Tuesday, October 11, 2005

scarce resources

I've been reading LOTR to Aja at night. We're almost finished book one and its been very enjoyable although it is surprisingly exhausting. Its difficult for me to actually force myself to pronounce all the proper nouns that when I'm reading in my head, I just look at as a block or symbol more than I actually sound out the name and "say" it in my head. I guess I discovered that I'm a lazy reader, or perhaps this is normal, I'm not sure. Anyway, I've also noticed that some of the good dialogue is ten times better when spoken aloud with the gusto it deserves. I'm not really doing seperate voices but I'm trying to say the dialogue with the correct emotion which takes some doing on the fly. If I recall, a few regular readers have also read the trilogy aloud. I would be interested in their recollections of the process.
Fantastic turn of fate: one of Aja's friends has to get ride of her roomate or her cat (one is allergic to the other) and based on contribution towards rent, the cat is now installed in our home until the end of the school year. Its really wonderfull as I absolutly adore cats. He's quite pretty, older and docile and has already quared off with me in a battle for my computer chair. Indeed life is a continuous struggle for scarce resources.

2 comments:

captainorange said...

I've read it aloud with Wendy, many moons ago. I recall it as a very pleasant experience. I am not what passes in our circle as a 'fast reader'. I have always mulled sentences and played with the pronunciation in my head. Tolkien is such a player of words that reading aloud can add an awful lot to the experience. I feel a wave of jealousy. Shouldn't be too long before Leora and Anwyn are ready for a taste...

rainswept said...

Steve (Jon Lovitz): Tartlets. -- Tartlets. -- Tartlets. -- The word has lost all meaning.

I'm a 'chunker'. I find it hard to make proper sense of text when I try to read it word4word. Except when I have to... HoL ;-)