“Wait, are Snape and Voldemort brothers?!”
This was my girlfriend last week.
I’m reading the Harry Potter series out loud to her (she’s never read the books or seen the movies(!)), and like most people, we’ve given extra chapters preferential treatment over parties, outdoor activities, and in the most gripping sections, bathing ourselves.
It is the best kind of book club. Not only are we sure everyone’s caught up, but we get to construct the world together in the spaces between us. We breathe life into the castle, discuss the characters’ moral decisions, make embarrassingly inaccurate predictions, and argue about magic’s real world applications. (We’ve yet to discover a prophecy that says a certain presidential candidate must die if we live.)
We never want this experience to end, but, alas, we’ve just started the seventh book.
So. Where to next?
All of the read-aloud lists I’ve found online are made up of books for young readers. As well they should be. Children’s books were built to be read aloud, and believe me, my girlfriend and I will read them. But by restricting ourselves to these lists, I think we’re neglecting some pretty interesting universes.
So I’ve made a list of my own. A short list. An imperfect list. But a good list nonetheless.
I’ve tried to limit myself to one of each of the following: a novel, a short story collection, a work of non-fiction, a graphic novel, and a book series. Each has, at the very least, a slight speculative fiction slant, because we are on Tor, after all.
The following are books for grown-ups that beg to be read aloud. Their words will rove through your mind like something alive, searching for an escape, forcing wide your lips so you can share them with the nearest person. I imagine it’s what vampirism must feel like.
So, don’t be bashful.
Do the funny voices.
Read the scary parts slowly.
Pause for dramatic effect.
Enjoy.
Best Read-Aloud Novel: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Why: When you suggest reading a book about a unicorn out loud to a grown-up, they might laugh at you. I hope they do. It will make things that much sweeter when Beagle’s lyrical prose perverts and elevates all fantasy tropes, making their mockery melt right off their faces.
Who will curl up in front of you: Seven-year-old girls who have been trained that unicorns are only for them. And maybe a few bronies. Keep a flyswatter handy to deal with these irritations.
Tips for reading: Read outside. It’s okay if you’re uncomfortable. So are the characters you’re reading about.
Runner-ups: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, and The Princess Bride by William Goldman.
Best Read-Aloud Short Story Collection: Pastoralia by George Saunders
Why: Saunders’ prose reads as easy as breathing. It’s absurd on the surface, challenging underneath, and each story pulls taut an intricate web of morality that only gets stickier the more you wrestle with it. They say Saunders is the best short story writer alive today. In this case, they are right.
Tips: Let Saunders’s prose dictate how quickly or slowly you read. Discuss how you would escape these impossible situations.
Who will curl up in front of you: Lovers of language, absurdity, and moral quandaries.
Runner-ups: Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, One More Thing by B.J. Novak, Black Juice by Margo Lanagan, Everything’s Eventual by Stephen King, The Middle Stories by Sheila Heti, and The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury.
Best Read-Aloud Graphic Novel: Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples
Why: Saga has everything: death, love, romance, heartbreak, magic, naturally occurring tree space ships, aliens, anthropomorphism, crude humor, smart humor, royalty with televisions for heads, sexy sex scenes, unsexy sex scenes, horrific violence, and a cat who always knows if you’re lying. All of these elements could fall flat if it weren’t for Fiona Staples frankly jaw-dropping artwork. Your eyes will ache from want of blinking.
Tips for reading: Assign different characters to different readers (you’ll be that much more devastated when they die). Don’t restrict yourself with traditional gender roles.
Runner-ups: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, Promethea by Alan Moore, The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and Castle Waiting by Linda Medley.
Best Read-Aloud Non-fiction: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
Why: Okay, I realize that by definition non-fiction cannot have a speculative fiction slant. However, some books are able to capture a piece of our world from an angle that makes it feel quite alien. And what real-world setting feels more sci-fi than people having sex in a science lab during an era when research on the topic is outlawed? Roach is hilarious, humble, and savvy as a pig being prepped for insemination. Some of the stories will definitely leave you feeling Less Than Sexy, but your water cooler conversation game will go through the roof.
Who will curl up in front of you: Perverts and science nerds (together at last).
Tips: Don’t read this one aloud to your mom.
Runner-ups: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, and Stiff by Mary Roach (if you want your stomach pinched instead of your cheeks).
Best Read-Aloud Series: The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Why: This series was pitched to me as “Harry Potter goes to college, with sex and drugs and all that that implies.” I think that analysis does a disservice to the work. Unlike Hogwarts, the magic here feels … more realistic, if that makes any sense. It’s dangerous and difficult and worms into dimensions most of its users don’t understand. And when they do understand it, they wish they hadn’t. Grossman’s trilogy about kids in a magical school tackles more adult themes. What do you do when you reach your goals and feel dissatisfied? How do you come to terms with growing up and leaving Hogwarts behind? The Magicians contains pockets of magic so deep that I felt lost when I went out into the world, knowing the only way to find my way back again would be to keep reading.
Who Will Curl Up In Front of You: Those who feel disenfranchised from Harry Potter and the real world. Also, goths.
Tips: Make big, gopping predictions about where the story’s headed (and prepare to be delightfully wrong). The first volume’s climax is slightly anti-climactic. Don’t stop.
Runner-ups: Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, Discworld by Terry Pratchett, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
All right, looks like that’s about i—
Rrg. Fine. FINE. Children’s books are too delightful not to read aloud, and they keep our imaginations crackling.
Let’s do those too.
Best Read-Aloud Children’s Book for Grown-Ups: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Why: Neil Gaiman was a struggling cobbler from Wales, whose literary career was cut short by an errant horseshoe kicked free by a duke’s thoroughbred. Gaiman’s grieving husband found the individual pages of this work tucked beneath the insoles of every shoe he failed to sell.
“Lying.”
Shut up, Lying Cat.
The Graveyard Book is, if you ask me, peak Gaiman. Each chapter is a unique short story that tells of a boy being raised by ghosts in a graveyard. The characters are as charming as they are unsettling and as trustworthy as they are transparent. Gaiman is able to pull off that rare magic trick of alluding to very adult things between the words, having grown-ups and children shiver alike at all the myths buried beneath us all.
Who will curl up in front of you: Your friends who say they’re “so weird” because Halloween is their favorite holiday (so a lot of them).
Tips: Make an effort to set a mood (candles, incense, smoke machine); better yet, find a graveyard and let it set a mood for you.
Runner-ups: The Canning Season by Polly Horvath, A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente, Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne, His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman.
There. Now that’s really it.
May those you love snuggle up around your feet. May your evenings be filled with gasps and sighs (of the literary variety).
Christian McKay Heidicker is a charming and gifted author from Utah. Cure for the Common Universe is his debut novel. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I’ve been reading the new Harry Potter Illustrated edition out loud to my wife, she has read all the books and seen the movies though (our first date was to a Harry Potter movie). It has been an interesting experience, I’ve been telling myself its practice for when we have kids, but I’m really having fun doing all the voices and we both ogle all of the beautiful illustrations together. Anyway, excellent article.
If you want to be humbled, listen to Jim Dale’s reading of the HP series. Every single character has a different voice!
A family member, his kids, and wife were traveling from Texas back to NC when one of the last HP novels came out. The adults and the oldest child read the book aloud, round robin, through the trip. They were hoarse yet happy by the time they made it home.
Before I got to the last entry, I was all ready to ask if Gaiman’s adult works read out loud as well as his children’s books. I actually wrote him fan mail thanking him for The Wolves in the Walls, as it is such a delight to read out loud compared to most picture books. Odd and the Frost Giants and Fortunately, the Milk read really well too. His adult novels haven’t worked as well for me, but maybe I’m just reading them too quietly.
A Wrinkle in Time.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
Unfortunately, attempting to read Harry Potter aloud with my wife just after we’d gotten married is the exact reason why I never finished the series or watched the movies beyond number 3.
Here’s how it happened. She had read 1-3 and I 1-4 prior to getting married. I thought it would be a fun activity/bonding experience to read 4 together. Neither one of us were huge fans, but liked the series well enough to keep at it. I’d read several chapters with her lounging on my shoulder. This became a nightly ritual.
The problem was that she’d drop off while I was reading, managing to stay coherent enough that I could ask her all kinds of questions which she could answer right then and there, but when starting back up the next night, she had no recollection of most of what we’d read. This was actually the source of one of our first fights.
So, I had to go back and re-read again most of what we’d already done, getting maybe a chapter or two farther. Next night, same story.
All this re-reading got me to the point where I was thoroughly fed-up with Harry. He was such a dip – never studying, only succeeding by luck or what his friends did, actively breaking every rule he could, putting his friends in all kinds of horrible situations, and in the end, he never seemed to grow or change.
I’ve been told REPEATEDLY by family and friends that Book 5 is where “it all changes” and all my frustrations with Harry are fixed. But having to re-read book 4 basically 3 times over, I’ve just never found the desire to ever go back to the series. And I doubt I ever will. I’ve already “spoiled” the story for myself through blog posts and wikis so I can talk with people who are fans, so I don’t really feel the need.
So, fair warning – doing the re-aloud thing? It may have unintended consequences.
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny — if you can find a copy. This is great for older children (tween and up) and adults. It’s classic, and a great read, especially for late October as a lead up to Halloween. It’s a short enough book that it can be read in one sitting.
I’ll second A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny – but even better, read it a chapter per night, starting with the Prologue on September 30th.
Terry Pratchett’s entire corpus makes for fine read-aloud times.
My wife and I have started reading books aloud in the last few months. It’s a very special time for us and now firmly a part of our nightly ritual. We both enjoy the same kinds of things so the most difficult thing about picking a book is to choose something from a wide variety of options. I recommend it.
I would love to see more suggestions in the comments. Looking especially for really good collections and anthologies. Our past list includes the first two books of the KingKiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss, Red Shirts (John Scalzi), and we’ve just started Peter F. Hamilton’s Great North Road. Pratchett’s books are on the future list as are the books in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.
I absolutely read The Last Unicorn out loud. Who wouldn’t?
My father read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings aloud to us when we were kids.
I come from a family where adult-to-adult reading aloud is a favored activity. Several married siblings regularly read aloud with their spouses. Not all of us read SFF, but some do. SFF read-aloud recommendations: Hellspark by Janet Kagan, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold (for one couple, this was their first Bujold, and led them to read aloud other books about Miles and Ekaterin), and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy.
Children’s SFF for adult read-aloud: Sophia McDougall’s Mars Evacuees and Space Hostages (though the mathematician brother pointed out that the physics of the space elevator was wrong!). Vonda McIntyre’s Barbary. For Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men you have to be able to pull off a thick Scottish brogue. When I was in the hospital post-cancer surgery, one of my brothers read Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13 to me (yes! I have great brothers!), and it was perfect for the situation: light, funny, engaging, imaginative. It got me reading (aloud or silently) other Ibbotson, and now my favorite is Island of the Aunts.
Short story collections: Ellen Klages’ Portable Childhoods.
Best read aloud book/author for adults and kids: Railsea by China Mieville, although the kids preferred Unlundun also by Mieville.
Thursday Next is great read out loud–there’s some amazing wordplay (I remember my father reading the “that-that” sequence to me when I was younger, and its hard to do it without laughing).
I saw Cat. Valente’s Fairyland series making the shortlist, but my boyfriend and I have had great fun reading her adult works, too. The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden & In the Cities of Coin and Spice in particular was just begging to be read aloud. (Tips: Swap reading so that one of you does the frame story and the other does the myriad tales. If there’s more of you, get different people doing different tellers within the tales, too. Be prepared to remember the voices of something you thought was a small side-cast character in an early bit that reappears for a much larger role later…)
We also tries Palimpsest, but must admit, all that sex made it a bit awkward for us. If that’s your cup of tea, though, go for it. It’s a great book. (Tips: Once again, split reading. If there’s two of you, take two people each. Don’t care about gender, instead, think about who can best pronounce Japanese or fake a good italian or russian accent.)
Actually Stanislaw Lem’s Tales of Pirx the Pilot and his entire Cyberiad-related short stories; also most of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories as well. Try JG Ballard’s short stories as well. And Harlan Ellison’s too. And Philip K Dick’s. And, lest we forget, Henry Lawson’s – particularly The Loaded Dog!
For novels, I would suggest HG Wells’ novels. He understood the flow of the spoken word. And of course Peter Carey’s Illywhacker. And anything by Maurice Shadbolt – his House of Strife Trilogy aka the New Zealand Wars Trilogy, is well worth the time.
Children’s book read-alouds … you really must try “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. My wife read the ninth volume aloud on a road trip, and I think I laughed every time she said the word “freaks”. Sad but true.
All of the Rick Riordan books (Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, Kane Chronicles). Reasonably short chapters, lots of humor and word play, lots of dialogue – near perfect reading/listening experience for teens or adults who want to act like them.
My father read The Chronicles of Narnia to me over 35 years ago. He also read the Just So stories by Rudyard Kipling. He had a fantastic reading voice and gave me a great love of books.
I have fond memories of reading the Winnie the Pooh stories and the Chronicles of Narnia to my kids. (I have Eeyore’s voice just right, if I do say so myself.) I’m not sure that a graphic novel would lend itself to being read out loud, but it would be an interesting challenge.
Ursula Le Guin’s books, and especially her short stories, make for great reading aloud. Also Diana Wynne Jones. And Kipling, of course (his Just So Stories are designed to be read aloud), even if his stories might not be fantastical enough to earn a spot in this list.
I love reading aloud but very rarely get to do it. Sometimes, when a book has really great dialogue or generally good flow in the writing, I find myself reading aloud to myself. It happens so often that I have to actively check myself when reading in public or semi-public places. :)
Thus begins The Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart a book that cries out to be read aloud even if only to ones self.
Somehow, dear author, not surprised to read you are a fellow Utahn, with a name like Christian McKay. I love read-aloud books. Audiobooks got me through five years of a very boring data entry job, and now as a full time mom, they allow me to keep up on my ‘reading’ while I do household chores. My husband and I also take turns reading out loud to each other in our own little two-person book club. Thank you for the recommendations!
Oooh! Ooh! I do this thing, um, where I sometimes NEED to read stuff out loud to myself, because a particular passage is so perfect that I need to hear it with my ears and feel it on my tongue? It… probably weirds people out, actually. But it means I have a LOT of strong feelings about books that feel particularly good to say and hear.
All of Ursula Vernon/T Kingfisher’s stuff lends itself particularly well to reading aloud, I find. She just has that conversational cadence and a way with a turn of phrase. That stop-and-speak-the-words thing I do happened a LOT with Castle Hangnail, and a few times in Bryony and Roses, and Jackalope Wives.
I second @cecrow’s recommendation of A Series of Unfortunate Events! Another one I’ve stopped and read aloud to myself, or pestered the hell out of my family and friends by forcing them to listen to me reading snippets to them.
Clive Barker’s kid’s book The Thief of Always is BEAUTIFUL in its language. Not sure about his adult stuff… mostly because I’ve only really read Mister B. Gone of his grown up books and the whole time I was kinda scared the narrator might come out of the book and murder me… I think I read out the opening passage anyway, though.
POETRY. Poetry with a beat and a rhythm not only CAN be spoken aloud, but SHOULD in order to get the full effect. Maya Angelou doesn’t WORK all the way unless you hear and feel and tap your toe to it. Don Marquis’s Archy and Mehitabel poems are a joy to say. It’s cheerio, my deario, that pulls a lady through!
Robin McKinley’s stuff has some lovely bits to roll around on the tongue? I remember the opening passage of Spindle’s End and the first chapter of Deerskin as having good mouthfeel.
… The visual novel Hatoful Boyfriend. Yes, the dating sim video game where you seduce pigeons. Shut up. I played it and made my best friend play it again with me and when playing a heavily text based game with another person it’s just EASIER when read aloud and I have voices for all the different pigeons and even alone how can you NOT want to say some of these lines? Fluffy heretic! From here to distant Macedonia! MY HUNTER GATHERER BLOOD BOILS!
@24: Poetry, of course!
In particular, Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, with the original on one page and his translation on the other. You can read it aloud either way, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the Old English (I certainly don’t), it still sounds wonderful sounded out.
Any of the Jeeves and Wooster books are great. Start off with a short story collection before moving to the novels. Hysterical Brit humor at its best.
Second much of the above, including:
– His Dark Materials: Golden Compass/N Lights is the current “read aloud to the family, including the spouse” book.
– Jeeves. Yes. Great dialogue!
My favorite children’s book to read aloud, to children and adults alike, is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
P. G. Wodehouse and his fantastical successors, Jack Vance and Terry Pratchett.
No “Who will curl up in front of you” for Saga/graphic novels?
The novel everyone should read at least once in their lifetime, along with the Last Unicorn, is The Neverending Story.
My favorite book to listen to is Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. I think part of it was the first time I heard it was on an overnight cross-country trip, where the stillness of the highway contributed to the book. It is VERY different from the movie of the same name, and is very thought-provoking.
No one has mentioned `The Thirteen Clocks’ by James Thurber? Admittedly, it’s a children’s book, but the language is so deliciously read-aloud-able. :)
Saki’s Tobermory, along with many of his other short stories – my Dad read them to us while we camped under the Australian stars in the outback – and I’ve read them to my husband too. One of our best readalouds has been The Go Between by L P Hartley – incredibly atmospheric, and a page turner, capturing another era. For short stories, we love Sum by David Eagleman – only 3 pages long, funny and conversation-starting…also – Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials! We read the trilogy to each other pre-children, and again to the kids when they came along to join in the reading fun…
Brief Life of Oscar Wao – seriously? — either the author of this article hasn’t read the book, or is disingenuous in suggesting this as a good read-aloud. If you aren’t proficient in Spanish, I *do* recommend you get the audiobook, which is excellent. But for sure if you don’t speak Snoash, do not attempt a read-aloud!
Read aloud: “Portuguese Irregular Verbs” and its sequel, “The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs” by Alexander McCall Smith. These are both novellas and incredibly entertaining. There’s a third book in the series, “Inn of Reduced Circumstances” which you will read because after the first two, you can’t not read it. The first two are masterpieces of farce.
The Mitford series by Jan Karon is lovely; heartwarming, soul-searching, sentimental, and funny in turns. Well worth the journey.