A woman lies in a bed. She’s ill, fragile. A man sits next to her bed, he’s reading aloud to her. Her eyes are closed as she listens. This is the one thing he can do for her.
We read to our children to introduce them to the world. It is through reading to them that we introduce them to the world, to magic, to the importance of words and the power of storytelling.
The act of reading to someone as a gift.
I listen to audio books on my commute to and from work. This is time I allocate to listen to stories, and to have someone read to me. This time has become a highlight in my day. There are some narrators that tell stories better than others, and some stories that that capture my imagination more than others. However, the act of listening to someone read me a novel feels like exploring imagination; my own, the author’s, the narrator’s.
It feels like I’m someone else.
Some people think that listening to audio books is cheating, that you haven’t really ‘read’ the book. I believe they’re missing the point.