I’ve been listening to LibriVox stories quite a bit lately, and I think I’ve found the perfect set of cozy winter stories, and I thought I’d share them.
The first is Edith Nesbit’s Book of Dragons. The stories are lovely. They’re written conversationally (a style I love but would likely never be published today) and are just cute. There’s really no other word for it. They’re like perfectly crafted bedtime stories. At roughly half an hour, each chapter is a discrete story, giving me just enough incentive to see it through before heading back inside, and repetitive enough that I don’t fret about missing things if I have to pay attention to my surroundings. If it was one long, continuous story, I’d probably grab a metaphorical bookmark and finish later on, whether I was at the end of chapter or not, so this is perfect if you need to bribe yourself to hang in there a few minutes more, like when you’re on the treadmill.
The second is J. Walker McSpadden’s Robin Hood. I’ve only listened to the first two chapters of this version of Robin Hood, but it is truly excellent. We lit a candle that smells like a fireplace (in the ideal version, we’d actually have a wood fire), cracked open a couple Nut Brown Ales (which are mentioned explicitly in the first chapter – Sam Smith makes a great one), and curled up under blankets to listen. I’m very excited to hear the rest of the piece, as the first chapter covers nearly the whole of what you get in film and book adaptations of the tale. A lot of what’s to come will be brand new to me.
LibriVox is a volunteer effort to record books that are in the public domain to distribute freely. It’s one of my absolute favorite sites on the internet. Both of these recordings are exemplary in both reading and sound quality, so I definitely recommend checking them out.
