LibriVox Audiobooks

So, there’s COVID. I’m retired, I’m at home. My volunteer job is “on pause.” Housework isn’t. I HATE housework. Dishwashing, laundry, dusting, etc. HATE it! Gotta do it. No longer have the excuse of showing up to work, going to the movies, meeting friends for drinks. Used to check out audiobooks from the library. My husband and I would listen together while I did a few chores. Now my husband doesn’t have the attention span and it “bothers” him when I try to listen. Besides the library is closed, too. I try a few audio book apps/ services, but they are a bad fit. And expensive. One of them offered me TWO books every six weeks. Oh sure, there was a lot of FREE stuff, meditation tapes, music, exercise stuff, motivational audios, etc., but I need stories. Books I’ve no shortage off. Always a reader, I married another reader 40 some years ago. If only our income grew like our book collection, I’d have someone else doing housework for me. But you can’t read a book and scrub the tub at the same time. So I discovered LibriVox short story collections. Perfect for house work. In fact, I use them to time chores. A Sherlock Holmes story is just long enough to clean one room. Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain get me through the dishes. Bret Harte . . . . never mind, bad example; Bret Harte, I usually stop what I’m doing and sit down and just listen to the story. Some readers are great and some not so, but I like them anyway. Extra marks marks for struggling through a story when you’re not sure how some of the words are pronounced. I like the randomness of the mix per collection. At first I was mildly irritated that the stories were in alphabetical order, but I learned to roll with it. I’m making this intolerably long, I know, but when I finish this review I have housework to do. LibriVox will not clean my kitchen, but it makes the job less painful.