Reading aloud

One of my all-time favourite novels is Great Expectations and, as my husband is not really a Dickens fan, I thought I'd try to convince him how great it is by reading it alound.

Although I didn't manage to convince him, I remembered all over again why I love Dickens - the richness, the pictures, the feelings, so much in there. Reading aloud made me slow down and not skim over the detail, creating vivid pictures in my head. Not many authors can do it so well.

Get audio books with novels written by Charles Dickens from the local library for him.Save your time for reading aloud.

Dickens had the qualities of a Nobel Prize Winner in Literature, and had the potential to win if Nobel Prizes' Competition existed during the tenure of his existence.
Dickens described the British underpriveleged soceities in his novels with such real feelings for the characters in the novels such as " Oliver Twist", "Tales of Two Cities"equipped with the skills liked a master storyteller in his generation.

Dickens really is one of my favorite authors to read aloud to myself (and I tend to read aloud to myself a lot). You're right, it really does make you appreciate the emotion in his work so much more!

Most probably know this, but Dickens was well known for dramatic readings from his novels. Wouldn't it be great to have experienced one of those?!

http://universitybookstore.blogspot.com/2008/01/dickens.html

Very interesting, slickdpdx. Thank you!
:-))

I love to read Dickens aloud! The characters are just so funny and quirky. I especially felt this with Copperfield. Mr. Barkis and Mrs. Maccawber! They are a riot. I love to act (in high school mostly), and that would be such a fun play to be in. I think I did do a cut from it for speech: Barkis' proposal scene.

Last year I heard the great Recorded Books audiobook of A Christmas Carol. Of course I knew the story -- everyone does. But for the first time I realized how brilliant a writer Dickens is. I heard his brilliance much more clearly than I ever read it.

I enjoyed doing Great Expectations aloud but found Nicolas Nickleby a slog and couldn't get through it.

Though it's not about reading aloud, I found this recent piece on Dickens aficionados interesting: http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2011/12/02/connected-dickens/0JfoF8vkanre61z0m9CX...

I would definitely buy a Dickens audio book if it was read by Stephen Fry. What an excellent combination that would be!

My favourite Dickens reader is Anton Lesser. I'm just about to start my annual listen to his reading of A Christmas Carol

Great tip, thanks. Since Stephen Fry hasn't recorded any Dickens yet, maybe I'll give Anton a go instead :-)

Nadia May was the audio narrator on some classics for Recorded Books in the 1980s. My library has digital copies of those (not sure how widely those are available though). She read Oliver Twist very well, as well as some other non-Dickens classics books.

The Recorded Books version of Christmas Carol I own is read by Frank Muller. In 2009 I blogged about the pleasures of hearing this great story read aloud for the first time.

http://writersrest.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/a-christmas-carol/

> 13 I'm pretty sure this is the edition for which I just requested an inter-library loan. Haven't read A Christmas Carol since I was 14 so thought it was time for a re-read - and it's the appropriate season!

>13 pennwriter: You won't be disappointed!

I agree - listening to Dickens read aloud, you find new things in even the most familiar books.

The Naxos unabridged audiobooks of Dickens on CD are uniformly superb, if very pricey. I'm halfway through listening to bleak house at the moment, for the second time. I know that some people sneer at audiobooks, but for me, working all day on a computer, with eyes too tired to read in the evening, these have been a godsend.

>16 puddleshark: I know that some people sneer at audiobooks

Some people sneer at Dickens as well. Their problem :) If audiobooks work for you, then they are good.:)

I'm not sure about tackling Dickens as a read-aloud, but I do love being read to and have ever since I was a little girl listening to my mother read to me at bedtime.

My husband and I have had a weekly read-aloud date every Wednesday night for 13 years now. He reads to me, and I butt in and criticize or ask questions, to which he always responds patiently, "I just read what it says." We've done everything from Harry Potter to Daniel Dennett this way.

>18 Meredy: A read-aloud date is a lovely idea.

My first experience of books was being read to at bedtime as a little girl.

>15 pennwriter: I'm about a third of the way through the Recorded Books version of A Christmas Carol read by Frank Muller, and I am definitely enjoying it so far! Unfortunately, previous library patrons did not take good care of the discs and they keep skipping. Sigh.