I don’t know about you, but I tend to under-utilize my technological gadgets.  I use my cell phone to make calls instead of the capabilities that it offers.  Occasionally I will find something that I get excited about.  This was true about a discovery on my Kindle.

I wrote ” A Portable Library” after my husband gave me a Kindle last September for my birthday.  I initially was not sure that I would like reading on it, but those fears subsided and a love affair began.  I have a true library on my Kindle that I carry in my purse wherever I go.  It has mostly free classics like Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Jane Eyre.  I also have a poetry collection, short stories, and purchased books like Lynn Austin’s Chronicle of the Kings series.

I found out how to organize the table of contents by making collections.  This made my life much easier.  If I want to read a short story, then I go to my Short Story Collection.  There are much less titles to scroll through as a result.  I also downloaded some free classical and/or instrumental music, which plays while I am reading.  In my dorm room many years ago, I played instrumental music while I studied.  It helped keep me focused by drowning out the background noise.  It still works.

What more could I want?  Well after listening to Andrew Pudewa speak on the importance of listening to high level books in order to build a sophiscated database of vocabulary and syntax in your brain, I began looking into audio books.  The Kindle plays audio books.  It saves your place in the audio book so that you don’t lose time trying to figure out where you were.

Just like the immense amount of free literature available to download on your Kindle from Project Gutenberg, Librivox Recordings have done the same thing with audio books.  The books are free on either site because the copyrights have expired.  The result is excellent classic literature is free in either written or spoken word.  The easiest site I have found is Books Should Be Free.  They have taken the time to create zip files of the chapters so downloading is easier.  They have a great selection, and have made audio samples available so that you can hear what you are getting.

The books are read by volunteers so I recommend listening before downloading.  Some are excellent recordings while others are not.  It is definitely worth checking out.  For more recent books and excellent audio quality, Audible is a good option.  This company is part of Amazon so it is super simple to send the audio book to your Kindle wirelessly.  They have many membership plans.  I signed up for the introductory plan, which costs $7.49 a month for the first three months.  Then it is $14.95 for the following months.  Each month you get a free book.  If you want more books, then you get a 30% discount.  You can drop your membership at any time.

My family loves the Ralph Moody series Little Britches.  I have read them the first two, and I purchased the third from Audible.  It is on each of my children’s iPods and my Kindle.  At 9:00 p.m. I send them to bed and they can either sleep, read, or listen to their audio book.  I also downloaded the audio collection of Beatrix Potter.  When the boys are under my feet and I need a short break, I have allowed them to listen to a story.  Every time they ask for the “Tale of Peter Rabbit.”  Actually they say, “Can we listen about the naughty bunny?”

Andrew and Isaac still prefer for me to read the books to them so I have not lost my job.  I read picture books to them.  I still read aloud in the summer and throughout school.  I read Bible and History in the morning.  I read a chapter from a book to my family while they eat lunch, which is usually historical fiction or classic literature.  My husband and I have a book going between the two of us about parenting and/or family.  So I was excited to find more uses for my Kindle as I entered the world of audio books.  I had forgotten how nice it is to be read to; it is a simple pleasure of life.  Audio books are indeed kindling a flame for listening.

Tags: Amazon, Andrew Pudewa, Audible, audio books, books should be free, kindle, Librivox, listening, project gutenberg

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 5:41 am and is filed under Homeschooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.