Lit2Go

I love this resource so much that I have to share it.  The University of South Florida has loads of books that are in the public domain available as free audiobooks.  I found these when I was studying for my comprehensive exams and needed to read at all hours of the day.  Since I had to keep living, I would listen to their books as I drove to, well, anywhere, as I cleaned, as I walked the dog, and as I bought groceries.  My husband got used to me having headphones in anytime I wasn’t sitting down with a book and my computer.

Before someone comments that listening isn’t the same as reading, I should say that I agree.  It’s not the same.  That doesn’t mean, however, that it is an inherently bad way to consume a book (and a lot of exam studying is consumption, after all).  These audiobooks made it possible for me to get through more material (and keep living ) than I would have been able to just sitting at my desk.

These audiobooks are great for a number of reasons.  First, they are free and you can listen to them online or on your iPhone using iTunesU.  Second, the reader is very good.  Librovox, another free audiobook source, has volunteers read their books and while I like this in theory, some of the reading can be rough.  Even when the reading is good, the voices change each chapter, so the listening experience is a bit odd.  The reader for Lit2Go (there may be more than one–I haven’t listened to all of their books) is clearly a professional and the quality is something that you would typically pay for.

I especially like the recordings they have of Dickens’s novels.  Dickens had an audience that read his stuff out loud, so I love getting to hear his words read that way.  While I do need to sit down with the text on paper to really pick it apart, hearing it gives me another perspective on his work.

If you’re a fan of Victorian literature like me, you’ll find lots of books that interest you at Lit2Go.  They have works by Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker.  I hope that USF continues to update their offerings as more books gain public domain status.