[basscomm]

There are many reasons why someone might want to improve their reading, and the only solution to that is to practice reading.

Audiobooks are someone else's (i.e. not your) interpretation of a work. Kind of like how you might go watch a play or a movie instead of reading a script. There's nothing wrong with either of those things, but they're not reading.

[latexr]

> There's nothing wrong with either of those things, but they're not reading.

Why are you compelled to defend that (in my view) meaningless distinction? Why does it matter? I’m asking genuinely, so I can understand why we’re having this conversation.

[basscomm]

Defend what? That reading and listening are two different skills?

[Apocryphon]

I am somewhat biased against audiobooks as well, but how do you justify that consuming text, language, words is substantially different between reading and listening? Particularly in novels and the like? If you aren't re-reading passages, and only processing lines of text in a linear fashion, how is that any different from listening to a transcription?