I read while I'm driving.
(The title words are true, but I don't do it often and I only selected that as a title so people would be horrified or interested in some other way. Sorry. A cheap trick)
Lately, most of my "reading" has been done as I travel in my car, listening to books on CD. This is delightful, (and often I find myself regretting arrival at my destination) but it is most necessarily a very different experience from reading. Interestingly enough, when the story is read aloud, I cannot help but notice the author's writing much more than I do when I read it. Word redundancy, grammatical weaknesses and discrepancies are more apparent, while punctuation and typographical errors are almost always unappreciated, because the reader corrects them on the fly. (When I edit my own things, I do not catch my most subtle errors unless I read the piece aloud. That is a pain, but as soon as I revert back to silent reading, I miss something)
Still, it is fascinating to realize how much of the personality of the author and the story comes through both media. Recently the fifth book in a five book series was not available on CD so I broke down and checked the book out. While I was deprived of the reader's interpretation of the sounds of the characters' voices, I was struck with the very obvious sameness between that part of the series compared with the other parts. I am confident it would be the same for any series I both read and hear.
That leads to a question, and then to a conclusion that is a bit of a leap. Would I have the same feelings from a given work if I were to read it in Braille? What if there were a code worked out in tastes like the Morse code, but with an 'a' being a sour and a sweet, a 'b' a bitter and salty, a 'c' a bitter and sweet, etc? Or a code made up of smells? What if I were to read or hear a good translation of the book in Japanese? (My strongest alternate language) Always, always the book is the same, whether we were to read it or hear it, or taste it or smell it or feel it, or experience it from a different part of the brain, it would be virtually identical to our experiencing it through any other medium. Is it possible that reading is a hybrid of all our senses? Could it even be one of the senses? Hmmm.
Lately, most of my "reading" has been done as I travel in my car, listening to books on CD. This is delightful, (and often I find myself regretting arrival at my destination) but it is most necessarily a very different experience from reading. Interestingly enough, when the story is read aloud, I cannot help but notice the author's writing much more than I do when I read it. Word redundancy, grammatical weaknesses and discrepancies are more apparent, while punctuation and typographical errors are almost always unappreciated, because the reader corrects them on the fly. (When I edit my own things, I do not catch my most subtle errors unless I read the piece aloud. That is a pain, but as soon as I revert back to silent reading, I miss something)
Still, it is fascinating to realize how much of the personality of the author and the story comes through both media. Recently the fifth book in a five book series was not available on CD so I broke down and checked the book out. While I was deprived of the reader's interpretation of the sounds of the characters' voices, I was struck with the very obvious sameness between that part of the series compared with the other parts. I am confident it would be the same for any series I both read and hear.
That leads to a question, and then to a conclusion that is a bit of a leap. Would I have the same feelings from a given work if I were to read it in Braille? What if there were a code worked out in tastes like the Morse code, but with an 'a' being a sour and a sweet, a 'b' a bitter and salty, a 'c' a bitter and sweet, etc? Or a code made up of smells? What if I were to read or hear a good translation of the book in Japanese? (My strongest alternate language) Always, always the book is the same, whether we were to read it or hear it, or taste it or smell it or feel it, or experience it from a different part of the brain, it would be virtually identical to our experiencing it through any other medium. Is it possible that reading is a hybrid of all our senses? Could it even be one of the senses? Hmmm.
No comments have been added yet.
