Listen up for a pleasurable way to enjoy literature

Harry Potter

Justine Carbery

Recently, during a long, sticky train journey through the Balkans, I rediscovered audio books. Previously I had taken CDs out of the library for my dad when his sight began to fail. I paid little heed, reckoning I was a long way off this mature preoccupation. But then I had to endure an eight-hour train journey in 42C heat, with no dining car or little trolley selling iced drinks in sight. It was so hot that the railway tracks melted and we had to crawl through the parched and glaring countryside with little entertainment.

Everyone was too hot to speak, the energy required for such stimulation buried beneath the fug of sweaty indolence. That night, in the relative cool of a Serbian hotel, I downloaded my first audio book onto my iPhone.