![]() Abridgements, once almost all of the business, pretty much disappeared. ![]() Technology greased the skids, with cassettes yielding to CDs, and with downloadable audio eventually holding down first place. People with reading difficulties became a natural audience for audiobooks, but you didn’t have to be dyslexic to absorb information more effectively and with less effort through your ears than through your eyes. Other drivers found audiobooks could shorten a long daily commute, or enliven a long road trip.Ī friend of mine with lifelong dyslexia had never read anything for pleasure when she listened to a book on a cross-country flight, a whole new world opened to her. Truck stops provided much of the distribution, as the first substantial audience consisted of long-haul truckers, many of whom found listening to a story a welcome alternative to radio. Nothing to it, I thought, and I was home by four that afternoon, and I lay down on the bed and slept for fifteen hours without stirring.īack then, no one quite knew what to do with audiobooks. A short book to begin with,it was severely abridged for audio, and I got through it in a single day-long session in a one-man studio in the West Sixties. It was Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the first Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery, just reissued by Dutton Penguin’s audio division was to publish the audiobook version, and I got the opportunity to narrate it. ![]() My Aunt Nettie died in 1982, and it was around a dozen years after that when I first recorded an audiobook. But it took a while for the audiobook to become an item for consumers-and, ultimately, a key component of the book publishing industry. To be sure, almost all of us started out as listeners we were read to before we learned to read on our own. Over time, of course, reading with one’s ears has emerged as an option even for people with perfect vision. If you could sit down and read a book, why would you want to listen to it? The program was free, but you had to be disabled to qualify for it. My Aunt Nettie’s eyesight had deteriorated to the point where reading for pleasure was no longer possible a lifelong reader, she discovered that she could obtain what were called Talking Books-recordings available, as I recall, from a division of the Library of Congress. I’m not sure when I first became aware of the medium, but it was probably close to half a century ago. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT AUDIOBOOKS, BEFORE WE GET DOWN TO CASES… Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. ![]() The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother-his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. Whether being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping or simply trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty.īorn a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic and deeply affecting. It is also the story of his relationship with his fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother – his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.īorn a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Trevor Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show in New York began with a criminal act: his birth. ![]()
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