- What do you think of reading aloud/being read to? Does it bring back memories of your childhood? Your children’s childhood?
- Does this affect the way you feel about audio books?
- Do you now have times when you read aloud or are read to?
- As a kid, I liked it. My mother read to me a lot, but I learned to read very early—I actually don’t remember not being able to read, although, of course, I couldn’t at some point.
- Not really; my feelings towards audiobooks come from the way I learn. I’m a visual learner, so I can’t initially engage with a text via audiobook; I miss things, I can’t take notes, I can’t mark passages, so on and so forth. I can only listen to audiobooks that I’ve already read in print form; it’s how I reread books, really.
- Nope, unless audiobooks count.
And here’s a quote from Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading that, I think, manages to express both the tyranny and the comfort of being read to:
At the same time, the act of reading out loud to an attentive listener often forces the reader to become more punctilious, to read without skipping or going back to a previous passage, fixing the text by means of a certain ritual formality. Whether in the Benedictine monasteries or the winter rooms of the late Middle Ages, in the inns and kitchens of the Renaissance or the drawing-rooms and cigar factories of the nineteenth century—even today, listening to an actor read a book on tape as we drive down the highway—the ceremony of being read to no doubt deprives the listener of some of the freedom inherent in the act of reading—choosing a tone, stressing a point, returning to a best-loved passage—but it also gives the versatile text a respectable identity, a sense of unity in time and an existence in space that it seldom has in the capricious hands of a solitary reader. (123)
- Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. 1996. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.
I like the idea of using an audio book to ‘reread’ books. I might try that!
TRISH – My BTT Post
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I agree. I only liked being read to (audio books) as a kid, which is why I try to read to my daughter often. 🙂
http://amylunderman.blogspot.com/2011/09/booking-through-theme-thursday.html
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I think that reading out load is a special thing to share with someone at any age. My BTT
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Reading aloud to someone makes it more special, not into audio books myself.
http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/09/booking-through-thursday_29.html
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I’ve never really considered whether being read to as a kid influenced my feelings toward audiobooks. My mom read to my siblings and me every night, and I fondly remember both those hours and many of the books we read together. It took years before I tried audiobooks. I listen to them frequently now, but I do tend to choose books that are less complicated for the most part. Really dense novels, heavy nonfiction, etc. are hard for me to listen to just because I miss things. Other than audiobooks, I rarely get read to, unless my husband comes across a passage he especially likes! (He’s working on The Complete Works of Shakespeare at present!)
Being read to does remind me of my childhood, but now that I can read for myself I much prefer that. I can read much faster than someone can read aloud, and I’m impatient.
I agree that I’m much more of a visual learner, I don’t generally listen to audiobooks (Goliath being the notable exception…Alan Cumming’s accents are too good to miss.) I find that I space out. That said, I did “read” Pride and Prejudice for the first time via audiobook while I was running, because unlike music audiobooks don’t influence my pace. But I must admit I did space out at times, and thus it had to be something where I already knew the plot.
As far as reading goes, I do have a memory of not being able to read…or read cursive, specifically. My mother was talking on the phone and I remember imitating her unreadable loopy handwriting on a pad meant for messages.
Exactly. I can’t listen to audiobooks while I run, but I run very differently from someone who runs properly, like you. 🙂