Investigating Audiobooks

In deciding what to read, I ask myself the question: how is listening to an audiobook like and unlike reading a physical text? That is, can I say I have ‘read’ a book if I have only listened to it being read to me? Or, instead, have I missed out on something critical to an engagement with the original text that only visually and physically poring over the words, their careful and intentional collection and ordering, and their signification, can afford? I have no answers. Only questions…