Swapping Books for Audiobooks has Reignited my Love of Literature, by Verity Babbs
The Guardian, Monday 6 November 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/06/swapping-books-for-audiobooks-literature
Below the Line comment:
I have little money, which rules out audible book
subscription services. However, I have discovered both that Project Gutenberg
has audio-recorded material, and in particular Librivox has a wealth of
material, all free. As a result, I have discovered that a good voice-actor can
greatly enhance my experience of a book. Recently, I have been enjoying reading
(the book) Nicholas Nickleby (I am about half-way through). I downloaded the
Librivox version read by Mil Nicholson, started again at the beginning of the
story, and found that her voice-skills brought out so much more of the story
than my silent reading. I love reading Dickens especially because I enjoy his
literary language, and so both media are important to me. I have a copy of
Bleak House to read next, but I shall probably listen to an audio recording
first, not least to bring the characters into colour for me, and then enjoy
reading the book. One disadvantage of the audio version is that I love to check
out Dicken's wonderful vocabulary, which is easy if the word is on the page in
front of me, but tricky when I am out walking the lanes of the North Downs
while listening to a description of the Marshalsea Prison (Little Dorrit). By
the by, as well as the book and the audio recording, I like to use an online
text version to enable me easily to search the text. For instance, if I
remember correctly, Dickens used the word deprecated only once in Little
Dorrit, but used the word depreciated several times. That additional 'i' in the
spelling difference between the two words, nearly invisible to my aging eyes,
changes the meaning of the sentences in which Dickens used them. (It is also
significant, I think, that in a narrative focused so much on the effects of
money on individuals and society, Dickens should use the word (and meaning)
'depreciated' when today the word (thought and meaning) 'deprecated' would be
more likely.)
Maybe a little controversial to say, but I have found the
audio versions of classics such as The Odyssey, Gulliver's Travels and Barry
Lyndon, very, very much easier to listen to than to read, because the constant
(inexorable) progress of the narration drives me through the dry passages at
which I would have stumbled had I been reading rather than listening.
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