Is there a backlog of classic books you've been telling yourself you will get to at some point, hopefully, before you die, but which you're realistically making no progress on? If the answer is yes, that's really just a symptom of a larger problem: you're not incorporating enough audiobooks into your literary consumption routine, your daily book diet. And the thing is, you have access to scores of free audiobooks without even realizing it.
Don't get bogged down by the bias against audiobooks, especially not when living literary legends like Stephen King himself are telling you they count as reading. Listening to books is great for staying current on new releases, but it is also a perfect way to dive into the deep end of the literary canon. All while folding clothes, or cooling down on the treadmill at gym, or on your commute, or taking the dogs for an evening walk.
Whether you like it or not, whether you use it or not, you probably have an Amazon account. You can use that to listen to a number of classic titles without even having an Audible membership. In many cases, these are new, modern audiobook editions produced for Audible.
Have An Amazon Account? Start Listening To Hundreds Hours Of Literary Classics For Free Today
War and Peace. You've had it on your shelf forever, and yeah, you sort of know it is about the Napoleonic Wars, and yeah, you know it's a masterpiece. One of the greatest books of all time, and all that. But, uh, no, you haven't actually gotten around to reading it. Why? Honestly, because sitting down to read it gives off the vibe of a chore. Which is why the Audible audiobook version, currently available for free from Amazon, is a gamechanger.
Thandiwe Newton narrates Tolstoy's novel for Audible, turning in a magnificent vocal performance. It is a cliché thing to say, but Newton "brings the text to life," which is the glory of a great audiobook. Especially for novels that feel like homework; listening to a book like War and Peace makes it entertainment again, like it was always meant to be. And with tomes like War and Peace, it's a lot of entertainment, when you consider it in terms of listening hours.
War and Peace clocks in at 60 hours. (For context, that's 90 minutes longer than the complete runtime of The Wire, all five seasons.) Listen to one hour a day, and that's two months of free entertainment. Looking for something a bit shorter to start? Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, narrated by Will Poulter, is only 22 hours long. Thinking English lit instead of Russian? Jane Austen's Persuasion is a brisk eight hours and change.
Audiobooks Are Perfect For Finally Finishing Those Great Works Of Literature You've Been Avoiding
Austen's Price and Prejudice, and Sense & Sensibility, and Emma, and Mansfield Park are also currently available free from Audible. So are Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. So is D.H. Lawrence's controversial Lady Chatterly's Lover, and a bunch of Charles Dickens. Years worth of high-quality audiobook listening available free, with only a basic Amazon account required to access them.
Despite creating one of the most enduring characters in modern literature, Bram Stoker's Dracula can be a slog to read. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is less a monster story and more of a philosophical treatise, when you go back to the text. Listening can give these horror classics a new lease on life for many readers. The same goes for Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books.
All of which are among the titles currently free from Audible, even without a paid subscription. Like any streaming service, the titles Amazon makes available for free do come and go. Meaning if they have something available that you really want to cross off your "to read" bucket list, don't sleep on it. If you have an Amazon account, listening to their free audiobook selection is a way of making the most of it.
What classic novel have you been avoiding? Are you willing to give the audiobook version a shot? We want to hear from you, readers!