Is this cheating ?

 Per this article in the New Yorker:  

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/recording-audiobooks-for-my-dad-stephen-king  

Stephen King used to pay his kids to record books onto cassette tape.   And per this next article:

https://ew.com/article/2007/02/01/stephen-king-why-he-loves-good-audiobook/ 

the reason was that he felt that stories were more naturally conveyed by listening to a human voice than by reading them silently off the page.

But for some reason it feels like cheating to me.  Just sitting back and listening rather then working at reading a book.  Shouldn't some effort be required ?

Now I don't spend time in a car like I used to, 5 days a week, a couple hours a day commuting, what a waste of time.  But that would have been a good place/time for listening to audio books (instead of listening to traffic reports on the radio).  However I don't ever remember seeing a western where someone was reading to someone else on a stage coach :)

I have tried turning on the read aloud function in some of the reader programs but it's just not the same as listening to a real person.   I also worked on a Morse Book project which would send text files downloaded from the internet in Morse code but that was also unsatisfying.

Now I listen to Chapter a Day while exercising (there aren't any traffic reports on the radio  around here :)

https://www.wpr.org/programs/chapter-day

 Finally, here is a story, Making it Home by Wendell Berry,  read by the author.  A wonderful story, simple but powerful -  not only the content but the performance.

or use this link to Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApRLCXCB80E

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm