Being Read To is a Delightful Thing.

I find that books, for me, are multidimensional.  One of the reasons I enjoy them is the chance to give them dimension in my imagination, like a pop-up suddenly springing into shape from the page.  But sometimes I derive equal pleasure from letting someone else do it for me - in an audiobook.  Hearing books read aloud, especially novels, ties them to their far-back roots in the fireside circle and the discourse of the sage or the storyteller.

For those of us who love audiobooks, have exhausted the library selection, and are limited in our purchasing power, it can be a discouraging prospect finding more.  I was in such a position until recently, when I stumbled on a treasure chest while digging in cyberspace:  Librivox!  Oh the joy!  Someone feels as I do!  Someone (or many someones) believes in free audiobooks!

Librivox is a community project to make audio recordings of works that are in the public domain, fiction and nonfiction, in English and any other language one of their readers can produce.  Their readers are volunteers, who, after a short setup and review process, can join projects as they choose.  (It's a tempting prospect to me; I've always wanted to read audiobooks.)  The recordings are also in the public domain, and therefore are to be freely distributed and downloaded.  One can find works by Austen and Dickens if one is a fan of British literature, or Cooper and Irving if one is pursuing American authors - also poetry and such delights as the Andrew Lang Fairy Books, which happen to be very dear to my heart.

I've been savoring a recording of Bleak House by Charles Dickens.  It is well read by a British actress, who does all the voices, to my great delight.  And the story!  My word, what a mixture of whimsy and cliffhangers!  But perhaps I'll have more to say about that on another occasion.

Librivox
Bleak House by Charles Dickens; read by Mil Nicholson