LibriVox: free theology audio books
Since moving to Sydney and becoming a professional commuter, I've grown to love audio books (as I mentioned once before). Last year I was especially glad to discover LibriVox, a site that provides a huge variety of free audiobooks, all recorded by volunteers. They've recorded some great theological, philosophical, political and literary classics. The recordings vary in quality, but there are some real gems. Over the past several months, I've whiled away many sane commuting hours accompanied by LibriVox – including the following works:
- Augustine, Enchiridion
- Augustine, City of God (40 hours: a huge labour of love, recorded by a single reader – it took me a couple of months to finish it)
- Augustine, Confessions (very nicely read: one of the best LibriVox recordings I've heard)
- Kafka, The Metamorphosis
- Kafka, "A Hunger Artist" (beautifully read, with a kind of anorexic sensitivity)
- Kafka, "In the Penal Colony"
- George Santayana, Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy
- Aristotle, Poetics (unfortunately, it's very poorly read: I couldn't bear to finish it)
- Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
- Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History
- Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophic Essay
- Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (26 hours, nicely read: I'm still working my way through this one)
Unfortunately, my commute is now a five block walk; but several years ago, when it was an hour-long drive, I worked through Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, the Iliad and the Odyssey. I think it would be a great opportunity to listen to Augustine, because of course he initially dictated all of his texts to someone.
But the Critique of Pure Reason? When I was a junior-year abroad student in Germany in the late 70s, I remember hearing a German student telling me he read it in English because it was easier to understand. I can't imagine driving and trying to understand Kant at the same time.
What? How do you underline? Where do the marginalia go? The stars and the asterisks and the "GAKS!"?
You're dead right Ben. It's a great resource pool, and even though my commute to work is very brief these days, the insomniac in me digs this stuff. I've made my way through some Hegel, Huxley, Kafka, Wilde, Sayers, Hardy, Plato and Ibsen, all while horizontal. No wonder I can't sleep.
"... I'm even tempted to record something myself."
What would you record? =)
Once I had a workstudy for a professor who wanted me to record "Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language" for him. Those were some of the most painfully tedious hours of my life, because I couldn't understand what I was reading at the speed of a good reading voice... I think it would work best to record an old personal standard --- a book one wanted to return to, whose phrases one could savour and understand, even while rendering them attractively.
Kant says we perceive only appearances via the senses, and not the Ding-an-sich (in brief). Given that reading and listening are via the senses (vision, hearing), anyone reading the mighty Kant cannot be sure he has gotten the real Thing, since seeing words on paper, or hearing a book on tape/CD are matters of sensibility, not apodeictic a priori knowledge.
Moral? you never learned anything.
I have really enjoyed librivox especially the reading of the Confessions and The Metamorphosis. They also have a really great reading of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: http://www.archive.org/details/man_thursday_zach_librivox
Dear Ben,
What exactly does "very nicely read" mean for a book like the Confessions? Would it be possible for you to amplify the adverb "nicely"?
Yours in Christ - JOHN HARTLEY.
Do you ding along with Kant, Ben, just to annoy your fellow commuters?
That's done it.
Check this out
http://jridenour.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/theology-audio-books/
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