Ngượng ngùng vì nghe sách nói

-> dùng từ trại đi, "hấp thụ", "vật vã với"... quyển sách (đó)...

hoặc đã đến lúc thay đổi khái niệm "đọc", là thu nạp thông tin thì cách gì chả được... 

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Dear Dan,

From time to time, people around me discuss a book they have read recently. While I know the book well, and I want to participate in the conversation, I hesitate because I listened to the book on tape. My first question is why am I embarrassed to say that I listened to the book? My second question is what can I do about it?

—Paula

We learn how to listen and comprehend at a young age and therefore we don't really remember how difficult it was for us. On the other hand, we learn how to read and write at a later age and we all remember the difficulty of the early struggles with reading and writing. Because of that, people associate greater difficulty with reading than listening. As a consequence, we take greater pride in reading than listening.

My first suggestion is that you realize that it isn't necessarily the case that reading is more difficult. It's just that we forget how difficult it is to learn to comprehend. When I got your question I purchased an audio book and I listened to it on a long flight–and for what it is worth, I find it is harder to focus when listening to a book than when reading one.

A second suggestion is that you to find a different word to describe your experience. For example, for books you loved, maybe you can say: "I inhaled that book." For more difficult books, maybe you can say: "I struggled with it," or some other phrase.

If these don't work, perhaps it is time to change the meaning of the word "read." Maybe we should acknowledge that today there are many ways to get information — audiobooks being one of them. This might seem dishonest, but you might be able to start a revolution (khởi đầu cuộc cách mạng), and help lots of people who listen to audiobooks feel more comfortable with (cảm thấy thoải mái) what they're doing. Good luck!

Bài trước: Hà Nội: Khổ sở tìm chỗ đỗ xe