It is wild to me that there are people who think audiobooks is "cheating" literature.
Oh, so reading books is a competitive sport now?
unironically, it makes me sad that so many people (even people who like books!) still treat reading as homework
"audiobooks don't count as reading" is a sentence that only makes sense if reading "counts" for something.
This is true for all the dumbass discourse around reading: Does fanfiction count as reading? Do graphic novels or comics count as reading? Do you have to read "the classics"? Is reading short/easy books "cheating"? Is it okay to not finish a book, should it "count" towards your total? The answer to all of these questions is: log off.
What standard are you holding yourself up to? Why does it matter at all? Who is "counting" and why? You're 37 you can't get a good grade in reading anymore, it's not real
I wonder if part of the reason that audiobooks have that stigma is that it used to be extremely commonplace for audiobooks to also be abridgements. Producing audiobooks is expensive and when they were primarily on cassette, distributing them had to be quite expensive as well. So when the audiobook market was primarily commuting suburban dads in their cars listening to cut down version of Tom Clancy novels, they probably had a different vibe compared to now when not everything gets an audio release but a whole lot of stuff does.
Anywho, audiobooks rule (except when the narrator is bad), although it sucks that the market is so tied up with amazon/audible.
