I guess the title says it all. What is your opinion? Do you think they can be counted as actual reading or not?

You mean like particularly in English or just in general? I once listened to a 1984 novel in Czech and it was great, but you don't use your eyes, so I'd say not.

Well, in a way, yes and no. More of a no.
I would views it more as listening, because it's not about using yours eyes as it is about your ears.
I mean if you saw it as reading then one could take just ordinary listening like reading. It's definitely not like that, though.
You know, we read books, not listen to them.
See what I mean?

An interesting question. I'd say that audio books can be equal to actually reading a book as long as they are unabridged and the person listening pays the same amount of attention to listening as they do when reading. On the other hand, you can't see how the words are spelled so you don't learn much as far as spelling of words, which is – in my book – one of the advantages of reading. Also, it's much more uncomfortable to rewind when you don't catch the meaning of a sentence or phrase or something, while with a book, you just read it again as many times as you please without any inconvenience. To sum it up, for an English learner, they definitely don't count as reading, yet they will improve your English in an enjoyable way.

actual reading… what exactly do you mean? Of course it's not reading… but if you mean whether it counts for school, for your literature course, I mean as if you've read a novel, then I'd say YES.

I hope lit teachers won't hate me for that.

I know it's not the same as reading.

I saw this poll on the net and wanted to find out what others thought about it. A lot of people said it was the same. So I started thinking about it. I think it's not the same. When I read a book, I think that subconsciously I learn collocations, passive vocabulary and so on. Though I don't know the meaning of words, sometimes I can guess them. What about listening to the book? Do I get the same result? Do I subconsciously learn collocations? Do I learn passive vocabulary? I guess not because if I don't know how to spell the word, I can't guess the meaning even from the context.
What do you think about that?

Edit: Sorry, kind of not noticed Carlos1's comment which in a way explains my question. But if anyone else has an idea or an opinion…

J.Kraus: Well mostly I can tell how the word is spelled just by listening to it, even if I don't know the meaning. E.g. Exorbitant is definitely one of the words.

Yeah, I know, but sometimes it's not 100 %.

Regarding Jan Kraus's next-to-last post. Well, we should realize that the first was speaking and listening, long before some sort of reading.
So, yes, you can definitely learn new phrases collocations etc.
Another thing is that English pronunciation and the actual spelling differ a great deal, which is unfortunate for us non-natives. Actually, even for natives.
I don't know how about you, but I have seen natives having problems spelling a word right so many times. Penny in BBT, several times in Friends, just you name it. And those are natives! Most interesting, they knew what those words meant, could use them, just didn't know the spelling.
What I am saying here is that speaking and listening are No. 1, many years later followed by reading.

I think that newspapers are really good for practicing your English, lots of idioms, phrasal verbs, puns and fancy words. An it won't take days to read it all. I personally immersed myself in The Times, my brother gave me from his little UK trip. Actually to me reading newspapers without missing no more than 2 words per page on average is a standard of intellectuall achievement in any language.

Yes battlefield, but that's because there are many illiterate or at least partially illiterate people in the USA, but that shouldn't be a great surprise. My sis f.e. asks me pretty often what i/y is this or that word. So yes, I agree with your post, but native speaker doesn't equal a good teacher. Some people can't even pronounce certain words right.

I wouldn't say there are many more illiterate people than here in Czech. I mean, if you were to pick an ordinary person in Czech, working at a usual 9–5 job, typically-looking, possessing an average IQ, going to sleep at a common time, I am sure you would come to realize when linguistically interviewing them that there are so many language flaws, many problems with language rules and stuff.
Just the way it is. And always will be.

That's why I used the adjective „partially“. I meant people that don't know how to spell turqoise. That is probably why the spelling bee is way more popular over there than here. You know because of all the irregularities that you have to learn by heart. Penny from TBBT is a great example. She is a simple farm chick from Nebraska and that's why she can't spell the difficult words, which is hilarious when confronted with a genius freak like Sheldon. It doesn't mean I think she's dumb or illiterate. Great example could be taken from the ebonics (African American Vernacular English) like the spelling of the definite article the (tha, da) etc. You must've encountered it as well.

Anyway, we are getting a bit off the topic, which is not good. 

Yeah right.