Listening to Books
I used to listen to book so on tape only on long car trips. I was a fast reader and the pace of an audio book is slow.
But since my accident I've listened to many audio books. The slower pace works for me now. I don't tend to listen to them at home--I can't seem to just be still and listen--but I listen to them in the car instead of the radio. I can't set up my playlists of music anymore, it's just too frustrating, but I can book a book in and listen.
The reader makes a difference. An audio book is part performance. Oh, yes, it can be just read and I've heard those. But a good reader makes a huge difference. I just finished listening to The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I highly recommend it and look forward to the movie--the casting looks terrific. But I'm amazing how a narrator in this case a British man, can make all the voices different while never changing this tone. He doesn't perform each voice like a cartoon voice, no, that would be disruptive. What he does in change the pace, the focus, the character of each voice, yet all the book is clearly just being read. It's almost seamless. In fact at times I felt like Neil Gaiman was just telling me another story in a bar.
I think I'm just going to listen to it again.
Anon