Audio Books vs Bound Books

Recently I've been listening to an abnormal amount of audiobooks. I can get so much reading done, and that is a very exciting prospect! But does listening to a book bring the same benefits of reading one? Or is it almost as mindless as watching a tv show?

When I began to wonder about this, my first thought was grammar, since I'd just written a blog post about that. Reading in the normal way will automatically give you an ear for good grammar, and help you with your spelling. Audio books do not have this benefit, but since grammar help is not exactly what people have in mind when they start reading, that hardly seems relevant for most everyone. If you already have perfect grammar, this doesn't apply.

The next problem was the temptation that comes with listening to a book. Multitasking. One of the most beautiful things about picking up and reading it is that it brings you into a different world and lets you escape from this world for a bit. But when you can multitask while reading, it hardly seems like a retreat.

But multitasking is also the biggest benefit of listening to an audio book. I can do something mindlessly productive while I'm listening, which is a huge breakthrough, and allows me to read twice as much as I normally would.

So, does the quality or quantity matter more? Or do you think that listening to audio books is better quality reading? Discuss in the comment section!