I spend the majority of my day with a connected pair of white wires dangling from my ears. If I’m alone, whether at work, in the car on my four-hour commute, or doing various duties around the house, my iPod and iPhone are with me. I leave the wires behind for meetings during the day, family dinners at night, and when I’m catching up with friends over drinks, but otherwise I’m almost always plugged in.

What comes out of those wires varies greatly. In the past few weeks alone I’ve cycled through Pusha T, Bret Easton Ellis, Eminem, Anthony Jeselnik, Lauryn Hill, Alec Baldwin, YG, Bill Burr, Method Man, Kevin Smith, Nas, Howard Stern, and many more. Though I love listening to comedians and hip-hop will always be my first love, I spend more and more of my time listening to audiobooks.

For years, the only interaction I had with audiobooks was the Risk Management joke on Seinfeld and when Stern’s guys would cut up an autobiography to make the famous author say something hilariously ridiculous and raunchy. That was it. Then, at some unknown point in the mid-‘00s, I listened to my first one. Then another. Then two more. Soon, instead of listening to Wu-Tang Forever for the thousandth time, I was now having a soothing voice read to me as if I were a child preparing for bed.

I was hooked.

In the years since, I’ve heard far more books than I’ve read. I’ve listened to biographies and autobiographies, novels and novellas, funny books by comedians and serious books by trained authors. I’ve blown through the Harry Potter saga for the first time and I’ve listened to every Grisham book at least twice.

Whenever I find myself at a party or a dinner discussing books, I’ll start to mention some of the better books I’ve taken in recently – Ghostman, Born Standing Up, 11/22/63, The Cuckoo’s Calling, Bossypants – by saying, “I just read…” before catching myself. Because I didn’t actually read them.

Do audiobooks count as reading?

In a sense, yes. The audiobook, assuming it’s unabridged, is the same as the book and it just requires a switching of the senses: taking it in through your ears rather than your eyes. The listener takes in the story and can hear alliteration, symbolism, and theme just as easily as if scanning the written word. Thanks to audiobooks, I’ve become exposed to, and imbibed, far more works of both fiction and nonfiction than I would have otherwise.

However, there is more to reading than just taking in the narrative. After all, just because you can listen to a story doesn’t prevent you from being illiterate. You can hear music, that doesn’t mean you can write or read it. Audiobooks present an issue with homophones and spelling, particularly of a character’s name, as well as punctuation and grammar, important things that are naturally learned through years of reading.

The biggest difference is that reading takes time and attention. A book is meant to be enjoyed myopically. I listen to audiobooks while doing dishes and sitting in traffic and they have saved me from depression and road rage numerous times, but my mind is always compromised and multitasking. It’s nearly impossible for me to get lost in the story, regardless of how well written it may be. I may get a picture of the world the writer has created, but I won’t enter that world. If I’m reading a physical book (let’s not talk about Kindles) while sitting on a park bench or in my favorite chair, I forget that I’m actually reading and I’m inside that book.

Have you ever looked up after reading a really engrossing book and it takes you a second to readjust to the real world? That’s the difference between reading a book and listening to one.

Do audiobooks count as reading? Not really. A little bit.

More importantly, does it matter? Absolutely not.