Biblioracle: The forgotten joy of reading books aloud with a loved one
For those of us who are fortunate, our first experience of reading is being read to.
I definitely don’t remember the first time someone read me a story, but I do recall, in that vague sense of memory way, sitting on my mother’s lap, paging through a book with her, and somewhere along the line when she said, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish …” something started to click, and I was reading on my own before I started kindergarten.
While I was definitely excited to be able to devour these things called books on my own time, something is lost when you’re no longer read to. Lots of kids continue to ask to be read a story long after they can read for good reason. Being close to a loved one, sinking into a story that’s being told to you really is a great pleasure and a sensation that is distinct from reading for oneself.
When I was teaching college creative writing, I would always take time in at least one class period to read an entire short story out loud to students so they could get in touch with the visceral reactions they would have as they listened to the story unfolded.
I would often use a story by Charles Baxter called “Through the Safety Net” from a collection with the same title. It’s a short, darkly humorous, tense piece where in the opening pages we’re signaled that something catastrophic is going to happen, and we spend the rest of the story — primarily an uneventful domestic scene of a wife and husband — waiting for the calamity to occur.
There is a moment where the woman removes a grapefruit knife from a kitchen drawer that has students holding their breath.
As the reader of the story with a captive audience, I always enjoyed the feeling of power I had as the only one who could unspool the narrative. I must’ve read that story to students a dozen times, and seeing their reactions never got old. The students themselves reported that it was one of their favorite moments in the semester.
Given that both the reader and receiver of the story read aloud derive such pleasure from the act, I’m wondering why we don’t continue to do it once we age out of our childhood years.
Maybe audio books fill part of this niche, but that isn’t really the same thing, is it? There’s something about the intimacy of two humans sharing a book that’s very different from listening to a professional reader on a recording.
I suppose there are a number of reasons this doesn’t happen more often, but I’m not sure they’re good ones.
It requires two people to sync up their time and interests. Mrs. Biblioracle and I sometimes can’t find the time to watch an episode of a TV show we’re both interested in simultaneously. Thank goodness for our streaming video-on-demand world, I guess.
Both parties have to agree on the book, though this shouldn’t be too hard.
Is it just that it seems a little weird to be read to when you know how to read? It shouldn’t. I know how to cook, but I still like having someone else prepare a meal. In fact, I like it much more than cooking.
I think I’ve convinced myself to try it, at least once. My suggestion to myself and anyone else who is intrigued is to start small, with a single short story, or maybe a few poems.
Then make sure the day’s bustle is over, and you can settle in, and get in touch with the listener you once were.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris” by Cormac McCarthy
2. “The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich
3. “Foster” by Claire Keegan
4. “Liberation Day” by George Saunders
5. “Septology” by Jon Fosse
— Matthew W., Rexburg, Idaho
Very intriguing list of books with some heady philosophical underpinnings attached to offbeat narratives. The book in that vein that comes to mind is one of my favorites of the last decade, “A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall” by Will Chancellor.
1. “The Secret Chord” by Geraldine Brooks
2. “Lavinia” by Ursula K. Le Guin
3. “The Blacktongue Thief” by Christopher Buehlman
4. “Wolf in White Van” by John Darnielle
5. “A Time to Keep Silence” by Patrick Leigh Fermor
— Ben B., Portland, Oregon
This is a book that utterly absorbed me, even though in theory my interest in a young mother temporarily apart from her husband and struggling to care for her child is limited. It’s a testament to the author’s incredible acuity for the moment-to-moment experiences of life, “The Golden State” by Lydia Kiesling.
1. “Wrong Place, Wrong Time” by Gillian McAllister
2. “The Son of the House” by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia
3. “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson
4. “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick
5. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
— Sue A., Hawthorn Woods
I’m seeing a lot of contemporary book club books here, which is absolutely fine, but given that Sue has a way to find books on those lists, I’m going to reach for something she might not know otherwise. Joshua Henkin writes quietly powerful, heartbreaking novels, and in this case, I’m going to specifically recommend “The World Without You.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
