This is one of the rare questions where knowing a person's answer tells you their habit rather than their reasoning. Asked whether listening to an audiobook is equivalent to having read the book, 29% of British adults said yes. Among those who had listened to an audiobook in the previous twelve months, 69% said yes. Among those for whom audiobooks are the main way they consume books, 78% said yes. The belief tracks the behaviour almost perfectly, in both directions. That means the dispute is less about evidence than about which side of it the person answering has stood on. The format also carries a history that cuts against the snobbery. Recorded books were built in 1931 by the American Foundation for the Blind and the Library of Congress as talking books for readers who could not use print, with test recordings made in 1932 and full production from 1934. For most of the format's existence, calling listening not-really-reading would have been a statement about disability rather than about effort.