Dunedin non-fiction writer Dr Lynley Hood talks summer reads.
My ideal summer destination is any wild and beautiful place that allows the randomness and relaxation of the holiday to deliver the ultimate gift of time - time for family and friends, for the natural world, and for uninterrupted listening to books.
I dream of reading books; enthralling, absorbing, enlightening books. But my visual impairment has put paid to that. As I grieve for the books I cannot read, I listen obsessively to audio books.
2. What is your favourite book to re-read in the summer, and why?
Fewer than 5% of the world's books are available in audio format. Unabridged, well-written, well-narrated audiobooks are rarer still. Since it takes three times longer to listen to a book than to read it, my choices are based on one over-riding requirement: the book had better be good.
3. What books are on your reading list this summer, and can you say a little about them?
That Proust and the Squid: the Story of Science and the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf was turned into an audiobook is a miracle for which I shall be eternally grateful. Wolf's account of the magic and neurobiology of reading helped me make sense of my loss, and introduced me to Proust.
Reading Proust is said to be difficult. Listening to Proust narrated by Neville Jason is to be entranced by a work of genius. Of the 153 hours and 40 minutes of Remembrance of Things Past, I still have 51 hours and 25 minutes to go. So this summer I'll be listening to Proust. I'll be enchanted and soothed. I'll fall asleep. I'll wake up again. I'll go on listening. It'll be wonderful.
4. What is your favourite book for your journey to a summer holiday destination, such as being on a plane?
My all-time favorite audiobook for long plane flight is Charlemagne by Richard Winston (narrated by Charlton Griffin). I turned it on when we left Los Angeles, went straight to sleep and slept soundly until we were woken for breakfast nine hours later. I have never slept so well on that long trans-Pacific flight in my life.
