The Untold Story of the Talking Book Is Quite a Story + 10 Insights I Never Considered Before.

As any follower of this blog knows, I'm a reader of talking books while commuting. There have been occasions over the years when someone will make a dismissive remark about listening to books is not really reading. Though the mildly abrasive dismissal would be disregarded as floof, it eventually became clear to me over time that listening to books is not considered real reading in some circles.

So I found it quite delightful to discover a whole book devoted to this matter, which I'd been listening to, I mean reading, this past week during my commute. The Untold Story of the Talking Book is Matthew Rubery's contribution to the debate, recounting the history of audio books beginning with Thomas Edison's recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil surface that could be played by phonograph in 1877. Today's audiobook industry is a billion dollar business.

What's fascinating in this story is how many different arguments arose along the way, and how many funny predictions about the future were generated by this "new" technology. For example, there were some who said audio books would replace printed books. In retrospect we see a lot of similarity between that prediction and the kinds of statements made with other inventions. Radio would disappear eventually when eclipsed by television, supposedly. Television would disappear when the Internet was in full swing. Retail stores will disappear when eclipsed by Amazon.

The author was in part motivated to research the topic because he himself liked audio books but was self-conscious about saying so in light of the nay-sayers. Here are a few of the insights that stuck with me after reading this audio book.

1. Edison expected the "talking book" to take of faster than it did. Ultimately it was half a century before the first full length novel had been recorded and reproduced.

2. Though many blind people welcomed talking books, there were also braille readers who felt listening to audio books wasn't really reading. Even though only 15% or so of blind people could read braille, there were some who quite opposed to the idea. Reading braille requires "deciphering code" which is more like deciphering letters on a page.

3. After World War 1 there were many soldiers who had been left blind as a result of injuries. Audio books were an easier way to "read" than having to learn braille. This became the impetus for the acceptance of audio book recordings, in album form at that time.

What was interesting, though, is that there were only a couple hundred soldier who had become blind. Even though there were tens of thousands of blind people already hungry for this new technology, it was sympathy for these newly blinded that pulled on the heartstrings of the masses to fund the mass recording of audio books.

4. The next debate had to do with censorship. Some books should not be made available to the blind, like Flaubert's Madame Bovary. But then, who has the authority to decide what was decent and indecent?

5. Which led to the next debate regarding one of the advantages of braille. No one would know what book I was reading under the covers, whereas if I'm listening to audio books...

6. The logistics of shipping and storage of audio books could be a problem. One novel could be 80 discs. War and Peace and the Bible were closer to 200.

EdNote: The first time I read the Bible through I found the book of Leviticus to be quite tedious. Because I had a blind friend who had a full set of albums of the Bible on recorded discs, read by Alexander Scourby, I borrowed the Book of Leviticus to listen to. I tethered my mind to the reader and forced myself to plow through. It worked!

EdNote 2: This experience taught me how storytelling is much easier to engage with than blah-blah-blah data. Whether you're in advertising, PR, sales or sipping a brew with your best friend's girl, stories will be much more engaging than "just the facts, ma'am."

7. The whole debate about whether a talking book is a book led to a reminder that throughout human history the village storyteller passed the tribe's knowledge on orally. Gutenberg and the printing press was a relatively modern development. If the Pentateuch was indeed scribed by Moses, as is claimed for itself, then everything that he recorded must have been passed down to him orally.

8. Another fascinating thought was this one. The author points out that the introduction of every new technology calls into question the previous competing technologies and causes us to think more deeply about both. Folk guitars and electric guitars, for example. In Hollywood, "talkies" did indeed eclipse silent films, but Michael Crichton was wrong when in the mid-nineties he told the National Press Club that the Internet would eliminate television.

9. Some argued against audio books because the listener would be more passive. Reading requires engagement, or so they said. (Are you still with me?)

10. One more major battle area had to do with how the books were read. Should they be read by professional actors or by straight readers who do not "add" to the reading? What about sound effects, as in radio theater? Does this add or interfere? (Personally, I totally dislike it.) Much debate swirled around many of these decisions.

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In short, I had no idea there were so many dimensions to this story. Today we have downloadable books on Audible and iTunes, CDs and streaming audio. One sci fi writer, a contemporary of Jules Verne, had a story in which people had audio books in their hats which they could listen to wherever they went. A Sony Walkman? It seemed fantastical at the time.

Bottom Line: If you don't want to call audio books reading, fine. They are great companions anyways. I just finished a biography of James Madison the week before, a president we seem to know so little about today, yet whose ideas are totally embedded in the founding fibers of our nation. But that's a story for another day.

Here's Matthew Rubery's book on Amazon.com

Orange Is The New Black: My Year in a Woman's Prison -- A Review of the Audiobook

After hearing several people talk about the miniseries Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman I decided to borrow the audiobook from the library, read by Cassandra Campbell. Fortunately I have not seen the show based on this book, as it is apparently using only the title as a springboard for creative screenwriters whose aim is to produce a compelling series.

From the start I found the book well written. The opening chapter does what all good stories do, it hooks the reader and makes him or her want to keep turning the pages.

Kerman's story seems to be a frank account of how a young, carefree young person makes life choices that have serious consequences beyond anything they could have imagined. Midnight Express comes to mind here. In Kerman's case she got involved with a woman who was part of an international drug smuggling ring. Exciting times in exotic places seemed the story of her life, until it came time to pay and she ends up in the women's federal prison in Danbury.

There are more than four thousand reviews of the book on Amazon.com with 46% weighing in at five stars. But there are ample quantities of negative comments. Some found the book boring. Some didn't like the narrator like this one who states, "Didn't everyone really go to high school with Piper Kerman? She is just the stereotypical, little, mean-girl, blonde, who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She makes an absolutely abysmal life choice, that she shrugs off as happening due to her being bored and adventurous, even though life has given her every advantage, and after 11 years finds herself dropped into the middle of the cesspool that is the American prison system."

I myself listened to the book as a writer, assessing all the decisions Kerman made as she told her story. The author had a delicate dance to do here. How frank should she be about her life choices? It would appear that she puts it all out there. Some say that she made the prison seem too much like a women's summer camp and not so bad, but it's clear from the numerous references to the challenge of keeping one's sanity and dignity that this was not a joyous picnic.

One of the criticisms of the book is that it's not as interesting as the television show. Well, the TV show doesn't have to be faithful to the facts. It can draw from all the stories ever experienced in women's prisons and while using Piper as a central character that serves to hold the stories together. There were no murders at Danbury the year she was there, for example. In fact, it would seem the biggest excitement was the possibility of Martha Stewart becoming an inmate there.

I agree with the Amazon reviewer who wrote, "It is written like a series of sequential articles rather than a narrative with true character development, but it still provides interesting insights into the rhythm of institutional prison life, with its mind-numbing bureaucracy and its mash-up of humanity trying to adapt or deal with incarceration. It is told from Kerman's pov, and thus her reactions to life in prison make up the bulk of the book, but she still provides a lot of food for thought about our prisons and the people who live in them."

It's clear throughout the book who has the power and who doesn't in a prison setting. The humiliation of being strip-searched or periodically groped has no recourse. And the ever-present threat of being sent to the SHU (Security Housing Unit, better known as solitary confinement) is a recurring theme throughout. The SHU comes up repeatedly as an ever-present reminder that you are an insect in the system.

The women at Danbury come from all walks of life, but there is a predominance of the poor -- black, Latino and white. Kerman is a college grad who had it good, but wound up in the tank. She had a boatload of support from her fiance, friends and family, and it was clear she had good prospects for her life after release. This is not the case for many, if not most, of the inmates she did time with.

Having just finished the book this morning, my fresh take here is that Piper Kerman has had an unusual experience that brought her many new insights about life, not only hers but the lives of others. I believe the book worth reading not only for hearing what prison life can be like but also for the insights she gained from the experience.

One of those insights was the observation that prison doesn't seem to be about helping people get rehabilitated. It's simply a form of punishment carried out with indifference by people who are simply performing a job.

And kudos to Cassandra Campbell for her reading. She did an admirable job in cnoveying the personalities of the various characters we  encounter along the way.

Recommended.