The Wonder of Hearing the Written Word

Earlier this month, the author Brian Jacques passed away. You might not know who he was, but I assure you that there is a subset of youngish adults whose parents probably watched a lot of PBS and received a Chinaberry catalog that contained the first three of Jacques series of Redwall books. I, my sisters, and a few cousins are some of those adults. I remember my mother reading Redwall to Bridget, Lucy, and I one chapter a night and having special voices for all the characters (and I seem to recall that on most nights, we begged and pleaded for an additional chapter). And Redwall is a great series, and I encourage parents with kids that are about 8 or 9 (there are some emotional parts of the book) to get the first book and read it to their children.
There is something so comforting and slightly hypnotic about hearing a story. And I think that are a lot of people who enjoy being read to beyond their childhood years. During our last few days in Europe, Lucy and I would read to each other (again a chapter at a time) from the first Artemis Fowl book. I often enjoy listening to books on CD, especially books read by the author (shout out to David Sedaris, whose books are best experienced in an audio format).