Julia Whelan is Reading to You
Audiobooks are big business. Unfortunately, I do not participate in this big business as I can’t bring myself to listen to books. This isn’t a purist thing, it’s a processing thing. For instance, I have very specific parameters for listening to podcasts: I cannot listen in the car if I’m the driver. Music only for my driving self, but I can listen and enjoy if I’m a passenger. I can listen with earbuds while I’m walking, but not running. I’ve never thought of myself as high maintenance, but maybe my ears prove otherwise.
Here’s a NYT profile of Julia Whelan, one of the most-requested and popular book narrators. Listened to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn? You’ve listened to Whelan. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid? Whelan voiced one of the characters. Tara Westover’s popular memoir, Educated? Yes, Whelan did that voiceover work for that too. And 400+ other audiobooks, articles for The New Yorker, and her own novel, Thank You for Listening. (Yes, it’s about the audio industry and voiceover work.)
My friend messaged me yesterday saying that she read The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz at my recommendation. “To be fair I did Audible. I’m incapable of turning pages these days.” That kind of struck me because I imagine many people feel that way. (And audiobooks still count as “reading,” by the way.) It made me think that maybe the reason I like gripping the pages so much is half a processing style thing but maybe half a control thing.
Here’s what made me think about that: Whelan has narrated articles by Olivia Nuzzi, New York magazine’s DC correspondent, and Nuzzi has learned something from listening to her. “When I listen to Julia read my stories, it sounds like she is calling you over to tell you a great story…When I write now, I try to think like that, that I am calling a reader over to tell them a great story. It has completely changed my approach.”
Maybe I’d process a book differently if I, as a reader, changed my approach too?
originally published on instagram