Reading aloud to family and friends was once an integral part of social life. Sadly, even for children, it has become a lot less common. Yet taking in a story through the eyes rather than the ears is a recent thing. If the earliest stories were oral, told around a fire or by a travelling bard, the biblical tales were read by preacher or pastor to a congregation, and by the head of the family at home.
A hundred years ago, families would gather to listen to anything from Dickens to the daily newspaper being read aloud; now, there is a widening gulf between those who grow up feeling that books, and stories, are an integral part of living in a community, and those who don
Readers who gather to hear authors read their works are drawn not only by the chance to see what writers look like, but also to absorb a story as our ancestors did, and as millions of adults and children will on World Book Day next Thursday.
The Venerable Bede was said to be the first man who could read silently to himself, but what was a milestone in fostering that internal, private dialogue also cut us off from enjoying literature as a communal activity. Many modern novels, such as those of Kafka or W. G. Sebald, would be impossible to enjoy aurally, while others
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