The Kindle Chronicles

Chris Brogan, left, and Julien Smith

I have been reading  The Impact Equation: Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise? by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith for more than five months. This is not because I am a slow reader, although I am a slow reader.

I got the idea for an experiment in immersive reading from my interview with Brogan on October 30, 2012 for TKC 222. I decided to read his book continuously for a year, starting over again each time I finished it. So far, I have completed three readings. My entry for the book at kindle.amazon.com shows 242 highlighted passages and 101 notes. My practice for this experiment is to read a few pages in The Impact Equation every day, and I’ve only missed a few days. I turn to the book on one of my Kindle devices or apps and enjoy seeing if I remember a particular passage well enough to recite by heart yet, or if it seems new.

It’s a good book for immersion, because the authors draw on a wide variety of sources to help us shape our ideas for maximum impact and use social media to achieve that impact. I made a list of all the books they mention, and it totals 28 titles–everything from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins to The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. Since I am a stickler for typos, I am grateful that this 285-page book only has seven that I’ve spotted so far. Brogan and Smith are careful, lively writers offering a useful approach to making your ideas matter.

That said, I have to confess that as I picked up my Kindle Fire this morning for the day’s reading, I wondered if six months might be enough for this experiment. The words seemed to be getting a little dry and familiar. For some reason, I ended up checking back to the book’s listing at amazon.com and realized for the first time that Whispersync for Voice was available for it, via an Audible version. Since I have so much time already invested in this book, the additional cost of $4.49 seemed reasonable, so I purchased and downloaded the file to my Fire HD 7″.

I expected that I would be hearing one of Audible’s excellent professional narrators, but instead I was pleasantly surprised to hear a voice that I recognized immediately as Brogan’s. He has a bedroom voice, full of empathy and earnestness, so this is a good vehicle for him. When I moved the audio player locator back to the start of the book, I was surprised again, to hear a different voice reading Chapter 1. I’ve never heard Julien Smith speak, so it was fun to hear him for the first time. Smith’s voice is more authoritative and professorial than Brogan’s. So they complement each other well, and each achieves a level of professional narration equal to any I’ve heard on other Audible books.

I’m not sure if Brogan and Smith wrote alternating chapters, but if so, this is a nice way to present the two authors’ voices and writing styles. Here is what one wrote, and now the other takes his turn. In reality, I think they review and edit each other’s writing, but probably the first draft came from whoever they chose to read that chapter for Audible.

What stuns me is how hearing the author’s voice so dramatically deepens the experience of reading the book. I am in a particularly good place to testify to this effect, having read the visible words on screens three times already. But now, as I watch the highlight move across the line as Brogan or Smith recite the words, I feel as if I am reading the book for the very first time. This is amazing, and a real tribute to Amazon’s brilliant pairing of Kindle books with Audible readings for a rapidly increasing number of titles.

In fact, Audible is now listing more than 23,000 titles that have Whispersync for Voice capability. If you have a book that you love and plan to read again, I urge you to consider taking advantage of this new way of deepening your experience of that book. Buy the Audible file and listen along as you read. You could do this without a Kindle Fire, on an E Ink Kindle or other device, even a paper book. But with the Fire you can see the words highlighted, like the bouncing ball that used to help follow the lyrics of a song. My mind takes heightened satisfaction and pleasure at the arrival of the same words instantaneously via two separate senses, eyes and ears.

When I decided to begin an immersive reading experiment for The Impact Equation, I had no idea that it would lead to this newfound satisfaction in pairing of the written and spoken word.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the depth of the delight has something to do with the first time I experienced it.  I remember as a boy how proud and happy I was when I realized that I could follow the words on the page, the very words that my father was reciting to me as he sat on the side of the bed, turning the pages of The Little Engine That Could.

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