- •Unit I What to Read? How to Read?
- •Vocabulary Notes
- •Types of Books
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Listening
- •Vocabulary
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •How One Should Read a Book
- •Writing
- •Have your say
- •Reading Is Interaction
- •Act it out
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •II. Adjectives applied to books
- •III. Aspects of a novel or a story
- •1. Subject, Theme
- •3. Setting, set
- •4. Characters
- •6. Ideas, views, attitudes
- •7. Style
- •8. Spirit, atmosphere, mood, feeling
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •In each set, find the odd-one-out, explain your choice.
- •My Favourite Escape: Books
- •Listening
- •Reading
- •The queen of crime
- •Act it out
- •Interview with an author
- •Have your say
- •Listening
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •An appraisal of a book
- •Have your say
- •II. Read books, rather than about books
- •IV. Read rapidly
- •V. Read by snatches
- •VI. Read what you like
- •VII. Read what you do not like
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Read the Better Magazines and Books
- •Reading
- •What Does it Take to Be a Good Reader?
- •Listening
- •Writing
- •Familiar Quotations
- •Have your say
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Why Trashy Books Are So Good for Little Boys
- •Writing
- •A letter
- •Act it out
- •Have your say
- •Interview 10 people (first-year students, your relations, friends, etc.) to find out how they select books.
- •Unit 4 how to develop the habit of reading
- •My several worlds
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Listening
- •Writing
- •Act it out
- •Have your say
- •How Shall The Habit of Reading Be Cultivated?
- •Unit 5 will books survive?
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •Reading
- •Writing
- •Read a good powerbook lately?
- •Vocabulary
- •Focus on vocabulary
- •In each set find the odd-one-out; explain your choice.
- •Reading
- •In the article, find the words that mean approximately the same as the following definition.
- •Death of the book or a novel way to read?
- •Act it out
- •Birth of the book to end all books
- •Have your say
- •III books shall survive
- •Reading
- •Burn them or bury them, you can’t beat books
- •Writing
- •Have your say
- •Brush up everything you have done and get ready for a round-table talk about books and reading.
Reading
Before you read the following article, could you explain what “an audio book” is?
Now, read the article and answer these questions:
When do people listen to audio books?
What people do you believe buy them? Why?
BOOKS ON TAPE
by William Scobie and Nick Godway
In the Middle Ages when books were scarce and few people could read, stories were rendered orally. With the introduction of mass education and greater availability of printed material, the oral tradition began to die out. Today’s miniature tape players are, in a way, helping to reverse this trend, as this 1986 article from “The Observer”, a British quality paper, shows.
Behind the wheel of one of the cars rolling bumper to bumper along LA’s smog-choked Hollywood Freeway, a driver is engrossed in a book. It is John Le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl – only this time it is coming over the car’s stereo cassette player read by Le Carre himself.
A jogger trots along the Pacific waterfront in the city’s trendy Marina district. “Women are great worriers when it comes to sex – we don’t need to be,” intones author Alexandra Penny through the jogger’s headset. She is reading from her bestseller, How to Make Love to a Man. Another driver, Bob Murray, vice-president of an LA computer company, listens to another bestseller for an hour each morning on the way to his job in LA. It is the Bible, complete on tape.
Welcome to the brave new world of audio publishing, a phenomenon which is changing America’s reading habits. Across the nation, in coin launderettes, supermarket queues, traffic jams, trains, cars and buses Americans are listening to books on tape.
The British have been listening for rather longer and, of course, in a rather more subdued fashion. Michael Turner, managing director of Associated Book Publishers says: “Audio tapes have been sold very successfully in this country for a number of years through the record trade. We see it as part of book exploitation, although we are not going to miss a gap in the market if it occurs.”
ABP has produced a couple of series – including Wind in the Willows in association with Thames Television – and their success has moved them to look at several new projects, including a Tintin series. It has also sold the audio cassette rights on several adult books to Thorn EMI, which specializes in this market under the Listen for Pleasure label. Thorn’s double cassette packs, which W.H. Smith says sell well, include such titles as The Moon is a Balloon, Biggles and 1984.
But it is the US where the market is booming. Last year sales hit $ 100 million – up 50% on 1984. Industry moguls predict annual sales of $ 500 million by the end of the decade.
“It’s the hottest new growth area in this business,” says an executive with Random House, which brought out its own “audio books” line. “After all there are more than 140 million portable cassette players in American homes today, and 60% of Americans have tape decks in their cars.”
“It’s the wave of the future,” says Bruno Quinson, a top executive with Macmillan, which puts out Berlitz language and travel tapes. “We are highly mobile, short-on-time, electronic society. People who’d never take four hours reading a book will spend an hour with a tape.”
Or less than an hour: to the distress of some authors, there is a growing trend towards condensation and editing (“adapting” in publishing jargon) of the original work. Simon & Schuster goes so far as to boast, in its blurbs, that its tapes “provide the essence of a book, the heart of the matter, in less than an hour’s time.”
This makes audio books “Kentucky Fried Literature”, the fast food of the publishing industry, in the eyes of academics. Others argue that thousands that would never pick up a book are being introduced to great literature and given access to new field of information by how-to and self-help manuals.
Say what you know about the following.
John Le Carre, Thames Television, Berlitz, 1984, Kentucky Fried Chicken, fast food
What is your understanding?
The market is booming.
It’s the hottest new growth area in the business.
It’s the wave of the future.
“We are highly mobile, short-on-time, electronic society”.
This makes audio books “Kentucky Fried Literature”, the fast food of the publishing industry, in the eyes of academics.
Thousands are given access to new fields of information by how-to and self-help manuals.
Talking Points
Why do you believe the audio books sell especially well in the USA? Do you think they may be equally popular in Russia?
What do you think of audio books? Would you buy any yourself? Why or why not?
Do you agree that a) “it’s the wave of the future”? b) “thousands are introduced to great literature”?
What’s your attitude to drastic condensation of the original work?
How may “listening to a book” while doing something else change its impact?
In what way may the “listening reader” be affected by sound (i.e. the reader’s or author’s voice, other voices, sound effects, music, etc.)?