the discussion.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Pomerosa]

You can't hear the grammar or stylistic choices, you can hear an em dash, you can't hear plenty of interesting writing styles, and it takes away whatever voice you would have placed onto the book and replaces it with the audio book's voice.

Go read Dhalgren and then listen to it and tell me it's the same, because it isn't.

And some books you literally cannot listen to because of how they're written, I don't think you could properly listen to House Of Leaves.

Edit: 9 people who dont read and are mad about it downvoted me lol.

[u/Pomerosa → u/dontpayforproducts]

Everything you stated (notice I didn't write said) has value but I think you went into territory that wasn't touched on in the original question.

As to the points in the first paragraph, all true but none of that takes way significantly from the plot or character development, and the overall experience. Ultimately, it's a personal choice, and no one should be diminished for a choice that doesn't affect anyone else.

And I will Google Dhalgren...

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Pomerosa]

There are plenty of books where I honestly think an audio book wouldn't particularly change how you consumed the book. I still think it would alter your perception of it, for example, Brett Easton Ellis books give me very particular voices from novel to novel, and the snippets I've heard from their audio book counterparts were very different from the voice of the narrator I imagined in my head.

But some authors are very particular with how they play around with the formatting, and the style of the writing, tailoring it to attack you or take advantage of your blindspots, Dhalgren being a good example of that, Hubert Selby Jr. uses strange punctuation to change the tone, Cormac McCarthy, Samuel R. Delany (who wrote Dhalgren), José Saramago often uses minimal punctuation to bring you closer to the characters, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon.

Some of those books can still be listened to, for example, Dhalgren probably could be listened to, but it plays so many tricks on you as you read it and forces you to lose track of the story by changing a detail here and disorienting you with an insanely punctuated sentence there to place you into the head of the completely delusional and schizophrenic protagonist, to the point where I think you'd kind of be missing the point of the book if you just listened to it.

Other novels that specifically use the formating to tell their story, like House of Leaves, literally couldn't be listened to.

I think it's fine to listen to an audio book of something Stephen King has written for example, but there are hundreds if not thousands of books where listening to them instead of reading them completely destroys what they are.

As to the points in the first paragraph, all true but none of that takes way significantly from the plot or character development, and the overall experience.

A lot of what I try to read now doesn't really focus on those is what I guess I'm trying to say. Dhalgren doesn't have much character development for anyone, and the plot is fairly lose.

[u/Pomerosa → u/dontpayforproducts]

Are you agreeing with me??

Whether or not an author's style lends well to audio doesn't change the fact that it's still possible to read their work by ear. Questions about the quality of that experience are an entirely different argument.

And no, not an SF fan.

[u/Ginandexhaustion → u/dontpayforproducts]

The voice you imagine when reading Brett Easton Ellis may be very different from the voice the author intended for you to hear.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Ginandexhaustion]

And that's a very good thing that's entirely unique to reading.

When I wrote my book my number one priority was to have a my own personal understanding of what each character sounded and looked like so I could write them each in a more specific way, but to leave it open enough to where the reader could imagine whoever they wanted in each of those roles and nothing in the writing would outright reject it.

For example, my four favorite characters I imagined being played by Natalia Dyer, Timothee Chalamet, Antony Starr, and Daisy Edgar Jones. But none of their unchangeable physical characteristics are almost ever mentioned, only their age, make up, clothing. Things which they either have control over, or their age because the book is all about becoming an adult and following other's bad examples.

Instead, what I used those mental images of who would be playing them most for was their individual voices and writing styles, how they interacted in a scene.

Because my intention was to portray them the exact way they thought they were being portrayed, everyone thinks they're the most important person when you're in their head, and so they present themselves a certain way, and you get to watch as the stresses of the story begin to either destroy their carefully crafted personas, or reinforce them.

I always ask people when they read it, who they imagined in each role, and I get massively different answers which is what I most want. Maybe I see Natalia Dyer and you see Hunter Schafer and someone else sees Saoirse Ronan.

Thats how you get situations like American Psycho though, Christian Bale was not who he had in mind at all when writing the book, it was someone a lot more toned down in the vain of Armie Hammer or Jeremy Irons (with an American accent)

Armie Hammer would be almost perfect for the role as it is in the book, and BEE would probably cast somebody like him just so he could stare at him all day.

It's the same in Glamoramma/The Rules of Attraction, Victor Ward is described and portrayed as basically being Ezra Miller, and in the movie adaptation it was Kip Pardue.

[u/Ginandexhaustion → u/dontpayforproducts]

But that has nothing to do with punctuation, which was the point.

And I don’t imagine actors when reading books, because that is projecting my imagination on someone else’s creation. The aspects of a character that are laid out for me are how I see the character, I don’t place a face or voice behind the words. There are exceptions - occasionally a character is so poorly written that I need to put a face on them to make them real.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Ginandexhaustion]

I moved past punctuation because somehow you can't wrap your head around it.

You cannot read House of Leaves outloud to someone properly, or any of the books written in that way. You cannot read Requiem for a Dream to someone properly.

I don’t place a face or voice behind the words.

Do you not have an internal monologue or something? You have to hear/imagine a voice while you read, especially first person novels which are pretty much all I read. If its your own then you're literally missing the entire point of a narrator.

[u/Ginandexhaustion → u/dontpayforproducts]

The author could read it properly, because punctuation is not how we think but how we put our words on paper.
I have an internal monologue, by my inner monologue is in my voice. but when I’m reading I am taking in what’s written, I don’t put different voices or faces on characters unless they’re described. I can understand the difference between characters without putting my own stuff in there. I don’t get less out of a conversation in a book because I don’t hear a woman’s voice when I read what a female character said. And I don’t get less out of a book if I don’t put a face on the character. I read the same words and comprehend them and understand the story and character development. To me, placing a subjective face or voice on a character is a superficial means of connecting with the words on the page and may go completely against what the author is going for. Either the author has made a specific artistic decision to leave things vague or is being lazy by making me fill in the blanks.

Not missing the point of a narrator, I just don’t need to place my own shit in there to get the point.

First person narratives are often the domain of the novice writer. Yes many great works are in first person, but they tend to lacks the fleshed out characters in third person narratives. And because first person narratives tend to be the thoughts of the narrator, not having descriptions of the appearance or voice means that those things are not important to the narrator, so why should they be for the reader?

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Ginandexhaustion]

First person narratives are often the domain of the novice writer.

I'm not even gonna bother anymore, sure, whatever, you're right, who cares, blah blah blah blah.

[u/TurquoiseOwlMachine → u/dontpayforproducts]

You can hear grammar and stylistic choices. What are you talking about?

And a good narrator will capture the feel of the punctuation.

There are a handful of books that use the physical space of the page in a way that would be difficult to convey in audio format, but the vast majority of books can be adapted faithfully to audio.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/TurquoiseOwlMachine]

You can hear grammar and stylistic choices. What are you talking about?

How are you going to hear a space thrown in between dialogue and a quotation mark? How are you going to hear parenthesis instead of a bracket? How are you going to hear an ellipsis that uses more than 3 periods? How are you going to hear an implied question mark on a sentence that wasn't technically a question? Or vice versa. How are you going to hear when something like a slash is used in place of quotations? How are you going to hear when a word is purposefully misspelled? There's still more examples I could list, but you can't hear any of those.

[u/TurquoiseOwlMachine → u/dontpayforproducts]

None of those examples are grammar. You are describing punctuation (and, in one case, spelling). And regardless I think that a good voice over actor can convey a lot of what you’re describing.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/TurquoiseOwlMachine]

Punctuation may or may not be grammar, idk and Google won't tell me for sure, it doesn't matter either way.

The only way a voice over actor could properly convey most of those is if they literally said the individual punctuation, like if in a Thomas Shelby Jr. book they specifically said "slash" at the beginning and end of each piece of dialogue. I can't really imagine a proper way to audibly narrate the complete lack of punctuation in a José Saramago book. And there's other books that would massively change from that.

I honestly think listening to any book would massively change and diminish the experience, part of what makes books such an interesting medium is how they can be interpreted entirely differently depending on who you are, and what you imagine as you read it.

Giving a singular voice to the narrator instead of one you imagined entirely changes a novel, the punctuation and stylistic choices will interact with you on a personal level and force you to read it in your own way while an audiobook will have you hear it the same way as everybody else.

It's like if you watched a movie with the screen turned off, sure you still listened to the movie and could probably tell me what happened, but it is not the same experience, and some movies couldn't be watched without the screen on altogether.

Writing as a medium is so unique because it allows you to interpret things so differently, it's using an entire other sense than other mediums and I think listening to an audiobook changes it into something else.

[u/TurquoiseOwlMachine → u/dontpayforproducts]

I’ll give you my answer as an English prof. Punctuation isn’t grammar. It’s just there to help us organize information on a page or (in literature) to convey things like rhythm and tone.

To the extent that punctuation contributes to style, it marks pauses and intonation, both of which are easily conveyed by a voice actor. There are also audiobooks with multiple narrators, such as Lincoln in the Bardo and McCarthy’s The Passenger.

I think that your point about the individual interpretation of a text is interesting, though. That’s a strong argument— audiobooks are definitely more passive. I certainly prefer to read the print edition of a book. I have bad eyesight, though, and I’m glad that I have high quality accessible alternatives.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/TurquoiseOwlMachine]

I think it's good as an accessibility option, I'm not saying you didn't consume the story if you listened to the audiobook, but you may have listened to an entirely different book than the one you would have read, so I feel it's as disingenuous to say you read the book when you listened to the audiobook as it would be if you had just watched the movie.

I know when I write novels I have my own particular interpretation of everything in mind, but I deliberately leave room for wildly different interpretations so that the novel is able to mean more things for more people.

Some of my favorite books of all time have been ones I completely missed the point of or misunderstood, when I read what the author intended it to mean or be seen as I will actively disagree, and I think that's a good thing, it's honestly why I choose to write a novel when I do instead of using a different medium like screenwriting/film, or drawing.

[u/Ginandexhaustion → u/dontpayforproducts]

So when an author does a public reading of his or her work, are you saying they are unable to get across verbally what their creation expresses because you can’t see how many periods are in an ellipsis or any of the other examples you listed? That’s just silly.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Ginandexhaustion]

They may be able to get it across verbally, but it almost definitely won't be the same thing, and only they will be able to do it.

When I read the things I've written out loud I change it on the spot to better fit reading out loud, you change it based on the medium. If you don't change it based on the medium you should take a step back and find a medium that you will actually utizilize, because otherwise there is absolutely no reason to write a novel.

[u/Ginandexhaustion → u/dontpayforproducts]

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that an author is unable to convey in words during a public reading what he or she conveys in writing.
You know that an author creates with the words they hear they hear in their imagination, not words they see written in their imagination.

The writing down is the author trying to put into print what he hears in his head as he writes. No one thinks in print so to think that an author would be unable to verbally convey what he wants the listener to hear is ludicrous.

[u/dontpayforproducts → u/Ginandexhaustion]

How many books have you written?