Rediscover the Classics with Audiobooks

As do all avid readers, I have favorite books and authors that I reread. I understand the pleasure of revisiting titles, especially classic works that I might have read at too young an age. I’m also partial to the power of the spoken word; audio has transformed more books than I can count. Listening to titles I’ve already read enhances the pleasures of rereading and my appreciation of the books. After all, novels by Austen, Dickens, and many others written before the twentieth century were frequently shared aloud. Many classics were written to be heard, and they translate readily to audio—especially when the narrators are good.

Here are three suggestions from the wealth of titles available. For family listening and summer car trips, try Alfred Molina’s stellar narration of Treasure Island. Molina is the perfect companion on this quest for pirate treasure, and his delightfully sinister characterizations of Long John Silver and his crew contrast nicely with his portrayal of the naive Jim Hawkins. This production, which intersperses sea chanteys to set the stage for adventure, is sure to entertain both fans and listeners hearing it for the first time.

I could rhapsodize for hours about Stanley Lombardo’s new translations and recordings of The Iliad and The Odyssey. He’s a classics professor who reads with authority and style, pronouncing the strange names and places without hesitation and capturing the cadence of the oral tradition, keeping time-honored idioms, and adding new ones. These fine recordings should be offered to every student assigned these works and to anyone interested in a fresh look.

For genre fans, I’m happy to report that Simon Prebble’s new reading of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal proves that this classic tale still has the power to thrill, decades after the book was first published. Prebble leads us step-by-step through the killer’s elaborate preparations to assassinate de Gaulle, interspersing the French investigator’s intuitive pursuit of the unknown assassin. It’s another title that passes the long-car-trip test.

Excerpt from At Leisure with Joyce Saricks: Rediscovering the Classics—through Audiobooks, first published June 1, 2010 (Booklist).