Finally, it’s summer time! Since I work in a public school system, that means eight or nine weeks working with few people around. Lots of time working alone. So I’ve been loading up my iPod with lots of free audio books.
The sources of free audio books on the World Wide Web is pretty wide. I’ve written about a few authors who podcast in the past. There are many others out there. Here are some sources I found for books I wanted to read:
For classic stories and older tales that are now in the public domain then check out LibriVox. I downloaded ten days of audio for my summer listening pleasure. Between my regular podcast listening and these stories then my summer alone time should be full.
A few things I might suggest about exploring free audio books is that you should be prepared for wide degrees of quality recordings. Some are very good and professional. Most are very fine amature recordings. But some are downright bad and the quality distracts from the story itself.
Then there is the telling of the tale itself. Like a good joke, some people can repeat a good joke and get everyone laughing. While others, like me, can ruin a great joke with poor delivery. This is true of narrators as well. So I advise picking a chapter and having a test listen before spending lots of time and bandwidth downloading hundreds of megabytes of audio files. I just can’t hear the story through some narrators tone and inflection. But some narrators are true actors and can really add to a story with their voices.
I’ll report back in a week or so with a report some of the first stories I’ve listened to.
“Infected” is the story of a mysterious disease that is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families. Follow Perry Dawsey as he suffers through the infection and enjoy the wild tale that develops.
“65 Below” is the story of recently retired United States Marine Corp Master Sergeant Marcus Orlando Johnson and his return home to Alaska after 20 years in the military. But he carries a burden. His high school sweet heart is in Alaska and he still loves her even though she broke his heart. This reunion ends up being unplanned as these two characters get wrapped up in an attempted terrorist act on U.S. soil by a collaboration of Arab terrorists and North Korean special forces who have discovered the whereabouts of a long-forgotten U.S. military chemical weapon and intend to use it immediately.
About a half-dozen chapters in I felt that Mr. Sands reminded me of Jack Higgins. Mr. Sands tosses in coincidences that sometimes feel odd or unbelievable. Such as the fact that Top, an honored nickname that Master Sergeants receive, has such intimate previous experiences with so many of the other characters. But it does not ruin the tale. The story builds expertly and intertwines flash backs effortlessly to slowly build the plot to a climax that left me unable to put the headphones down. He reads the story himself and has a voice that is easy to listen to. The many and varied characters feel like people I know. It’s worth the listen!
on Amazon as of April 1, 2008.