Great Books Audio ~ Chapter a Day publishes a ‘chapter’ at a time from classic literature, both fiction and poetry, as a podcast. This is a great way to not only expand your horizons but to “read” some of the books you should have read in high school.

Although the title includes “Chapter a Day”, it appears that anywhere from 5 to 20 ‘chapters’ are published each month, averaging about 3 per week. You can listen directly on the site, download the mp3, or subscribe to the podcast. So far I have only heard one voice narrating the stories, so I assume it is done by the site’s owner, Walter Burek, though the site does not give any details about the podcast’s origins or motivations.

Along with the first chapter of each work, the host includes some information about the book or poem and it’s author. Subsequent chapters each have a picture of some kind that relate to the story in some way, usually quite interesting.

I am currently listening to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells and the reader’s voice fits in well with the single person narration format of the story. Will be interesting to see how he does on more complex stories. It would be nice if there was an index page linking to the start of each story and poem read.

Here is a list of the books that have been read so far and a link to the first chapter:

• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Man Who Knew Too Much by G.K. Chesterton
• The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Call of the Wild by Jack London

Details

• Website: http://www.greatbooksaudio.com
• RSS: http://podcasts.odiogo.com/great-books-a-chapter-a-day/podcasts-xml.php
• Host: Walter Gerald Burek
• Started: November 2006
• Frequency: 5 to 20 podcasts per month