Title: Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision With a Guide-Dog By My Side
Author: Susan Krieger
Narrator: Ann Richardson
Copyright: 2011, Crossroad Press
Duration: 6 hours, 45 minutes
Genres: non fiction, memoir
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Review copy provided by Crossroad Press.
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: This book is a romance, a travel adventure, an emotional quest, and a deeply reflective description of coming to terms with lack of sight. It reveals the invisible work of navigating with a guide dog while learning to perceive the world in new ways. In a series of beautifully textured stories, author Susan Krieger takes the reader on a fascinating journey as she travels with Teela, her lively "golden dog," through airports, city streets, and Southwest desert landscapes, exploring these surroundings with changed sight. This unusual account of travel will inspire the sighted as well as the blind, offering pointed observations on processes of learning to work with a service animal and on coming to terms with a disability.
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Losing your sight, obviously, causes some pretty big adjustments in the way you live your life. It changes your view of the world, and of the people you come into contact with. It changes the way you think about things, and it causes you to re-evaluate your priorities. You have to learn new ways of doing familiar tasks, and you have to learn some new tasks to compensate for the old ones you just can’t do any more.
I lost my sight two years ago, and I could go on and on about the different ways going blind can change your life, but I probably wouldn’t do it as clearly and concisely as Susan Krieger. In her memoir, Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision With a Guide-Dog by my Side, Susan describes her experiences in adjusting to her blindness in plain and simple language that is easy to understand. She has a knack for putting things in layman’s terms, as you might say.
This is Krieger’s second book about her adjustment to blindness, and as you can tell by the title, she focuses primarily on her travel experiences. She talks a lot about learning to work with a guide-dog, and the training and issues of trust that are involved in that. Personally, I’ve never tried a guide-dog so I found this to be very interesting and informative.
Of even more interest to me, were Susan’s descriptions of her own thoughts and feelings; learning to trust others for example, or trying to balance the need for assistance with the need for independence. She talks about simple things like crossing a street or picking out food at a buffet, simple for sighted folks that is, and more difficult things like navigating an airport and boarding a plane.
Narrator Ann Richardson did an adequate job on this audiobook. Traveling Blind is a memoir so there isn’t really any dialogue. That makes it hard to gauge Richardson’s skill since, in my opinion, a narrator’s ability to handle dialogue is a critical point. Still, I found her tone and inflection to be good, and she remained consistent throughout the audiobook.
Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision With a Guide-dog by My Side will be an interesting listen for a lot of people, I think. Those who are blind will enjoy it because it’s always interesting to compare notes with other blind people. Sighties might enjoy it as well, if only to gain a little perspective on things. This audiobook is a good reminder to us that we should never take anything for granted, and that there is life after a devastating loss, if you have the courage to go after it.
CHECK OUT THESE OTHER AUDIOBOOK REVIEWS:
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks
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If you like this audiobook review, you can purchase the audiobook here:
Get “Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision With a Guide Dog By My Side” by Susan Krieger (Unabridged Audiobook) from Crossroad Press.
This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt
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You know, I take offense to being called a 'sightie'. I am gifted with sight and I thank the good Lord everyday that I get to see just one more day, because I know all too well, how quickly it can be taken away.
ReplyDeleteSo please, call me gifted, not a sightie. :)
Love you honey. :)