After last week's post on Audible, I realized I had many further stray thoughts about the audio book experience in general. I've had no problem integrating Audible into my normal listening routine at work or in the car, and in general I'm satisfied with the experience.

But I can't help this nagging feeling that it somehow doesn't count -- that I'm not actually reading the books I'm listening to. And this sensation is really dependent on the content of the book in question. I felt no qualms whatsoever about Yes, Please or Not That Kind of Girl, perhaps because the respective tones were funny and personable, and maybe because they were read by the authors themselves, which somehow seems to legitimize them?

But then again, Just Kids is read by Patti Smith but I can't help but feel like a dirty cheat for listening to the audio book, and there were certainly times when she was going on and on about the bohemian scene of St Mark's Place in 1967 and I was thinking about my grocery list.

And yet, I know I get distracted while I'm reading too; there is no way I never thought about other things while wading through Moby Dick. My eyes manage to move from word to word, line to line, down the page, without my absorbing more than a small fraction of the meaning or content. I think this is a pretty normal experience, and I don't fault myself for it, so why do I care when the same thing happens with audio books?

So the inevitable question becomes: do audio books count? Are they legitimate? If I've listened to an audio book, can I say I "read" the book, or do I have to clarify that I actually listened to it instead? Why is there a difference?