I appreciate how the author brought up scripta continua as a response to those who dismiss listening to audiobooks as not reading. If you're not struggling to

I appreciate how the author brought up scripta continua as a response to those who dismiss listening to audiobooks as not reading. If you're not struggling to parse out the words like the ancient greeks and romans did, are you really doing all the work that could be done and getting the full experience? I "read" a lot of non-fiction via audiobooks. Sure, it's not the same thing as visually parsing a line of poetry and figuring out how to say it, and then how to say it again with a totally different meaning. That's not the point of most non-fiction. You're learning about stuff. You are being informed. To "listen" to an entire book on a subject you're interested in, to learn many things about it, and then claim you "haven't read the book" is nonsense. I would agree that, sometimes, you can tune boring passages out, but you can do that when reading a dead-tree book too. How many students have stayed up late, reading their course textbooks only to re-read the same page again and again because their mind is past its ability to absorb? Just as realizing you've tuned out and turning back a couple pages is a thing with books, so too is hitting the rewind button with an audiobook. Just as sometimes you have to put a dead-tree book down and think for a moment, so to does it pay dividends to hit pause on your audiobook. I'd argue that there's a bigger difference between being an active vs passive listener/reader than there is between listening and reading. The one thing I would concede is that there is some information audio just isn't up to conveying. Any book that is heavy on pictures, diagrams, or equations is not going to be possible to convey via pure audio.