Listening

It seems like all professional athletes have headphones on all the time. They have their favorite tunes to warm up to or to inspire them to excel at their sport. (Poker players on TV are plugged in too.) I can see why. Sports are rhythmical and the moves the athletes make are often improvisations, just like a rift on a guitar or saxophone.

These professionals we see on television are the best in the world so there is a high level of artistry on display just like the superstars of music you might see at a concert hall.

Nearly every sport has a repetitive aspect to it. There is a staccato beat to a dribbling basketball and a different, less urgent beat in a tennis rally or double play. You can dance to it. I’ll give it a seven.

But not everyone with earplugs on is listening to music. People also listen to recorded books. There are lots of advantages to listening to someone else read a book. You can hear the inflection that the narrator uses to help you understand the words in their context. You can hear someone else pronounce a particularly difficult name or location.

Plus, you can do other things while listening to a book. Many people walk their dog, exercise, play cards, drive or do yard work while listening. Or you can do nothing but listen to a book with your eyes closed.

June is National Audiobook Month and libraries are promoting recorded books as a way for their patrons to more completely use and appreciate what is on their shelves. Most libraries have several hundred recorded books on their shelves. Best selling fiction to keep you up on the literary scene, classics that you have always wanted to return to and nonfiction books for learning a skill, computer program or a foreign language.

And now there are downloadable books that can be listened to on an MP3 player or an iPod.

Don't miss this opportunity to connect with an audiobook at your library during June. Get a heads up on summer listening titles. Impress your friends. They’ll ask “What are you listening to?” and you can answer “Just something I picked up at the library.”

Reading is fun and it’s always nice to be able to look back on a paragraph that was not clear and re-read it but there are lots of reasons why you should listen to recorded books. Who knows? Someone could see your headphones and might think you are a professional athlete and ask for your autograph.

Published as
Library Corner in the Highland Community News
June 3, 2011 by John Grimm