I am an avid reader and a member of
two book clubs, but I have never “read” a book on tape. I have always been suspicious of this
approach. How will I be able to
concentrate? Won’t it be painfully
slow? What if I don’t like the reader’s
voice?
For 18 years, I was a mom who took
her evenings at home seriously, and many of those involved reading in a comfy
chair in my study while my daughter did her homework. But now, two things have changed: first, there is no daughter to be home for,
so there is no impetus to actually occupy my evenings with reading and second,
I’m spending far too many hours in the car, driving to classes at College of Marin, to rehearsals in Palo Alto, to voice coaching
in Oakland, and then to Almost Pi in Point Reyes to recover! So, I borrowed a few audio books from the
library, and now, I’m hooked! No longer
do I perceive these commutes as wasted hours.
I find myself learning, laughing, lingering over the sentences before I
withdraw the car key.
And as for the voice of the reader, I’ve learned to adapt. From Stefan Rudnicki, whose resonant bass lent extra gravitas to Nabokov’s “Speak Memory” yet was so rich as to give me auditory indigestion, to Elisa Donovan, whose cutesy vocal lilt in “Lean In” by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg seemed antithetical to the topic at hand (advancement of women in the workplace, but to be fair, Sandberg herself suffers a similar affliction), audition adds an extra dimension to the experience of reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment