Books And Lifelong Learning: Listening to Memoirs

In celebration of AudioFile Magazine's 2017 Best AudioBooks

http://digital.audiofilemagazine.com/t/9418-audiofile-best-audiobooks, I decided to write about listening to audiobooks and give you the opportunity to listen to a few clips on SoundCloud.

While many of us like to read about someone’s life, trials, and tribulations, successes and heartache, others like to listen to the same words. Listening to memoirs is more intimate for the aurality is a look into an individual that’s personal and passionate.

Biography, the life of a person or persons written by a scholar or journalist or relative, is an external and often dispassionate view. The subject’s life is set into a social, familial, or historical context with asides that explain or demonstrate why the person developed to be who he or she is or was.

Memoir is that personal look or remembrance of what life was like when growing up, when struggling with life and loss.

Audiobook narrators make the memoir come to life. Sometimes the reader “becomes” the memoirist. Other times, the reader is the author. Of course, there are times when reader and memoirist are mismatched but we hope that doesn’t happen too often.

When the author, the memoirist, reads their own book, listeners get an earful. How does that author sound in real life? Do they lisp? Do they have regional accents? Where do they place emphasis on their words and writing? In other words, we hear what they sound like “warts and all.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s reality.

Below are some SoundCloud clips of current Audiofile Magazine 2017 Best Memoiraudiobooks.