Wrapped Up In Books

My mp3 player has saved me from countless hours of boredom at my summer job. I spend the better part of my shift listening to NPR, music files, podcasts, and now I've also begun listening to audiobooks. The other day I discovered LibriVox, a public domain assembly of audiobooks with chapters read by volunteers. Since it's public domain, there aren't many books from 1900 forward, so most of the titles don't really interest me, but I've been listening to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey which is the only Jane Austen title that I'm at all interested in. I'm especially enjoying Austen's commentary on the "tradition of the novel" as she saw it. The novel genre was only about a century old when she started writing and it was already a form ripe for parody.

Best line of the book, so far: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."

The volunteer readers are a mixed bag, though. Some are American, some British, I think one was even Scottish. Some of the Americans tend to read in a snooty, aristocratic voice which is somewhat distracting. One reader, though, was outstanding in the way she was able to create completely unique voices for each of the characters during the dialogue passages. It was very impressive. At first I thought there was more than one person reading, but it was the same woman throughout the chapter. She read two chapters from the book and they were the best chapters so far.