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Comment by paulluuk | Hacker News Reader

So, I listen to about 25 audiobooks per year (mostly fantasy and sci-fi, with a few political, popular science or popular economics book sprinkled between). I'm quite happy about that, because it's something that I can do in bed, while travelling to/from work, while doing groceries, etc.

You might say that it's my "escape from reality".

But.. well.. who cares? I don't think that my unending love for Dungeon Crawler Carl is somehow making me a better person.

I think that something much more relevant is how much exercise people get, how many people do weekly sports or exercise for example? And that's something that the Hacker News crowd in particular will likely score worse on then how many books they read per year.

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Dungeon Crawler Carl is outstanding. My partner and I blew through the most recent one in mere days after it came out. It's going to be a long wait for #8.

If you haven't, I highly recommend Orconomics as well. J. Zachary Pike is a masterful writer.

I know right?! It's so good, but I don't know anyone who has read it, haha. I'll pick up your recommendation for sure.

This seems bit like anti-intellectualism to me. I perceive mention of physical exercise as red herring here because you can do both. Actually that is what I do also while commuting.

Audio books are fine but actual reading is important too. The "escape from reality" is not relevant part but being served without doing the work is.

> Audio books are fine but actual reading is important too. The "escape from reality" is not relevant part but being served without doing the work is.

I disagree that audiobooks are not a substitute to actual reading, with respect to your point regarding the medium itself. Perhaps you have a point regarding the kind of material and listening that one can multitask/commute while listening. But stories were first transmitted orally and provoked imaginations and creativity with the same limited information all the same, and continue to. It is arguably the more primitive and natural medium for storytelling but that for a period it was only economical to disseminate them very widely by writing. Whatever beneficent mental work goes into reading fiction especially I believe happens in aural listening.

If on the other hand you argue that it is the work that goes into interpreting the written word visually, I would say that the same work happens outside of fiction as well, including all the lowbrow and instrumental reading that we do all the time nowadays.

The main difference is that when "listening" most people here talk about doing it while doing something else.

Whereas reading requires a person's vision to be focused on the book, and therefore precludes driving, and most other activities. The book therefore receives the readers full attention, it's not background music to the commute.

The difference in attention is significant.

Given all of that, I don't think the "reading a book" metric is really significant in measure how thoughtful society is, given that most books mentioned here are vacuous make believe. Entertainment is fine, but reading "Pink Unicorns Fly Through Hyperspace" isn't expanding anyone's awareness of the world.

I love reading and other intellectual activities, so I’m by no means anti-intellectual.

But I do abhor elitism - whether cultural or intellectual. I reject the idea that 'high culture' defines intelligence or value, and by extension, I question whether we can truly measure the intellectual level of a society based purely on how many (or which) books they read.

You're right that physical exercise is somewhat tangential to this discussion. My point wasn’t to distract but to challenge the idea that book-reading is the sole meaningful metric for personal or societal development.

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