Reading Aloud

Confession: The faults I hate most in others are the ones I see in myself.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

I've fallen in love with audiobooks over the last eight years. It all started when I found myself driving for six hours a week, and the radio began to wear on me. I had only a portable tape player, but it was enough to get my started.

Now, more recently, I've discovered the joys of the iPod and the free audiobook rentals at the local library. It didn't take long to put two and two together.

I love hearing stories read aloud. That's something I enjoyed as a child. It's almost as if prose on a page is like clothes on a hangar. Reading the words silently is like visualizing those clothes on a person, but hearing a story read aloud is like seeing those clothes being modeled.

On the one hand, the model could be good or bad, and the clothes could suffer. On the other hand, halfway decent clothes can be made to look incredible.

I guess the trick is to write so that the vocal interpretation is kind of "built in" to the words themselves, in rhythm and cadence, so the silent reader can hear them in his head, and the vocal reader can read at best advantage.