I should be reading Through the Looking-Glass, because that’s this week’s reading. I listened to Dracula, which is next week’s and I could be listening to Frankenstein which is the week after that’s assignment.
Instead, I’m sort of pecking at Looking-Glass because I’m head over heels in love with The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. What an unfolding series of tales about the settlement of Mars and what happens over time. I had started listening to it while quilting but now I’m listening to it in the car and even a bit through the computer.
I didn’t think I would like audio books. When I’d tried them in the past, my brain would wander away, or I would and then I’d realize I was many pages down the road and had no idea what had happened. Since I tried again I have learned that they’re not the best in all situations. Certain quilting activities, great. Actual quilting, excellent. Sticking squares on the wall or cutting fabric, not so much. Commuting, excellent. Going somewhere and needing to pay attention to directions, not so much.
I haven’t hit a voice that I have had a problem with. Most readers read in a pretty clear and undramatized way, perhaps with a little voicing of gender but not overdone.
Mostly, I realize how much I am enjoying the actual words. As a kid I read a lot. What I lacked in breadth of reading (different titles) I made up for in dedication to my favorites. Then I have to say I was given speed reading training in Junior High and again in High School and it seemed to me to change reading for me. It certainly did not improve my comprehension and retention of what I was studying. It did make it easier for me to quickly find what I was looking for on a page.
For years, I did not read much fiction at all. Most of my reading was non-fiction, biography, how-to. Then I read some things like The Belgariad and eventually began reading and re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I read the Silmarillion and did it by reading parts of it out loud. It helped me get past the biblically long, contorted sentences and hard to fathom connections.
These audio books are giving me fiction back. The well-put-together words, the delicious phrases, the room to think about what is going on. I listened to Alice in Wonderland and part of my brain was thinking of all the bizarre things the teacher and other students were going to tell me this book was about – politics, religion, pedophilia, drugs, whatever.
As I listened to the story spin out, I thought: oh, I see. She’s too little (young) for this. She’s too big (old, grown up) for that. That’s what we tell kids all the time – you’re too big to cry or act that way, you’re too young to do those things or to be able to think for yourself. All of that makes the kid wonder where the heck they are in the big scheme of things, and the big adult world.
I did have a moment as I rolled this over in my brain when I thought of all the things I was going to hear these stories were about and felt, I must just be a terrible reader that I don’t get all this stuff as I’m reading. I get too involved with the story and language and the writer’s little tricks and fail to understand all the deep dark mysteries of it all. Oh dear.
Well anyway, The Martian Chronicles. Read or listen to them. They’re great! Next up Frankenstein. Then Hawthorne and Poe. Where’s my big pink complete works of poe book? I better start looking now!
