Endorsement of my New Love

Steven King is one of my favorite authors...and shamefully, I've never read a single one of his novels (I did read his On Writing, though). I love his column in Entertainment Weekly...it's really the only thing that keeps me from being embarrassed to be a EW subscriber.

Anyway, this week's column is on audiobooks, a media that I've devoured since commuting 10 hours/week fifteen months ago. I've always kinda felt guilty that I'm "reading" audiobooks instead of reading "real" books, but thanks to the stamp of approval from Steven King, I no longer feel any shame!!

"Some critics — the always tiresome Harold Bloom among them — claim that listening to audiobooks isn't reading. I couldn't disagree more. In some ways, audio perfects reading. One friend of mine likes to tell the story of how she got so involved in Blair Brown's reading of Sue Miller's Lost in the Forest that she missed her turnpike exit and ended up in Boston. Another swears he never really ''got'' Elmore Leonard until he listened to Arliss Howard reading The Hot Kid and heard the mixed rhythm of the dialogue and narration.

The book purists argue for the sanctity of the page and the perfect communion of reader and writer, with no intermediary. They say that if there's something you don't understand in a book, you can always go back and read it again (these seem to be people so technologically challenged they've never heard of rewind, or can't find the back button on their CD players). Bloom has said that ''Deep reading really demands the inner ear...that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.'' Here is a man who has clearly never listened to a campfire story."

You the man, Steven!