{"id":43538,"date":"2023-02-18T18:42:23","date_gmt":"2023-02-18T23:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rachellerogers.com\/dev1\/?p=43538"},"modified":"2026-02-28T10:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T15:24:18","slug":"reading-by-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rachellerogers.com\/dev1\/reading-by-ear\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading By Ear"},"content":{"rendered":"
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18<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

FEBRUARY 2023<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

Audiobooks
Reading
Literary Fiction
Mystery Authors<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Reading By Ear<\/h1>

by Rachelle Rogers<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n

In case you haven\u2019t already figured it out, I\u2019m talking audiobooks. It\u2019s a controversial subject for many like me who love the turn of a deckle-edged page, an exquisite cover, elegant interior design, the comfort of a well-fingered volume lying by my bedside, bookmark in place, ready to rescue me on sleepless nights.<\/p>\n

But over the last three years I\u2019ve had issues with my eyes, and reading bound books or eBooks has not always been possible or comfortable. That\u2019s when I turned to audiobooks and discovered a whole new obsession. Not only did how<\/em> I was reading change, but what<\/em> I was reading also changed.<\/p>\n

In the past, very long books frightened me. I did, however, read The Swan Thieves <\/em>by Elizabeth Kostova (592 pp), A Prayer for Owen Meany<\/em> by John Irving (543 pp), and Possession<\/em> by A.S. Byatt (555 pp), two different times. But when a former lover, on my 57th birthday, gifted me with his favorite book, Infinite Jest <\/em>by David Foster Wallace, inscribing: To amazing Rachelle, a writer who can appreciate this, on this her birthday 12\/11\/03 with lots of love and plenty of affection<\/em>\u2026at 1,088 pages, I ran in the other direction. Eventually, so did he. All the way across the country. Another man afraid of his own magnificence. Ha. With audiobooks, it\u2019s the opposite. I savor having a long story to listen to.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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My initial venture into reading by ear was in 2012, when I took a 30 day free trial on audible.com. At that time, the first book I chose was Freedom <\/em>by Jonathan Franzen, 24 hrs and 9 min long. These days, in addition to audible.com, I often download books from the NC Digital Library, scribd.com, and occasionally audiobooks.com.<\/p>\n

The first thing I do after choosing an audiobook is listen to a sample which is usually two or three minutes long, enough to tell if I want to go any further. Sometimes there are books I really want to read, but I absolutely can\u2019t abide the narrator\u2019s voice and will move on. And sometimes an actor who I adore will narrate a fine book, but the reading style or character interpretation or something I can\u2019t even put my finger on sounds \u201coff\u201d to me. This unfortunately happened with The Book Of Magic<\/em> by Alice Hoffman. The narrator is Jennifer Ehle (think 1995 Pride and Prejudice <\/em>with Jennifer Ehle and the delicious Colin Firth). I can\u2019t exactly say what it was about her narration that annoyed me, but being an Alice Hoffman fan, I did listen all the way through.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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When I began reading by ear during the pandemic, I mostly looked for my usual fare \u2014 literary fiction in all its flavors. I\u2019ve read a lot of books in three years, especially since, for long periods of time, I couldn\u2019t comfortably watch television. Here's a small sampling of literary fiction I enjoyed:<\/p>\n

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