This was the first audiobook that I’ve ever listened to, and if it wasn’t part of the NYT Summer Reading Challenge to listen to an audiobook, I never would have listened to it. While I listen to podcasts, I don’t listen to audiobooks because I find that my mind tends to wander while listening and thus I absorb much less of the text than I otherwise would have. Reading is exercise for my brain, a deeply enjoyable and immersive pastime and somehow listening doesn’t provide me with the same effects.

So when I saw the “listen to an audiobook” part of the NYT Summer Reading Challenge I felt daunted. Then I remembered that I had been planning to reread The Odyssey and wondered if this might be an opportunity to experience a book that I’ve read three or four times in a new way.

So I searched Kobo books and lo and behold – they had my favourite Odyssey translation read by Sir Ian McKellen, no less. I only wish that they’d also had him read The Iliad, but no luck.

The Odyssey is an epic poem. It was performed by bards for decades upon decades before it was written down, and the Fagles translation keeps the rosy fingered poetic beauty of the piece. Sir Ian McKellen is a phenomenal actor with great sensitivity to poetry and text. The combination of both is astounding. The text leapt to life, felt rich and full of nueance that I had missed before. It was like the difference between reading a Shakespeare play and seeing it performed by first class actors on stage. I felt Odysseus’s anguish, Telemachus’s frustration, Penelope’s melancholy. They became real to me.

For 13 hours I was mesmerised. It was like being in a dark theatre with just Ian McKellen on stage bringing a whole world of wonder to life. The only sour part of it all were the short musical interludes, which I found jarring. There was no need for that embellishment, and I felt that it detracted and distracted from the overall piece.

I didn’t do the dishes while listening to this book. I had read The Odyssey three or four times already, studied it in the university more than once, and yet here it was completely fresh, challenging my notions of this book. Poetry is meant to be listened to, not read, and I think that I have found a use for audiobooks in my reading life.