Do any of you read aloud to each other?

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The past couple of nights Scott has read me to near sleep. We were wondering if other people ever do this together, besides just parents reading bedtime stories to their kids. Sometimes when I'm alone I enjoy reading out loud to myself. Do you read aloud to friends/lovers/yourself? Are you ever read aloud to?

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 21:06 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a Devries book peppered with lots of German words like "Weltanschauung" and "Ding an sich" which are fun to hear.

― Maria D. (Maria D.), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 21:18 (twenty-one years ago)

We don't but our best friends do. That DeVries book sounds good.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 4 January 2005 21:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, not so much right now, but in the past, yes. I'm a big fan. I haven't "gone through" a long text yet, though. (Well, except in marathon readings that I've been a part of; I recently organized a reading of Bernadette Mayer's "Midwinter Day" and before that took part in a reading of Ted Berrigan's "Sonnets" along with Stein's "Tender Buttons". But that's not quite what this question is about.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 06:59 (twenty-one years ago)

I wish I had a partner who could read to me. But well I like listening to book summaries on phone.

― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 17:54 (twenty-one years ago)

My wife and I will read aloud to one another from time to time. It isn't an ingrained habit, so it is rare. When she gave me a book for Christmas this year we took turns reading it aloud to one another before we went to bed. We also read aloud on winter solstice.

She was a children's librarian and I was a drama geek at one time, so we both take pleasure in reading aloud. The poetry I've written has always had a strong emphasis on how it would sound as a reading. It seems to me that this is one of the foundation stones of pleasure in reading and writing.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 5 January 2005 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

I think I figured it out. We can't read each other to sleep because I never go to sleep.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 6 January 2005 08:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I never go to sleep neither.

But I am in favour of reading aloud, I think. My mother read me The Hobbit when I was a little boy. That means a lot to me. Recently I heard my father read aloud a paragraph from The Corrections, and was struck by the pause in rapid modern time, the old-fashioned silence around his words.

― the bellefox, Thursday, 6 January 2005 11:40 (twenty-one years ago)

My husband reads aloud to me, an hour or so each night. We are in the midst of The French Lieutenant's Woman. This is part of his plan to expose me to literature I've missed out on, since I'm an engineer and he's an English/drama sort. Last year, we also read The Good Soldier (absolutely amazing book) and Handful of Dust.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 January 2005 04:47 (twenty-one years ago)

My dad once read us 'Everest: The Hard Way' by Chris Bonnington, painstaking preparations and basecamp bumph included. We are still in a coma. He used to read stuff aloud from the paper a lot, but I haven't heard him do that for ages. I wonder if he's stopped.

I thought this thread was going to be about us all getting together and reading aloud to each other as a kind of social activity.

As part of the proofreading course I'm doing you have to correct some Jane Austen. If you read it aloud it's relatively easy to see where the mistakes are. I suppose this is cheating.

― Puddin'Head Miller (PJ Miller), Monday, 10 January 2005 10:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I didn't know that Austen made mistakes.

Miller, you are droll, about the coma, and the newspaper.

I don't want us all to read to each other.

Jaq, maybe you could coo your husband to sleep with engineering texts? Or the details and statistics from blueprints?

― the bellefox, Monday, 10 January 2005 14:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes bellefox, it does put him right out. I have some new ones to try though as I'm back to class starting today - Engineering Economics and The Product Design Lifecycle. Both riveting tomes. The welding tomes are for the summer session.

― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, 10 January 2005 15:39 (twenty-one years ago)

That is funny.

I am serious.

― the bellefox, Monday, 10 January 2005 16:28 (twenty-one years ago)

It is much easier to spot typos when reading aloud. When we did a reading of Bernadette Mayer's "Midwinter's Day" there was a typo in my section which I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed if I had been reading it to myself. I couldn't decide whether to read the typo as is or to fix it or what.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 10 January 2005 22:46 (twenty-one years ago)

three weeks pass...

I wish! I love being read to. When I was a senior in HS my English teacher read aloud to us: Goodbye Mr Chips. In 8th grade my teacher read to us every day after lunch. I remember most her reading Red Planet Mars. It was the best time of the day. Alas, no one reads to me now. I read my stuff and my beloved reads his Louis L'Amour. And never the twain shall meet, I suppose.

― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Friday, 4 February 2005 03:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, I love doing this. I read some essay to my girlfried as she knitted the other day. Also we read some Dr. Seuss books together alternating pages.

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 02:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I like doing this with M too. We've read the last two Harry Potter books to each other, and the Narnia books. Lately some stuff on British folklore. Children's books do seem to work best though - I wonder if I like it because it both recalls being read to as a child and prefigures me reading to my own future children?

― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 10 February 2005 11:23 (twenty-one years ago)

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