Purists, I’ll tell you.
They’re everywhere. You know the sort.
They say it has to be “this way” exactly or not at all.
It can be about anything.
Filet Mignon vs. any other steak
Popcorn with salt only. Not paprika. Not cheese. Not caramel.
Peanut butter. The creamy vs. anything else.
The right way to make a pancake.
But it doesn’t stop with food.
It could be cars. For example, they might say a Jeep is the only car you should drive.
Or shoes. Perhaps Nike is their thing.
Mascara.
I mean it. People can be purists about anything.
Okay. So I admit it. Sometimes I’ve been known to drift into these purist attitudes.
The one that comes to mind lately is reading.
I love to read. I do a lot of reading during the day as I gather information to write this blog. Or perhaps, while I’m doing research for a book. And at night, before bedtime, I read for pleasure. I love, love, love reading for pleasure.
But there are two things about this. First, I am a slow reader. Sssslllllooooooowwwwwwww.
And secondly, as of late, by the time I pick up my book, I’m so tired that I drift off into sleep after a few pages. It takes me eons to finish a novel this way.
Someone recently suggested that I try audiobooks. Well. Here is where the purist thing came in. I don’t really feel like it is reading unless you are reading. It becomes more like watching TV or listening to the radio.
I wondered if I was right. Is listening to books really all that different from reading them? In other words, do audiobooks “count” as reading? And. Which is better?
Well. There are a lot of studies on this. But most of the studies that I found were done by regular Joes. Not by some Dr. HuffinPuff at Yale. Or Dr. BiggyWig at Harvard. Regardless, I found that the “experts” say there’s no clear-cut answer.
Like this guy. David Daniel, a professor of psychology at James Madison University. He ran a series of tests. Daniel co-authored a study that found students who listened to a podcast lesson performed worse on a comprehension quiz than students who read the same lesson on paper. “And the podcast group did a lot worse, not a little worse,” he said. “Compared to the readers, the listeners scored an average of 28% lower on the quiz—about the difference between an A or a D grade.”
There’s that.
But other studies say that reading and listening to audiobooks are about equal when it comes to stimulating the brain. They just do it in different ways.
And still other studies say the brain has to conduct more “work” when it reads. Activity work.
Many of the “assessors” on the subject talk about engagement as being the biggest difference between the two mediums.
Psychology Today noted: “The critical difference between reading and listening is that reading is something you do, whereas listening is something that happens to you. Reading is an act of engagement. The words on the page aren’t going to read themselves, which is something they literally do in an audiobook. If you’re not actively taking in written information, then you’re not going to make progress on the book. Audiobooks, on the other hand, make progress with or without your participation. You can tune out, your mind wandering around the subject at hand, and there will still be forward motion in the story.”
So. There’s that too.
I’ve never listened to an audiobook. So maybe I’ll give it a try.
Or maybe I’ll just keep reading as I always do.
Because in the end, I think it depends on the person. It all comes down to what we like and feel comfortable with.
And with me and audiobooks? Well. I already have enough voices in my head without adding any more. It’s crowded up there.
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“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
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“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert
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“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
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Do you read? Or do you sort of read with your ears?
