Sunday, June 29, 2008

Open Source Audio Books

We (my GWC classmates and I) need to read "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy for class on 15 July. While searching for study notes* on the book I ran across a great open source, all volunteer audio book source: librivox.org. It has nearly 1500 selections available for download. Unfortunately, only five out of the fifteen books of War and Peace have been recorded thus far. I am grateful nevertheless. The drive to California will be much more productive!

*A note on study notes: they are great when used correctly. Mortimer Adler in "How to Read a Book" proposes four levels of reading, one of which is Inspectional Reading. For me, study notes fall here. It is similar to the "pre-read" suggested by Adler because study notes familiarize me with the characters and plot (if a novel like War & Peace) or the main ideas so that I can more easily gain what I want from the book. Study notes do not take the place of the actual book.