We seem to have this arc going on that takes us back to the best story tellers relating our greatest literature in oral format.
Interesting cycle. If some of you have not encountered the joys of Audible et al.

These are free classics you can listen to.
http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks

There are many resources at the end of the list as well. I got hooked when travelling cross country with the kid by motorcycle last summer and the audio books really made the time go by. I had certainly listened to them in past on tape and on DVD while taking long trips to Florida.

At that time it was an expensive proposition tho some of the highway stops let you swap out one tape or DVD for another of equal value for a small fee. Audible still is expensive compared to the same ebook but now there is a combo where you get both.

We know that books and magazines and newspapers in print are a dying aspect of human culture with the advent of eBooks and I adore having such a wide selection including many free by the likes of John Muir that I would otherwise have to chase down in a library or kill some tree which he would be appalled at.

Now we are segueing into audible books in some cases read by the author. We know texting and rapid online communication is altering the language ......are we perhaps moving to a far more oral society again being able to listen to our great story tellers narrate their tales just as they envision them.

For myself, I get far far more engaged in the audio format of a book when well done. Some of the biographies which might be a bit tedious being read ....come alive with a quality oral rendition. I still recall the delight of radio plays when I was a kid....getting lost in the spoken tale.

We pride ourselves on literacy but perhaps we are moving to post literate in the sense of words spoken instead of read with the short forms of texting becoming the only necessary "skill" .....do we need to be able to spell encyclopaedia???

I'm a big fan of audio books, it really makes yard work and other chores more enjoyable. I'm about to go weeding with Leopold Bloom. My wife and I also have a book going that we listen to together after dinner.

I generally get my books from my library system and find the "professional" books better then what I've gotten from free online sources but I'm so spoiled by my library that I haven't tried those in a while.

Audio books have given me an exposure to great literature that would not have happened without them.

Yeah, they're great, I almost can't read anymore, too antsy, but it's great when driving or otherwise doing something mindless enough that you can absorb the reading. I recently finished the 5 books of Game of Thrones, took a long-ass time, books were like 32 30 48 38 48 hours, something like that. Another thing I've used before is to have text read by a program, a lot of them can do a passable job with .txt and .pdf files. Notepadd++ has a plugin available that does well enough.