First Line: Cloud Cuckoo Land

The first line of Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is:

A fourteen-year-old girl sits cross-legged on the floor of a circular vault.

 

***

 

I started reading Doerr's book yesterday on my kindle (above) and in audiobook form on my mobile device using the Libby app from my public library. I engage in what might be called immersive reading. In other words, I read the printed words on my ebook reader and listen to an audio version of the same book on a Bluetooth speaker or pair of headphones at the same time. This experience is immersive in the sense that I concentrate on two modalities of the text at the same time.

However, I do enjoy being able to hold and touch a physical copy of the book once in a while. So, I checked out a hardcover print version of Doerr's book from the library yesterday. Just for context, this copy has more than 1100 pages, is more than two inches thick and weighs almost three and a half pounds. Not the most portable version of the text. The standard text was already checked out by another patron.

Finally, I saw that the library also had a playaway preloaded audiobook which I also checked out. I could listen to the book in this format instead of the Libby format, but it has two disadvantages, at least in my opinion. First, it requires a physical cable. Second, it has fewer options for playback speed. I like to listen to a book at 2x speed if I am walking or doing mundane chores like laundry or dinner prep; if I am engaged in immersive reading, then I like to listen at 2.5x or higher. Once the brain becomes used to a higher speed it becomes the preferred processing speed in my experience.