Musing Mondays

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Do you listen to audiobooks? Why, or why not?
I used to listen to audio books rather a lot. The reason was I waked to and from work every day and it was a good 25 minutes each way, so I loaded up my iPod with audio books and got in a little literature while I walked. It was great and I discovered some real gems this way. Most of them were free out-of-copyright downloads from Librivox (all the audio books are read by regular folks, and not professionals, and they do it for the love of reading rather than for compensation of any kind). Of course, some readers are better than others, but on the whole, I found the quality to be quite high and quickly found a few favourite regular readers among them.

I sometimes got hold of professional audio books though, and one particularly memorable foray into this medium was Michael York reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Of course, Michael York played d’Artagnan in the 70s movies based on the books, so it was very nostalgic, but his impersonations of the other people who had played the other pivotal characters were superb and it was almost like hearing them play their parts all over again. It has become one of my favourite novels of all time and I know I’ll read it again and again.

Nowadays I don’t really listen to audio books, largely because I now share an iPod with my hubby and it’s loaded up with music to listen to in the car, but if I ever find myself with an iPod for my sole use, it will be loaded up with audio books once more!