Jaxar the Barbarian, aka “that juice-fueled toddler” loves to go on long walks.
“Outside!” he cries, pulling at my hand. Once on the sidewalk, he leads me down the street, around the corner, up the hill, and through a thousand miles of orc-infested wilderness en route to Mordor. Or maybe a playground. He likes swinging on the swings.
Between moments of active parenting, I use these epics journeys to listen to audio books. Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of books from Librivox. Librivox, for the uninitiated, is an amazing website that provides free public domain audio books. They’ve got an army of volunteers who read and record the books, then release the recordings themselves to the public domain.
Thanks to these saints of the spoken word, I’m catching up on my John Carter novels. They’re a bit cheesy, and definitely products of their time, but they’re packed with awesome gaming ideas and pure pulpy fun. What’s more, the reader sounds more than a little like Nick Offerman, so it’s easy to imagine Ron Swanson narrating Carter’s Martian adventures, which makes them all that much more entertaining.
Oh. Neat! I just poked around the Librivox site some more and found they’ve got Kurt Vonnegut, Andre Norton, and Fritz Lieber… and that’s just in the sci-fi category.
Come on, Jaxar! That ring won’t toss itself into Mount Doom!
I feel the audio book love too. Been listening to Glen Cook’ s Black Company series lately for the same reasons.