from The Book Standard
August 24, 2005
The Book Babes:
By Ellen Heltzel & Margo Hammond

There's even an audio literary magazine on the market. The inaugural issue of Verb, which will be available Sept. 12 for download at Audible.com or iTunes, includes a 13,000-word excerpt from an unpublished novel by Pulitzer Prize–winner Robert Olen Butler, a short story by National Book Award winner Ha Jin and a new short story from Edgar Award–winner Tom Franklin. It also features the voice of James Dickey (recorded just two months before his death) and, even more remarkably, the voice of Walt Whitman.

I see all of these developments as great supplements to my reading regime, but I wonder if one day, hearing literature will be more common than reading it. Could the printed word ever go the way of the eight-track?