Emily Lahut
Publisher
Katherine Press
Friday, October 28, 2011
Has reading aloud with friends become a thing of the past?
One of the many pleasures in my life is watching my friends and family read to their young children. We put so much care into the choices of stories we read to these impressionable minds and the tone in which we present the stories. They soak up the words, characters, and the plots asking us to read them over and over until they can “read” them back to us from memory. As we get older we seem to gravitate to the television in order to share the experience of stories instead of reading them to each other. But I believe there is immense value in reading to each other throughout our lives. I have delightful memories of my parents loading us all up into a canoe so my mom could read us The Secret Garden while we leisurely paddled around a lake. Later, when my sister and I moved into an apartment together, with no television, we entertained ourselves by reading books to each other. Steinbeck was a favorite to read aloud. A book I have read over and over with friends on traveling adventures is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole for its bizarre humor that you just can’t help but share with the people around you. I have even earned a good scolding at a campground for laughing too loud while a good friend of mine read me excerpts from a David Sedaris book. And what romantic hasn’t read poetry to their lovers? I am getting warm fuzzy feelings recalling these times but it occurred to me that I have not shared a book or story with someone in this fashion in quite a while. I wonder… has reading aloud with friends become a thing of the past? In this modern time when everything moves so fast and time seems so hard to come by, we should still be able to find the time to at least share short stories with each other. If you don’t already do this, give it a try. We would love to hear about your experiences.
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The question you posed prompted me to read an article from of an outdated New Yorker to my 7 week old son. The article examined the possibility that former sen. Weiner's sexting debacle was caused by his, and other males', lack of motivation to shop for clothing. I found myself laughing out loud (something I rarely do) as I read. It was not so much the content, but the fact that I had an audience to share it with. Isn't language meant to be a form of communicating and sharing with others? Thank you for reigniting my love of reading aloud. Tonight I plan on shutting off my television and radio to read an excerpt from the C Word to my husband.
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