God save us from books with soundtracks

By Harry MountLiterature, The Telegraph,l  August 29th, 2011

Below - St Jerome in his Study, iPod in left hand, by Domenico Ghirlandaio

The last bastion of silence in Britain has been breached. As today’s Telegraph reports, publishers are now producing the first “enhanced e-books”, where soundtracks are provided along with the text. The first one, The Adventures of the Speckled Band, a Sherlock Holmes story, came out last week, complete with driving rain, thunderclaps and blood-curdling screams.
Perhaps the most powerful advantage a book has over any other medium is in sparking and expanding the imagination. When you read, you fill in the gaps – your own internal soundtrack, how things look, how the emotions feel. Soundtracks are that much more prescriptive and precise, with little room left for your brain to improvise. Your own inner version of a scream may be that much more blood-curdling than the one laid down in the sound studio.
Eventually, if enough effects are added to a book, it stops being a book. Throw in a soundtrack and it becomes a radio play; add images on top, and it’s a film.
Full piece at The Telegraph.