How I "read" Classic Literature

I read with my ears. That is: I listen to audio books.

I have loved librivox ever since I first discovered it in my freshman year of college. With a spring break to be spent on campus I needed something to keep me entertained. Fortunately I got a hold of Librivox's The Picture of Dorian Gray. I remember listening to it while jogging and exercising, as I didn't know many other ways to pass unscheduled time. That is my first memory of Librivox.

Since my freshman year I have used Librivox to listen to a lot of stories, and my having "read" War and Peace during the summer of 2008 and my time as a student in China is certainly because of Librivox. I have great doubts that I would have gotten through that behemoth if I had been in possession of a paper copy. Don Quixote was listened to while I did boring manual labor at Kalamazoo college in the summer of 2008, and I "read" some of Leo Tolstoy's and Oscar Wilde's short stories the same way, to keep from insanity while painting walls and moving furniture in exchange for the privilege to live on campus during the summer. During my senior year of college I "read" Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island. After seeing how thick a paper copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was sitting (unfinished, I might add!) on the shelf of another K student, I was very pleased that I had used such an easy way to read it.

A few months ago, however, I discovered that Librivox audio books could be downloaded as podcasts directly in iTunes. I was immensely pleased, as the ease and convenience of listening to audio books suddenly skyrocketed. As a result my rate of "reading" has gone up significantly, and in the past six months of being in China I feel that I have "read" many books: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and a collection of H. P. Lovecraft stories. I am currently finished up my Mark Twain kick, and after polishing off The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I am part way though A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I am definitely enjoying Twain's sense of humor and satire so far


I normally don't listen to audio books in the daytime though. While I am on a bus, bike, or subway I tend to listen to educational or news podcasts, or sometimes lectures from iTunes U. In fact, the only time that I consistently listen to audio books in when I lay in bed before sleeping. A pillow mp3 player that a received as a gift years ago serves this purpose, and is exceedingly more comfortable than trying to drift into sleep with ear buds in my ears of headphones around my head.

I problem does arise though: when I lay down in a vaguely comfortable position in a dark room at the end of a day, egads! I tend to fall asleep! This is a problem when I am listening to especially long chapters, as if I fall asleep before the end of a chapter my iPod will keep playing until the end of that chapter, meaning that I miss out on a part of the story. I can, of course, go back and listen again, or look up what I missed on Sparknotes. It is a little hassle though.

Another downside is that I can only read old (classic, usually) books this way. For all of the more modern books I want to read about China, Brazil, Latin America, lying, zombies or anything by my new favorite philosopher, I still have to actually read the book, rather than drifting into dreams while listening to someone else's voice.

I feel really geeky about enjoying audio books so much, but in kind of a warm and fuzzy way. In the same way that reading a good story often makes me not want to put the book down or makes me excited to pick up the book again, I sometimes enjoy the stories so much that I am excited to go to bed, and I end up turning off my lights and hopping into the covers far earlier than I otherwise would so that I can listen to more of the story. More rest certainly won't hurt my health, but I find it amusing that I hop into bed full of energy and excitement.