Just finished reading Life’s Edge by Carl Zimmer. It was the third book of Zimmer I’ve read. Some time ago I decided to read books only aloud. The first book was Harry Potter, a few years ago. Reading aloud helped me stop jumping between paragraphs and resist the temptation to skip boring parts. It also helped me to keep a constant reading speed (which is just 2:20 min per page). I was able to see how the pauses in speech match the punctuation and structure of written sentences. And it helped to start thinking in phrases and word combinations rather than in separate words and grammar rules. It helped to draw attention to how the sentences are built — from time to time it was against my understanding of English grammar (and I googled why and patched my understanding as a result).
These 290 pages took me about 6.5 hours (2:20 per page). I bought the book on Apr, 8, exactly one month ago. On average, it was taking about 15 minutes per day.
I found the book really interesting, but if one has to choose which Zimmer’s to read, then it is better to start with his previous book, “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity” (2018). “The Planet of Viruses” (2015) was interesting too.
I recorded how I was reading one of the last pages of the book. Since I had never seen that page before, it was not as smooth as it could be. Have you heard my Russian accent? Have you heard my rolling “r”? Interesting to hear some feedback and recommendations from those for whom English is the first language.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 