Some good listening as you drive or cut the grass...

In response to a reader's comment requesting recommendations of free books to listen to, I threw this together:

I'd start with this page of Chesterton's works available free on LibriVox. Chesterton is an acquired taste that assumes some ability on the part of the reader or listener. If you haven't listened to him before, maybe I'd start with What's Wrong with the World around chapter 15 or so because...

his wisdom on the sexes is, for postmoderns such as you and me, cataclysmic. But also Orthodoxy and Heresies and The Thing (not on LibriVox yet!) and Everlasting Man(not on LibriVox yet!) and The Appetite of Tyranny (the last six minutes are stunning) andEugenics and Other Evils and Alarms and Discursions and All Things Considered and What I Saw in America.

Maybe Hillaire Belloc.

Keep in mind that these are Roman Catholic authors so don't believe a word they say about Protestantism or (especially) what they mistakenly understand as "Calvinism."

For fun, Jerome Jerome's Three Men in a Boat or anything by P. G. Wodehouse.

Samuel Johnson's Plan and Preface to a Dictionary of English is fascinating.

Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care (not Librivox, but the Internet Archive) is very helpful, spiritually—and not just for pastors.

Ocassionally you'll run into chapters read by annoying people, but remember they don't get paid. Today, though, I wrote the LibriVox people asking them to replace chapters 35 and 37 of What's Wrong with the World because the reader has rendered them unintelligible.

Too, get the copy of Pilgrim's Progress and listen to it. (Most anything by Bunyan would be good.) Also Spurgeon's All of Grace. I could go on, but that's a start. If you're married, for your wife, Elizabeth Prentiss Stepping Heavenward.

Finally, for some time now I've made it a habit to listen the New Testament book of Romans as recorded by Dale McConachie (available here). Listen to Scripture first, and Romans is an excellent place to hover for a long, long time. If I cut my grass and Heather and Doug's grass, I get through Romans two or three times. When you listen to Chesterton, you listen to Chesterton, but when you listen to Romans, you listen to God.