I would like to tell you a little bit about me -- my personal experience as a patron of the National Library Service (NLS) and also my professional affiliation with the talking-book program. I was not a patron of the program until my mid-twenties. I began losing my vision at the age of eight due to a recessive gene disorder, which gradually progresses over life. But I was still reading print at a pretty good clip with low vision aids during high school. When I went to college, I began using books on tape from Recording for the Blind and also from a local volunteer organization. But never did I do much recreational reading. I always found recreational reading arduous. It was bad enough that I had to read all those textbooks, which did not come easily to me. There were several turning points that led me to become an avid reader of the program. A couple of years after I graduated from college, my sister was raving about a book that she had read. And she said, "Carl, you have to read this book!" I said, "What is it about?" And she said, "It's about rabbits." I said, "l don't want to read about rabbits." She said, "It's not really about rabbits — just read it." A couple of months later a good friend of mine said, "I'm reading this great book." And I said, "What is it about?" He said, "It's about rabbits." I had a lot of respect for both my sister and this guy, so I finally picked up this book. It was on rigid disk with a lot of scratches. But from the first minute on, I was mesmerized. Anybody want to guess what the book was? Right, Watership Down. Well, I finished the book and I said, "Wow, fiction can be fun! I didn't realize that."* Adapted from an address delivered by Carl R. Augusto to the Conference of Librarians Serving Blind and Physically Handicapped Individuals (May 1992), in National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Reflections of a Lifetime Reader (Washington, DC: Library of Congress), p. 1-2. 1 Type the correct answer in the box. Spell all words correctly. This is a narrati