Cartime Stories
Feb. 20th, 2009 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Do you read out loud? To your kids? To someone? Do you share stories with others?
Bryon and I occasionally get a hankering to share a literary experience together. We read the Harry Potter books together, mostly me reading and him listening, but sometimes the reverse. It became a shared experience for us. We read Elizabeth Peter's Amelia Peabody books together. I enjoy giving the characters fun voices. I suppose listening to someone else read a book on tape is similar. There's less laughing at goofy mistakes, but it's still the oral/aural tradition.
Bryon and I have decided to read Terry Pratchett's Disc World series on the commute. Pratchett's prose trips me up a wee bit, as his sentences tend to lead one way, but wander actually another. I've read the books that feature Granny Weatherwax and her adventures. No surprise there. I also have enjoyed the Tiffany Aching books he's done, where Pratchett's sentences know exactly where they're going. I guess that's the difference 26 years of writing makes--from 1983, when he wrote Color of Magic to 2009.
I look forward to reading all the books as another shared experience with Bryon. I'd be happy to hear about your experiences in the oral/aural tradition.
Catherine
Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.
I've read Pratchett in the car to my sweeties before!
Date: 2009-02-20 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-20 03:53 pm (UTC)In our pre-parenting days, my husband and I read the first three Harry Potters together. Mostly I read and he listened, because, having majored in English and French Lit, and thus perforce done an enormous amount of reading aloud in front of people, I am more comfortable with it (also, I talk less at work than he does, so my voice is less tired at the end of the day). It was a good experience, and I would also like to do it again (maybe with the rest of the Harry Potters, which he still hasn't read!!).
ETA: I meant to add that we don't read aloud in the car -- he's driving, and I get carsick if I read (a legacy of pregnancy, it appears, because I never used to). Neither of us has ever commuted by car, either, so I was on my second reading of your post before I realized you weren't talking about reading aloud to each other on the bus or subway :D
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Date: 2009-02-20 06:18 pm (UTC)When I was a child he read out loud to me every night--my strongest memories are of the Narnia books, starting when I was about 4. He did all the voices. (He was a drama major in college, originally.) It's one of my fondest childhood memories. I love to read out loud and can't wait to read to my kids, but right now I never get the chance because my husband isn't a fan of listening to books, he prefers to read to himself.
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Date: 2009-02-20 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-20 08:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-20 09:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-21 05:09 pm (UTC)What... that's never happened to you?
And I used to Madeline every night before she went to bed when she was younger and before I worked second shift. That was a lot of fun. I remember reading her The Hobbit and The Princess and the Goblins and The Story of Doctor Doolittle.
For a while our church had lay readers doing the scripture readings, which I enjoyed; but the pastor dropped it, partially because of a dearth of volunteers but mostly, I think, because some cranky parishioners didn't like it. I didn't do the Cookie Monster, but I had fun trying to differentiate the voice between the prophetic declamations of the Old Testament readings and the conversational tone of of Paul's epistles. (Well, I do Paul as chatty and conversational, anyway).