Reading Aloud

Maybe I’m not the only one who occasionally feels deeply out of synch with her fellow humans. I didn’t expect it to happen as much as it has in my current focus on reading about reading, though. This morning, New York Times columnist Melissa Kirsch (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/briefing/reading-aloud.html) sent out a newsletter about reading aloud. Almost in passing, she introduced me to the Harvard Sentences (https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/audio/harvard.html), a rather wonderful collection of real English sentences, designed —  “written” doesn’t seem to fit here — to test technologies in which the sound of speech is critical to the meaning. The development of hearing aids would be one example.  I’m really glad to know about these sentences, and completely agree with Melissa that they are the stuff of poetry. Still, I don’t think it strengthens her case for reading aloud.

Our columnist is sure that her readers, subscribers to the morning newsletter, love to be read to. The trouble is, I don’t.  We can blame my mother, of course, and it’s true that I didn’t like her reading to me.  It seemed to make her nervous, I’d probably figured out that it wasn’t good for anyone. But however I got to be this way, it probably explains why I I tend to lose the plot at academic conferences, rarely can follow sermons in church, etc, quickly reach a state of near – paralysis listening to the soundtracks on some documentaries, etc.

It may be a small point. But I’m more convinced than ever that any one person’s reading patterns — choices, frequency, length, position, situation, etc. are unique as a fingerprint.  They deserve close attention and nurturing.  They should be defended again the enemy, that being any moral imperative impinging on the question:  don’t read because you think you should — and I won’t listen to people reading to me because other people think I should enjoy it!