I finished reading my new novel Quaternity aloud.
This exercise was very helpful. Not only because I found some little mistakes, but I found places where it didn’t “sound” right. So I made the appropriate changes.
Truman Capote once said he wrote for the ear. There’s some truth in that, I think. Hearing the words read aloud brings the story into a new perspective for me. I’ve done this with parts of short stories, paragraphs, scenes. Never the entire novel. But this was something I decided to do a long time ago when and if I ever finished writing the novel.
I felt it was something necessary because I knew from the outset this would be a difficult novel to write. Since that was the case I figured I would have to go an extra mile to make sure it “sounded” right to the ear.
And, from what I can tell, it does.
All I have left is to write the synopsis and send it in to the publishers. Then I will read through the novel one last time, but that shouldn’t take long at all. It’s all downhill from here.
Whew!
Hoover's Corner 
Congratulations! I do the read aloud thing too. First time I tried it, I was surprised how many things I caught that I hadn’t noticed in other editing passes.
It surprised me, too. But I’m glad I caught the mistakes, and like I said, more importantly was finding the places that didn’t “sound’ right. “)