My Congo has so many WT readers I only come up on the schedule about once every 4 or 5 months. Last time I think I was out of town and I made sure not to switch places with anybody. All the wannabe Walter Cronkites practically jump out of their shoes at the "privilege" of reading when someone like me does a no-show. Anyway, I think it's been close to a year since I've read a Craptower out loud in public and nobody seems to notice or care.
The Book Study is a different animal though. I probably read there about once every 4 - 6 weeks. Whenever I'm asked to read and I'm truly feeling the least bit ill, I'll mention this and usually someone else will read instead. Otherwise I'll give a tired-sounding "Sure. That's fine."
To twist the words of Our Lord at Matthew 24:15:
"Let the (no-longer-believing-JW) reader use discernment."
If you take everything you learned about public reading in the Theocratic Misery School, turn it around 180 degrees, you'll have a pretty good idea of how to best read at the Congregation Book Study.
Look for the key, thought-carrying word(s) in the sentence.
Then mumble them or skip them entirely.
Pre-read the paragraph silently so you have a good feel for the overall message that the Faithful & Discreet Slave class is trying to convey.
Then do your best to obscure it.
1. Exclamation point? Read it flat.
2. Question Mark? (see #1.)
3. Italics, Underlined or Bold? (see #1.)
4. Unimportant, conjunctive words or phrases? Hit these a little bit harder. Almost use emphasis. But not quite.
5. Pausing. Whenever you see a comma, period, semi-colon or colon, blow through that Stop sign like a L.A. soccer mom in a Humvee.
But pausing should not be left out entirely by any means. Anytime the above-mentioned punctuation marks are missing is a perfect time to consider inserting a pause. One of my favorites is the ill-timed pause that sounds like I've lost my place and am trying to find it again. I do at least one of these per paragraph. Sometimes two or three.
6. Pitch, Pace & Power.
Remember your TMS Overseer blathering on about the 3-Ps? Here's how they should REALLY be addressed.
Pitch: Isn't that gooey stuff that comes out of trees?
No pitch. You have no clue what pitch is. Think of the comedian Steven Wright and you've pretty much got pitch nailed.
Pace: Overall the pace should be slow, uniform and monotonous. The only exceptions are when pausing as outlined in Item #5 or when you encounter a phrase or sentence that is so obnoxious that you're about ready to hurl. In this case a combination of pausing followed by a hurried monotone "let's just get through this" pace is best.
Power: Same as pitch. Think of the loudest you could possibly read something. That's 100%. Now dial it back to about 5% and let it flucuate between 5% - 5.00001%. Again, sleepytime monotone is the goal.
7. Pronunciation. I have (had?) a great reputation as an excellent reader. I can't quite bring myself to start butchering pronunciation................yet. I think it would be too much of a red flag right now. But time will tell. If you've got just a mediocre rep when it comes to pronunciation, I would advise a steady decline in this area. Try not to do too many humorous mispronunciations though, as this tends to wake people up and that would defeat your purpose.
If you diligently apply yourself to your "art of (un)-teaching" you will soon reap rich rewards. A glance at the kids now often reveals closed eyelids as soon as 5 minutes after the start of the meeting on a really good night. If I slip up and read well by mistake, they might make it 10-15 minutes. My CBSO has long ago given up on giving me facial clues that I should wake up my kids. He talked to me about it once and I told him they've got a lot of homework and have to get up very early all week. If I force them to stay awake they'll just resent the meetings even more.
My wife, what a trooper, she can usually hold out for at least 30 minutes before I start seeing her eyelids droop.
So that's it for my mini-JWD reverse-Theocratic Ministry School.
Did I miss anything?
OM