“A Singular Sensation,” my latest column for the Washington Independent Review of Books, looks at reading aloud from a number of angles: the joys and benefits of audiobooks, the ways that reading stories to someone turns a solitary experience into a communal one, and then the advantages to writers of speaking their words and hearing them fresh during drafting-revision of works in progress.
Here’s a sample paragraph from the column:
Audiobooks help busy folks find time to read and distract readers from boring drives in a positive way, but to my mind, their value also transcends that. Listening to all — all — of Morrison’s books (even the ones I’d already read) not only helped pass the miles, but also brought me into the complex cadences of her prose in ways I’d not fully felt seeing the sentences on the page.
Read the full article here—aloud, if you want.