Audiobooks
For almost my entire reading life, I’ve always read to myself. I have no recollection of ever having books read to me as a child. That’s not to say it didn’t happen but possibly once I learned to read it stopped happening. Or something along those lines.
The one exception on this was when I was in fourth grade and our English teacher read Charlotte’s Web out loud to our class in preparation for us to take a field trip to see the animated film. I don’t remember it that well aside from us sitting on a rug or something while she read. That was the only teacher who I recall doing that.
I didn’t go to kindergarten but once I was in first grade I was super-ready to read. I was in the top reading group from early on and stayed that way throughout my primary years. So again I read to myself and there was never any notion that I would be read to.
I few years ago I read The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker and I really adored it. I read it a couple of times and still go back and read parts occasionally. Barker just released a sequel this week, but it’s currently only on audiobook. I was quite torn because I want to know what happens next but I really prefer to read for myself.
I read books on Netgalley which provides advanced reader copies in exchange for reviews. Occasionally something good comes along and this time the audiobook for the sequel showed up. I went ahead and requested it and happily, I succeeded.
I’ve been listening for the past three days now. It’s really weird to listen to the book instead of reading it for myself. The worst part is I have my own imagined voices and images of the story and now I’ve got someone else inflicting a different version on me. Of course there’s no way around this but it makes for a totally new “reading” experience. I did find the first couple of chapters to be a bit rough and didn’t find the reader did so good of a job at differentiating characters voices. It’s gotten better as it’s gone on. What’s really funny is that one character has a longish name and it’s pronounced fully each time. But when I read for myself, I tend to create a mental shortcut while reading so as not to take up so much time. It’s really funny to keep hearing this long name spoken.
I’m only up to chapter ten and there’s a lot more to go. I am kind of getting into it a bit more now. Initially I was listening with earphones but last night I connected with a bluetooth speaker and just let it play continuously. I’ve also played it in the car but I find it gets stuck after each chapter ends. I think I listened to three or four last night without pause, so that set up seems to work okay for me. It says I’m about a quarter of the way through the book so progress is happening.
I really look forward to the ebook/print versions being released in June or July so I can read it again with my own personal voices and images. One thing that I do wonder about is whether this would have been an issue had this been the first book or a standalone story. I might have to try it out some time just to see.
2 Comments
Valerie
Wow, I was read to So Much as a child. I can remember lots of different teachers reading to the class, and turning us on to neat stories. My fifth and sixth grade teacher introduced us to science fiction. My fourth grade teacher abruptly *stopped* reading Julie Of The Wolves in the middle, probably because it has a rape scene in it. (I read the rest and didn’t understand what was happening there, but then years later I realized what it was. To this day I wonder why the author put a rape into a kids’ book.) Grownups read to my sister and me. And we both turned into voracious readers at a very young age. I wish people had read to you!
It’s been years since I last listened to an audiobook now, but I’ve found that they tend to be very hit-or-miss, depending on whether or not I like the reader. My favorites are the ones where the reader really “gets it” about the story and has contagious excitement. Often the books I like the best are read by their authors, since the author is guaranteed to understand the book and get enthusiastic at the right times. Nowadays I tend to be listening to podcasts, not books, and I find I like listening on a faster speed. Spoken words often feel to me like the reader is wasting my time, because reading written words is so much faster. Speeding up the playback makes that feeling go away.
For maybe a year I’ve had a digital note on my computer to remind me read “The Thinking Woman’s Guide To Real Magic” because you liked it. It keeps getting delayed because my library has it as an e-book, and I always have paper books that are due and not renewable, so they always get jumped to the front of the line. Which means that I never get around to reading this book. And I really should!
Purple Lorikeet
I wonder what is typical with teachers in primary schools. It would seem logical to read to kids but perhaps that action didn’t happen so much in upper grades. I did read to Game Fanatic long after he was able to read for himself. I just don’t recall being read to, so if it happened much, it left no lasting impact.
I’m almost halfway through the audiobook and I have gotten much more used to the reader. I really do think she has improved over the course of the book. Apparently she did the audiobook for the previous book so I’d be curious to hear a bit of that. I have toyed with the idea of listening to audiobooks in the car more recently but just have never taken that thought into action. I have run into the problem of listening at night before bed when I am almost falling asleep at times and miss bits. When I am reading myself, I tend to just reread the page but it’s a bit more time-consuming to go back on audio and I just haven’t done that as yet. I decided I didn’t miss anything major and so I will catch up when the book is published. I still find it weird to have the audio version published first.