I have always thought that listening to a book is like being fed through an NG tube: aces in an emergency, but not the preferred content delivery method.

The boredom accruing to a year’s worth of commuting, though, has come to seem like an emergency crying out for some audio relief. I looked into audiobooks; they were quite expensive, though, for something I wasn’t entirely sure I would enjoy. I wondered if there were any free audiobooks, much like free podcasts.

There are. Librivox.org records books in the public domain — old books, but that’s mostly what I enjoy anyway. I downloaded an English translation of a French nineteenth-century detective story, The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux. To my astonishment, I was completely captivated. It was pure police procedural, and I had to listen carefully to take in all the clues. The miles flew by.

Oddly, to my ear, different chapters were read by different narrators, and some of the narrators were clearly not native English speakers, although that was an advantage for some with all the French names in Yellow Room. I logged on to librivox.org to see if I could divine the reason, and as it turns out, all the readers are volunteers. Anyone with a pulse, a computer, and a microphone can contribute one or more chapters to the public domain audiobook of his or her choice.

Upon learning this, I had a crazy idea. What if I read a chapter? One the one hand, I’ve always loved reading out loud. On the other hand, I have something of a tortured voice. I can enunciate clearly and read fluently, but the sound, due to some biomechanical fault, is distinctly unmelodious.

But, hell. I don’t have to listen to it!

So the next time you’re on a long road trip, and the kids are clamoring for the next installment of the Palliser series (”Mommy! We’re dying to know…does Phineas Finn get back into Parliament?”) note that Chapter 12 of Phineas Redux is yours truly.