Kathy Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "readings"
My critic, the dog
In preparation for the official Welsh launch of The Woodville Connection in Fishguard this coming Saturday, I have been practising reading out loud selected extracts from the book.
In all honesty my first attempts were pretty feeble but I do think I’m making progress. Not that Tova, our elderly dog, is doing much for my self-esteem. When I first started declaiming to an otherwise empty room she reacted with little more than a quizzical stare but repeated readings have brought out her inner critic. Now, the moment I start to read she lurches arthritically to her feet and exits through the patio doors into the garden.
What bother me is that Tova has no problem with my enthusiastic but truly dreadful rendering of musical theatre classics. I say with no false modesty that while I adore singing, I really can’t hold a tune and so I save my musical outbursts for when I am alone in the house (alone, that is, except for the dog). I can warble away to my heart’s content, mangling notes and generally committing GBH of the eardrums, and Tova moves nary a muscle. Yet the minute I stand up, open the book and prepare to read, off she trots.
I’m not entirely sure what this means with regard to the event at Fishguard. I’m hoping that Tova is simply a poor judge of prose readings but in case it turns out she’s spot on in her critical assessment, perhaps I’d better be ready to launch into a song!
In all honesty my first attempts were pretty feeble but I do think I’m making progress. Not that Tova, our elderly dog, is doing much for my self-esteem. When I first started declaiming to an otherwise empty room she reacted with little more than a quizzical stare but repeated readings have brought out her inner critic. Now, the moment I start to read she lurches arthritically to her feet and exits through the patio doors into the garden.
What bother me is that Tova has no problem with my enthusiastic but truly dreadful rendering of musical theatre classics. I say with no false modesty that while I adore singing, I really can’t hold a tune and so I save my musical outbursts for when I am alone in the house (alone, that is, except for the dog). I can warble away to my heart’s content, mangling notes and generally committing GBH of the eardrums, and Tova moves nary a muscle. Yet the minute I stand up, open the book and prepare to read, off she trots.
I’m not entirely sure what this means with regard to the event at Fishguard. I’m hoping that Tova is simply a poor judge of prose readings but in case it turns out she’s spot on in her critical assessment, perhaps I’d better be ready to launch into a song!
