Loren Eaton offers three reasons for new and established authors to have their work recorded into audiobooks.
“Most audiobook listeners are affluent professionals with plenty of time available during their commutes, and such availability is reflected in the sales numbers. A recent report from the American Association of Publishers shows that downloadable audiobooks are the industry’s fastest-growing segment.”
Commuters are a growing demographic for audiobooks.
Annual research into German media consumption reveals a steady decline in readers.
“A solid quarter (25.1%) of Germans don’t buy books at all,” Ingrid Süßmann reports. “Book buying in general seems to be correlated to age: the older you get, the less likely you will buy a book; 28% of Germans over 60 years of age didn’t buy any books in 2015.”
“When I was growing up in the Bronx, the local Jewish deli owner, whose meats smelled vaguely rancid and whose bagels seemed to start out already a day old, attributed his failing business to the vulgarization of Bronx tastes.” Professor Gary Saul Morson says the deli owner’s rationale illustrates the same by many humanities professors. Students and their parents have every right to ask why they should subject themselves to literature courses.
“I speak with students by the dozens,” Morson writes, “and none has ever told me that he or she does not take more literature courses because every moment at school must be devoted to maximizing future income. On the contrary, students respond by describing some literature course they took that left them thinking they had nothing to gain from repeating the experience. And when I hear their descriptions of these classes, I see their point.” (via Prufrock)
Rosaria Butterfield describes her rejection of lesbianism, three heresies related to homosexuality, and the importance of what and how we read to our worldview.
In short, we honor God with our reading diligence. We honor God with our reading sacrifice. If you watch two hours of TV and surf the internet for three, what would happen if you abandoned these habits for reading the Bible and the Puritans? For real. Could the best solution to the sin that enslaves us be just that simple and difficult all at the same time? We create Christian communities that are safe places to struggle because we know sin is also “lurking at [our] door.” God tells us that sin’s “desire is for you, but you shall have mastery over it” (Gen. 4:7). Sin isn’t a matter of knowing better, it isn’t (only) a series of bad choices—and if it were, we wouldn’t need a Savior, just need a new app on our iPhone.
Erik Raymond offers a few hacks for reading more books. His advice includes making a plan and pushing yourself a bit. I have to draw the line at making a spreadsheet. That seems so Windows 95.
Author S.A. Hunt posted this fan letter on his Google+ feed (now defunct) yesterday. It’s a nice Found Reader story.
I don’t mean to hit you in the feels, but I have to share this with you and the community. My brother hates books, hates reading. He’s always had trouble with it, and he always felt like books were a world (really many worlds) he was locked outside of. In the last year he finally got new glasses and reading became a lot easier, he came to me and asked if I had anything lying around the house that he might be interested in reading. I handed him The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree and gave him an adapted Princess Bride speech: “swords, guns, torture, revenge, giant robot things, mad men with masks, chases, escapes, true love, miracles: you want it, this book has it.”
I kinda backed away slowly, hoping for the best, but Devin hasn’t read a book since high school. Over the next couple of weeks I started getting way more texts than usual: “I just got to the ocean monster,” “text me the name of that town they visit, I wanna name my city after it in Risk Legacy,” “I feel like the world is conspiring against me to finish the last few pages of this book. Every time I have a moment something has to happen! WTF!” I realized that he was going to need the second book before I’d find time to finish it, so I primed it right to his house. He texts me the next day “Yeah that first book cliff hangs hard! Glad I can just pick up the next one, thanks sis.”
He wanted to write you a thank you letter, but he’s less confident with writing than he is with reading, so I got drafted.
TLDR: My brother hasn’t willingly opened a book in his whole 30 years, and your book, your writing just opened a thousand doors. He took WitTT with him EVERYWHERE until he finished it, and now he won’t shut up about it. He beat that book up so hard that he told me he “owes me a new, nice copy.”
Hugh McGuire talks about and perhaps demonstrates the negative effects of giving ourselves to digital media on our minds. He says though he loves books, he wasn’t reading them. He had too many distractions. This year, he has set digital boundaries and seen positive results.
“When the people at The New Yorker can’t concentrate long enough to listen to a song all the way through, how are books to survive?”
If that’s the norm in New York, they need a revolution.
Nick Ripatrazone observes, “In a 1978 debate with William Gass at the University of Cincinnati, John Gardner said the fiction of Anthony Trollope is rarely taught ‘because it’s all clear.’ In contrast, ‘every line of Thomas Pynchon you can explain because nothing is clear.’ The result: ‘the academy ends up accidentally selecting books the student may need help with. They may be a couple of the greatest books in all history and 20 of the worst, but there’s something to say about them.’ Gardner warned that ‘The sophisticated reader may not remember how to read: he may not understand why it’s nice that Jack in the Beanstalk steals those things from the giant.'”
Gardner also called Pynchon “a brilliant man, but his theory of what fiction ought to do is diametrically opposed to mine, and while I think he’s wonderful and ought to be read — besides which it’s a pleasure — I don’t want anybody confusing him with the great artists of our time. He’s a great stunt-man.”
Ripatrazone goes on to talk about the difficulties and importance of teaching Pynchon : “I end with Pynchon because his fiction is difficult, dated, and frustrating: exactly what my students need to read before they go to college.”
More from Spurgeon on 2 Timothy 4:13, in which Paul asks for someone to bring him his books.
Even an apostle must read. Some of our very ultra Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains—oh! that is the preacher.
How rebuked are they by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!
The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, “Give thyself unto reading.” The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service.
Oh god. Put down your books. STOP READING. (Actual article from San Antonio Texan newspaper, August 26, 1858) pic.twitter.com/2edR2nR8U9
— Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) March 5, 2015