In the past couple of years, I’ve decided that I absolutely love listening to books on tape, or listening to other people read stories. It’s a great way to pass the time on long road trips and, more recently for me, a great way to pass time while waiting for public transportation – or while on it.
LibriVox.org is made up of a group of volunteers reading on their own time and for the listeners enjoyment. Most of the works they offer are oldies but goodies. Recently, I listened to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin and then Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. As I write this post, I am downloading the full zip file that includes all chapters in mp3 format of Uncle Toms Cabin. That way, I don’t have to worry about downoading chapter by chapter and listening through a browser…I’ll just unzip the folder of mp3’s and dump it into ITunes. Good deal.
Just another quick note, since the readers are volunteer, you don’t always get one person reading the whole book (though with Pride and Prejudice you do – thank you Annie Coleman!). So it can be jarring to have someone with a great reading ability, doing voices for each character one chapter, and then a obviously young squeaky voiced boy the next. All in all, its never unbearable and the readers usually do a superb job throughout.
