I am a reading monster.
I pile the words onto my plate, 3 book stacks at a time. Chewing would take too long, and I have another stack of books arriving. So, I inhale them. I float on thoughts, scenes. Vivid images spiral me into the clouds.
But once the scenes are wrung out of their potent taste, I take to the plate again. 3 book stacks. Inhale. Float. Spiral.
Then, overwhelmed by the cramming scenes in my head and overlapping voices, I starved the reading monster. Years at a time.
It’s sneaky, though. Picks up a word here and there. Disguises food under the guise of productivity. No floating, no spiraling. Now, it’s a bleak, grey root and obsession with ticking clock hands.
Recently, I’ve taken a step back and reevaluated this scale. Neither approach was working for me, so I needed something down the middle of the road.
I meddled with slow reading.
I’ve avoided audiobooks for a few reasons. 1) When I read, that is me retreating to my headspace. I don’t want a voice or another person drawing me out because they’re talking.
And more importantly, 2) I struggle to process what people are saying without seeing the words, too. (Yes, I am that hearing person who needs captions on movies). Damn, if only audiobooks had that same feature….oh, they do. *cue facepalm*
I gave City of Wishes, written by Rachel Morgan, and narrated by Arielle Delisle, a whorl. And, wow.
Who was going to tell me that audiobooks can bring the characters to life? That I could hear them like I was talking with them? And I didn’t have to spend extra mental energy trying on different accents (although that energy has now been used to keep myself from flying ahead of the narrator).
Regardless, I’m a changed reading monster.
At first, it felt odd listening to a feminine voice cast a masculine voice, but as fiction and fantasy worlds do, the story hooked me in, and I suspended my real-world beliefs. It’s not a feminine voice attempting to mimic a masculine one. That’s just his voice!
Really, this brings back memories of my childhood librarian casting different voices as she read. I forgot how fun a story can be when told aloud, and listening to the narrator at a set pace challenged me to paint the scene fully in my mind. I’ve read other books by Rachel Morgan before, and now I am convinced I must return to them and re-experience the story with Arielle Delisle guiding my slow reading journey.
While I have learned that I can enjoy audiobooks, I have found that I am very picky with who is narrating. So, like I have identified the Safe Foods for my earthly body to consume, I must now find Safe Voices for my reading monster.