If you can't read, listen
I don't have a lot of waking hours to read. My job is mostly reading as well, and that tires my eyes so much that it is hard to read much when I get home. To satisfy my longing for stories, I have been listening to audio books - the free kind - while driving. I drive a lot, especially because the woman I love lives 300 miles away from where I live during the week.
For starters, I listened to Victor Appleton's "Tom Swift and The Visitor From Planet X". This one - while hokey and campy as all Tom Swift stories are - was decidedly delightful. Further, it was not one of the Tom Swift books I had read when I was a youngster, while swiftly (sorry for pun) working my way through the elementary school library.
I then began a book I have always wanted to read, but never could manage to start - Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars". This was enjoyable mostly because of the language and the man's incredible imagination. I admire this sort of huge creativity even more than storytelling prowess.
Then my son wanted to listen to Dracula - the original one by Bram Stoker - on our Friday night drive last weekend to the Seattle area. This is heavy, and he actually was the one to call it quits. I have it, still, and I have continued it. I think I'm nearly half way through it, and it's starting to get a bit more strange and exciting. This thing is 464MB of 64kb/s MP3. I think it's about a zillion hours of audio.
I have interrupted Dracula to finish "A Princess of Mars". The ending was disappointing, but I liked the book enough to seriously consider more Burroughs in future.
Not all of the readers are endowed with obvious talent. Some put on fake accents that distract from the literature. One reader's fake Dracula accent was so hokey my son and I were guffawing throughout the entire chapter.
Next up, there's Machiavelli, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, more Tom Swift (later stories - not as good, IMHO), and more. These are all old classics - outside of copyright, probably. I like "free" and I like "classic" and I need them to be audio. The combination suits me well, indeed.
For starters, I listened to Victor Appleton's "Tom Swift and The Visitor From Planet X". This one - while hokey and campy as all Tom Swift stories are - was decidedly delightful. Further, it was not one of the Tom Swift books I had read when I was a youngster, while swiftly (sorry for pun) working my way through the elementary school library.
I then began a book I have always wanted to read, but never could manage to start - Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars". This was enjoyable mostly because of the language and the man's incredible imagination. I admire this sort of huge creativity even more than storytelling prowess.
Then my son wanted to listen to Dracula - the original one by Bram Stoker - on our Friday night drive last weekend to the Seattle area. This is heavy, and he actually was the one to call it quits. I have it, still, and I have continued it. I think I'm nearly half way through it, and it's starting to get a bit more strange and exciting. This thing is 464MB of 64kb/s MP3. I think it's about a zillion hours of audio.
I have interrupted Dracula to finish "A Princess of Mars". The ending was disappointing, but I liked the book enough to seriously consider more Burroughs in future.
Not all of the readers are endowed with obvious talent. Some put on fake accents that distract from the literature. One reader's fake Dracula accent was so hokey my son and I were guffawing throughout the entire chapter.
Next up, there's Machiavelli, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, more Tom Swift (later stories - not as good, IMHO), and more. These are all old classics - outside of copyright, probably. I like "free" and I like "classic" and I need them to be audio. The combination suits me well, indeed.