To Read or to LIsten.....That is The Question.

I can’t seem to get immersed in any one book lately. Too restless --- mind drifting hither and yon, searching, for what? Purpose? The meaning of life? New and exotic spiders? Chocolate?? Rather than really reading one book, I’ve been dipping and browsing.

One I’ve been carting around is “Under My Skin,” Volume One of Doris Lessing’s autobiography. Why Doris Lessing? I am not a fan, or even an un-fan, of her books. I haven’t read any of them, even though I have seen her referred to as “one of the great writers of the twentieth century.” Reviews of her latest book, “The Cleft” leave me uninterested.

But she has an arresting face. A face with character. The face of a person who didn’t back down from life’s challenges.

That face captivated me, and so I carried her home in my book bag. I haven’t been sorry. “One reason for writing this autobiography” she says, “is that more and more I realize I was part of an extraordinary time, the end of the British Empire in Africa……………..People no longer know what that time was like, even those who live in Southern Africa.” She has had a fascinating life and tells the story well.

I think I like autobiographies better than those written about someone by someone else. Because your life, and the paths you take, or don’t, and the decisions you make, or won’t, are all determined by how you think. And who, but you, can really understand that?

All of which makes my mind wander, in it’s aimless fashion, to a newspaper article I read recently, wherein “Book club purists look down on their brethren who---gasp---get the audio version.” [“Listen, you cheater” by Andrew Adam Newman of the NY Times]

For me the choice is easy. I prefer books. I like the weight of them, the feel of them, sometimes even the smell of them. I love the promise of another world waiting for me between the covers. Some of my favourite places are bookstores, especially musty -smelling second hand ones where each book’s physical history is shrouded in mystery. I like the situations of reading too, whether curled up inside, listening to the rain, or tucked into a corner of the porch, or hidden in the leafy middle of the tree at the bottom of our garden when I was growing up, or fitting in just a few pages more before my head flops onto my chest at night.

Sometimes I do check out audio versions, especially for trips in the car. But when I do, I often find the reader’s voice or interpretation annoying, as I did when I listened to “Rise and Shine.” I’m a big fan of Anna Quindlen’s, but she was not the reader, and the reader didn’t read it as I would have expected the author would have wanted it read. Call me persnickety.

This doesn’t happen when the author is the reader.
Two outstanding examples come to mind. Sometime after reading, and loving, Frank McCourt’s book “Angela’s Ashes,” I found the audio version, read by McCourt himself. And loved it, all over again. It was like sitting by the fire, listening to him tell his story. He got the accent just right. Imagine that! Much better than some poor amadawn of an American trying to fake it with a stage-Irish brogue! Each inflection was perfect, and his pronunciation of the frequent Irish words flawless. As Homer would say---“Doh!” He wrote the bloody thing. It came from inside his head and his memory and out through his vocal chords. Of course no one else could have done it justice.

Likewise with lives. Only the person who has lived a life can write about it convincingly. At least about the parts that most interest me---what they were thinking and feeling.


Then recently I happened upon an audio version of “The Not So Big Life” by Sarah Susanka. She is an architect whose book “The Not So Big House” I had really enjoyed. When we lived in Minnesota, we went on a tour of an award-winning house designed by her. Her ideas about our living spaces make so much sense to me. And here she was, unexpectedly applying her architectural principles to the way people conduct their lives. I was intrigued. I listened to the entire thing and became as much a fan of her ideas about our lives as I already was of her ideas about the houses we live them in. She herself was the reader. Only she could have read it with such passion and conviction. I will probably check out the book version soon, which will have the advantage of letting me reread parts I find particularly interesting, and gaze off into space while contemplating others. Yes, I know. I could rewind the tape or CD, but I’d rather reread, given the choice, than mess with buttons and risk blowing something up. Which has been known to happen.

But, back to Doris. She says “….scientists…….say something like, `If the story of the earth is twenty four hours long, then humanity’s part in it occupies the last minute of that day.` Similarly, in the story of a life, if it is being told true to time as actually experienced, then I’d say seventy percent of the book would take you to age ten. At eighty percent you would have reached fifteen. At ninety-five percent, you get to about thirty. The rest is a rush - towards eternity.”

Will you excuse me now? I have to go immerse myself in my book, which has finally got me hooked.