Speech Patterns and Intonation: Why Audio Books Read By The Author Give You A Little Something Extra

Posted on 22 October 2007

I first got hooked on audio books some time in the summer of 2005 when I began working as an IT Auditor/Consultant. I travel a lot - more than most. Some weeks I spend as much as 10 to 15 hours in my car or in airports, which leaves me a with a lot of time to fill. Audio books are a great way to turn commute time into something productive.

My audio book addiction has seen a significant resurgence these past two weeks due to heavy commuting - I polished off 4 books in traffic over a two week period - my first read of Po Bronson’s Why Do I Love These People, and my second read of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling On Happiness and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States. It had been a while since I’d listened to an author read their own work, but I’m realizing all over again why I’ve come to appreciate the experience of consuming a book that way for all the reasons that make it different to turning pages myself. Here’s why I love (and recommend) audio books read by the author: Aside from the obvious benefits of being able to drive (or workout etc) and consume a book at the same time, listening to an author read their own book can provide a much richer experience because you get a unique opportunity to connect to the author and the work. First off, the author’s speech patterns, intonation and inflection give us unique insight into what the author really thinks is important - which is a huge advantage, especially with dense, academic books. Across the board though, the melody of the changes in pitch, tone and pace highlight elements the author wants us to pay attention to, as well as adding subtle sarcasm and implications that aren’t otherwise explicitly stated in the text. Humor, too, comes alive if the author’s a great speaker. Love that. It makes the overall experience of many books more vibrant, in my opinion.

Of course, there one major caveat - some books are much worse in audio - the audio version of David Bach’s Automatic Millionaire Series, although informational, is as irritating, dry and repetitive as any set of books could possibly be - his voice is nasally and he over-sells his point over and over. Forcing yourself to listen to (and finish) one of his books feels a lot like trying to wanting to get out of an endless conversation with an annoying but well-informed used car salesman. My advice is to steer clear of self-help and finance books in audio. Many of them suffer from over-selling and boring authors. Also, books not read by the author don’t offer the same range of benefits as books that are. You’ll rarely find a guest reader that interprets and delivers the text the way the creator would - and shouldn’t finding a connection to the author be the reason you pick up the audio version in the first place? They’re twice as expensive as the paperbacks for goodness sake…which baffles me given that the CDs themselves cost cents to mass produce.

Final Thoughts for this post:

The impetus for this post was my experience of the last 10 minutes of the audio version of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States, which is a fascinating afterword by Howard himself not included in the printed version of the book. Howard (who was born in 1922 in Brooklyn, New York) talks openly about his motivations for writing the book, as well as how his experiences being active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States over the last 60 or so years have colored his opinions and beliefs as a human being. Surprisingly, he apologizes too for not including the stories of Latino’s (as well as a host of other minorities) in the book, siting the fact that, due to the nature of his experiences to date, he was largely unaware of their plights as he was writing the book. For those of you who haven’t read this book - it is a highly controversial, dense academic read, and the tone for the majority of the book is passionate, negative and critical - it’s almost like he was trying to balance the last 100 years of history out with every word he wrote…but what you’re left with after finishing the last 10 minutes of the audio version is a feeling of connection to very great, very compassionate, and above all, very humble man. I would have never gotten the feeling I got finishing this audio book from text.