Voices in Our Heads

“’With a digital audiobook you don’t always notice how long a book is, and something that might look experimental on the page sounds totally natural when read aloud.’ In a way, she [Laura smith, senior acquisitions editor at WF Howes, company publishing the audio edition] says, Ducks, Newburyport may be perfectly suited to the format. ‘The idea of listening to someone’s innermost thoughts is intriguing. The further we get into the protagonist’s head, the more powerful the experience becomes. It gives a surreal sense of immediacy, and an intense need to keep listening – to stick with her and find out what happens’” (from “Surreal immediacy: how a 1,000-page book became a 45-hour audiobook).

When I checked out Lucy Ellman’s novel Ducks, Newburyport with my hoopla account and loaded those 1000 pages, I had just read the article in the Guardian. As soon as I saw the fields of words bounded by slim borders of white, I realized that I would be saving Ellman’s tour de force for our road trip this summer. What better way to be doubly transported than to drive the Pacific Coast highway while swimming in a sea of redoubtable prose?

Audiobooks? Personally I’ve hardly explored the medium. And what a shame. Yesterday, while making dinner, I finished The Tatooist of Auschwitz, my tears adding salt to the spinach searing on the stovetop. Here’s what I know now—it’s easily as hard to return from this form of storytelling as from the eyes-across-the-page mode. A recent article  from Discover says:

” …the most recent study, which compared brains when they were listening and reading, showed that words tend to activate the same brain regions with the same intensity, regardless of input….The subject’s brains were creating meaning from the words in the same way, regardless if they were listening or reading. In fact, the brain maps for both auditory and visual input they created from the data looked nearly identical.”

I remember my son arriving home from college for vacation looking somewhat dazed. As I appraised him post-hug, I asked, “How was your trip?”

“Well, mom, I just listened to The Road. Now I have to read it.” I waited. “I’m not sure that the way I feel about it hasn’t been too influenced by the way the reader read it, so…” These are words every book-loving mom—person—wants to hear.

I’m thinking about them now as I watch too many kids in the schools where I substitute discount reading. Many of them do love art, so graphic literature does capture some, but I am often touting the great audiobooks that are out there for them, for us. And I guess that’s at the heart of this: I need to do more “pushing” toward audiobooks.

Maybe you could help?!