Reading Aloud

The Harvard Sentences are hundreds of sentences that have been used for many decades to test technologies in which understanding speech is essential, like telephone systems and hearing aids. I came across the list recently and was charmed by it.

Some sample sentences: It’s easy to tell the depth of a well. The hogs were fed chopped corn and garbage. Help the woman get back to her feet. The harder he tried the less he got done. It caught its hind paw in a rusty trap. Write a fond note to the friend you cherish. Most of the news is easy for us to hear.

These sentences weren’t chosen for their meaning but for their “phonetic balance,” the way their frequency of sounds are similar to spoken language. They’re tools, not advice or koans. But reading them I felt moved as when reading a poem. I found a site where you can listen to people read the sentences in different accents and tried to see if it was possible to hear a series of lines aloud without them gathering meaning. These narrators were particularly skilled at reading without affect, but it’s impossible to listen to even the least emotive person recite: “The stray cat gave birth to kittens. The young girl gave no clear response. The meal was cooked before the bell rang. What joy there is in living,” and not detect some poetry.

Is there a person on earth who doesn’t love to be read to? Children get storytime, nightly if they’re lucky, but once we know how to read we typically do it by ourselves. Last year I wrote about audiobooks as bedtime stories for adults, how they can tap into that desire that’s maybe dormant in all of us, the desire to have our sleep treated as a project worthy of coaxing and custodianship. Every few months I let Joseph Brodsky reading his poem “A Song” lull me to sleep. Recently a friend and I read each other portions of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Reading to someone is different from simply speaking to them. The words aren’t yours, so you don’t own the thoughts or meaning, only the communication. You’re free to interpret, to perform. It’s a process of co-discovery, intimate but, unlike conversation, the content comes from a third party. It’s about connecting and it’s also about consuming art together, whether that art is a poem or “The Polar Express” or a novel from which you and your sweetheart read alternating chapters to each other while cooking dinner.

There are so many ways to be read to now, if that’s your thing. Audiobooks, articles narrated by people and by artificial intelligence, recordings of author appearances at bookstores, and yes, WAV files of curiously blasé people muttering Harvard Sentences into the void. There is little I like more than reading by myself, or listening to a book alone on a long car drive. But you might still make the effort to read and be read to by the people in your life. It’s cozy. It’s strange and exciting if you’ve grown accustomed to reading as a solo activity. You’re living in your head all the time with your own voice as the narrator. It’s so lovely to listen to someone else tell the stories for a change.

For more

• “The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th-century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company.” Verlyn Klinkenborg, from 2009, on the pleasures of reading aloud.

• “Reading Aloud to My Daughter, From Prison.”

• From Gizmodo: “The ‘Harvard Sentences’ Secretly Shaped the Development of Audio Tech.”

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Film

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• In “The Last Showgirl,” Pamela Anderson stars as a dancer at a Las Vegas revue. The director Gia Coppola tells the story with “an obvious appreciation for the affirming highs and bitter lows that age and beauty afford,” Manohla Dargis writes.

• At the movies, the character of the “older woman” — middle-aged and in a relationship with a younger man — has finally become the protagonist.

• Oscar nominations will be revealed next week. The Times’s awards columnist shared the nods he’d like to see, including “Challengers” for best original score.

• Perry, the miniature donkey who was used as a model for “Shrek” animators, died at 30.

Television

• “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Abbott Elementary” share a city, but their tones couldn’t be more different. Still, this week’s crossover episode was seamless.

• The director of a documentary about “The Jerry Springer Show” spoke to The Times about the talk show’s complex legacy.

• After 17 years, Hoda Kotb anchored the “Today” show for the final time.

Music

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• Many of the music industry’s most respected — and consistently employed — rock ’n’ roll roadies are septuagenarians.

• Sam Moore, the tenor half of the scorching soul duo Sam & Dave — known for indelible hits like “Soul Man” — died at 89.

• The folk singer Peter Yarrow died this week at 86. With his trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, he eased folk music into the Top 10.

More Culture

• Jenna Bush, the former first daughter and current literary influencer, is starting a publishing venture with Penguin Random House.

• “Show Boat” set a new standard for Broadway. Frequently revived, as in a new production called “Show/Boat: A River,” it endures because it has always said something important about America, our critic writes.

• Sara Mearns, a New York City Ballet star, discusses her recent return to the stage wearing hearing aids: “I want to hear the music that I’m dancing to.”

• The Mexican architect Frida Escobedo designed a new wing at the Met. She is the first woman to do so in the museum’s 154-year history. Read about her rise.

THE LATEST NEWS

California Fires

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• Firefighters have made little progress battling two huge fires in Los Angeles. The largest, the Palisades fire, expanded east last night, threatening an upscale area that includes the Getty Center.

• The fires have killed at least 11 people and destroyed or damaged thousands of buildings. (These maps show the scale of the destruction.)

• Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered an independent review to determine why firefighters ran out of water earlier this week.

• “Everywhere you look, everything’s on fire”: A mother knew she had to get her family out of Altadena, even if it meant losing all that they left behind.

• People who live through wildfires may experience anxiety, depression or psychological distress for years afterward, experts warned.

Politics

• The judge in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial gave him a lenient sentence that carried no punishment. Still, it ensures that Trump will be a felon when he takes office.

• The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold a law that would ban TikTok unless the app’s parent company sells it.

• A federal judge held Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court for continuing to defame two Georgia election workers, the second such ruling against him this week.

Other Big Stories

• U.S. employers added 256,000 jobs last month, a stronger-than-expected result.

• The U.S. imposed new sanctions targeting Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — dozens of tankers that Moscow uses to evade existing oil sanctions.