On Reading Aloud

I've always loved reading aloud to others, and being read to aloud.

So it was wonderful when my nieces were small and had an endless appetite for this form of social interaction.  Of course, sometimes they insisted on hearing their favorite stories over and over.  While some books hold up better than others to such repetition, any near-memorized book presents opportunities for the grown-up to feel like a comic genius:  Playing it completely straight, as if you were merely reading the words on the page, you slip in one clearly incorrect word.  I remember doing this with the marvelous Sendak counting book, One Was Johnny, and the irksome Magic Tree House series.

I also remember a longish car ride with Suzie, perhaps while we were flatmates in 1999.  She was driving, so I offered to read aloud from her Barbara Kingsolver book (possibly Pigs in Heaven or The Poisonwood Bible).  The possibility had apparently never occurred to her before, but she was utterly delighted.  True fact: That was actually the only time I've ever read anything by Kingsolver.

And these days, from time to time, my beloved reads to me from his work in progress.