Books That Listen Back
On World Book Day
On World Book Day, a few of the languages KIKU now listens in. Listening travels.
I had the thought recently that when we’re reading, we don’t only read the words. We don’t just move through content at pace and volume. We wrestle to understand characters in relation to one another and in relation to ourselves. We read to comprehend the story, but we also read to discover an experience we may not yet have fully recognised in ourselves.
Like listening, reading is a multi-channel experience of content and relationship. We gather information from what is said, but we also develop a kind of relationship with the book, jointly creating meaning in an active space.
And like a person who is sharing something with you, a book isn’t written only to transmit information. It invites you to read its story, which sometimes makes it feel as though the book is listening back.
I had this experience recently while reading My Friends by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. Each of the friends in the story reveals themselves one after the other, inviting me to discover them in the same way I come to know my own friends. But as I became increasingly familiar with the characters and invested in what they had at stake, the book began to feel as if it were listening back, uncannily telling me something about myself I hadn’t known before.
On this World Book Day, if you’ve ever had the experience of a book that seemed to listen back, I’d love to hear which book it was and what that experience felt like for you.
In the meantime, wishing you many spacious listening moments on this World Book Day.