Best books for reading Out Loud

When I was a kid, my mom and I would read books to each other in the car. As an adult, I am very lucky to have a life partner who enjoys listening to me read books out loud. So for most of my life, I have read and listened to books. I have found that not all books work well out loud, and there is a certain skill to choosing books that are going to be good out loud.

What are some of your favorite out-loud books?

As a kid, mom and I read each other all of the Little House on the Prairie books - young adult literature often works well out loud.

As an adult, some of our favorite out-loud books have been Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (I think it took us about 8 months to read it), The Princess Bride (that one took us about a week - we didn't get much sleep that week), The Once and Future King, and The Time Traveler's Wife.

What criteria do you use when selecting books to read out loud? Some of our criteria are:

* Length - really long books can get tedious out loud, so I usually don't want to tackle a book that is more than 350-400 pages (although there are lots of exceptions, such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.

* Fairly simple writing style - long sentences and complicated vocabulary can be hard to process aurally, so in general, a simple writing style works better. Again, there are lots of exceptions to this. This is why young adult literature often works well out loud.

* Chapter lengths - since we tend to read out loud at bedtime, it's important to have regular stopping places. Books with fairly uniform chapter lengths, or lots of stopping places within the chapter, tend to work better.

* Dialog style - I'm not very good at doing lots of different voices, so if the author doesn't put in a lot of "he said / she said", it can get really confusing for the person listening to me.

Reading books out loud is a really amazing way to share the reading experience. We were both emotional wrecks while we were reading The Time Traveler's Wife, and it was wonderful to get to share the emotional trauma with someone else.

So what are some of your favorite books to read out loud? How do you choose which books you are going to read out loud? And what experiences have you had sharing books with someone else?

Thackeray's Vanity Fair is a good read-aloud. Did it once on a long bike trip, when cut off from TV and other distractions.

I, too, have always enjoyed works read out loud. My father was a big fan of reading aloud, and so were his parents. My paternal grandmother was a fifth grade teacher and I was spoiled with books growing up. As a child, I read White Fang and the Bobbsey Twins books aloud to myself.

All through my English career, I went to author readings and enjoyed extending the experience in the academic sphere. And now, I'm in a relationship with a man who has a talent for reading aloud. He read The Hobbit and it came alive. We had also been taking turns reading Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling but that was set aside when graduate school got strenuous.

Now, as a high school teacher, I take the time to read excerpts from young adult books and adult books with interest to youth at the beginning of each class. Despite some of the students rolling their eyes and saying it's a waste of time, I know how important it is. Nearly each time class ends, a student comes forward and asks for the book I read from, or where to find it. Reading aloud is a powerful and important literacy tool.

As a matter of fact, I'm considering honing my skills at reading aloud and contributing to Librivox (.com). They provide free audio books that are user contributed. I use them all the time for my students who are aural learners, or who have a difficult time reading.

Favorite books to read aloud from? Just about any YA book, but specifically, Inkheart, anything by Chris Crutcher, and Tolkien. By far, those are the texts I enjoy reading aloud the most.

I read aloud to my husband almost every night. We decided to start when we first got married because he's a physicist and never really has read much 'recreationally' and wanted to read more, and I really wanted to share my love of reading with him. Right now we're reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is fun, but sometimes hard to read aloud since I have to stop and laugh for minutes at a time.

I too grew up in a reader-friendly home. My mom read to me every day growing up (Gwendydd: we read The Little House on the Prairie books too!) I can't wait to read to my kids too someday.

Oh, and I'm a Classics prof., and I sometimes read Latin aloud to my Latin students to try to get them to understand how beautiful and powerful the language was/still is.

Tolkien's books are definitely excellent out loud - I think he wrote them with reading aloud in mind over silent reading. The first time I ever read the Lord of the Rings trilogy was when I read them out loud to my boyfriend through college. We were in a long-distance relationship and didn't see each other much, so it took most of college to read them. But we have some wonderful memories of when and where we read those books over the years. I do most of our out loud reading, but I was crying so hard at the end of The Return of the King that he had to read the end to me.

It's great to read tear-jerkers out loud so that you have someone else who understands why you're crying and who can cry along with you. I remember my mom telling me about reading Charlotte's Web to herself when she was a kid, and she cried really hard at the end, and her mom couldn't understand why she was so sad about a spider. My boyfriend and I have shared some really good tearjerkers. I think we both cried all the way through The Time Traveler's Wife, even during the happy parts. The Once and Future King also solicited some tears, although at least they were usually followed by raucous laughter. The Last Unicorn is another book that is really good out loud, and that one always makes me cry a lot.

I count myself infinitely fortunate to have found a boyfriend who not only enjoys books, but also cries at the sad parts right along with me. :)

Gwendydd, you are indeed lucky to have a boyfriend who cries at the sad parts. There are not enough of them out there! Luckily, my fiance does, too!

I'm starting a new unit with one of my junior English classes. This group of students struggle with reading and so I plan on using the audiobook of Maya Angelou reading her novel I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I'll end up reading a few other novels to them, too. It'll be fun! And a great literacy tool.

I think that The Gift by Patrick O'Leary is a good read-aloud book. Actually, if no one's around to think I'm crazy and I'm re-reading that one, I sometimes read it aloud to myself. Kinda embarrassing, but there you go - same deal with The Last Unicorn, it's one of those that begs to be read aloud.

I've always enjoyed reading aloud to my wife and two boys (now teenagers). A few years ago we went through The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. It took just under a year, and it was the best group reading experience we had. My boys especially liked the voices I did; they became second nature, as most characters continue through the whole tale.

Regarding voices: it's probably best to give the main character your own voice, so you can save the (strenuous) task of unusual voices for the less frequent characters.

I've figured out that Rudyard Kipling wrote his stories for the sole purpose of being read aloud. My fiance and I have alternated reading Puck of Pook's Hill and the Just So Stories for a few years now. Last night, I was having a crummy night, so he pulled out the second volume, one we haven't cracked open yet, and read The Greatest Story in the World. Seriously. That story was meant to be read aloud. It was amazing.

I'll recommend Fup by Jim Dodge. Short, sweet, humorous, and uplifting.

I just started reading Inkheart out loud to my boyfriend two nights ago, on brokensnowpea's recommendation. I can tell we're going to end up staying up late for one more chapter a lot over the next few weeks!

@ Gwendydd (11): Oh good! How is the reading going? As it's now July, I bet you're done with Inkheart now. What are you reading currently?

My fiance (husband in two weeks!) and I haven't been reading aloud the last few months because life has been so hectic (end of the school year madness, moving to a new house, settling in, and curriculum planning for the new year) but now that life is settling back down, I plan on finding a book to read out loud at bedtime again soon.

Now that I've said that, I should modify it some. We have been occasionally been reading Aesop's Fables to each other at bed time. But it's not a nightly habit. We read from Aesop maybe once a week, but it's very inconsistent.

We're not quite done with Inkheart.... we had a busy few weeks where there just wasn't time to read. We took a trip where we drove through California for a while, so we read Fup out loud, because it takes place in CA. Thank you, VisibleGhost, for that suggestion: it is definitely a charming and funny book, and was great road-trip reading!

Our next book is going to be Dealing with Dragons, by Patricia Wrede. Actually, we've already started it. We went for a hike in the woods, and I had brought it along because it's a really small book. We were in a really isolated and empty park with well-maintained trails, so we walked slowly and read out loud to each other as we walked. That was one of the best hikes I've ever been on!

I read Miracle in the Andes to my husband, while he painted out bedroom last winter. That was on a Sunday. The next day, our district cancelled school due to a snow day. My husband drives a truck, so I went out with him so as to finish the book. It's not one you'd typically think of for reading out loud, but the personal narrative made it a captivating read aloud.

Some other nominations:
The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

All of these are very episodic and have an element of travel, which often goes down well in the circumstances of reading aloud. (Probably there aren't that many strong-voiced marathon readers who do a book at a sitting!) Jerome and Waugh are quite humorous, too.

My posted "library" is only of books I've read aloud, with occasional comments, for whatever they're worth. It's pretty subjective, of course.

Watership Down is an amazing book to read out loud; and the rabbit mythology makes it interesting for adults as well as children. Pride and Prejudice was another favorite of ours; very funny social satire.