I thought I would try listening to some classic poetry, nonfiction, and fiction when I was in bed but my eyes were too tired or I was too sleepy to read or watch anything.
I had collected a few very worthy items, and in preparation I made some very nice-looking large icons for the "ten-foot interface" I use on my 32" widescreen bedroom HDTV. Here's what the first two look like:
This morning I awoke far too early, 4 A.M. or so, for no good reason, but rather than just toss and turn after my first thoughts got old, I fired up a LibriVox audiobook of Walt Whitman's famous Leaves of Grass.
Well, I am here to tell you, this is the best way to experience poetry: in the dark, nothing competing for your attention, hearing the words spoken....
Good things about this particular audiobook: it's free and it's broken into parts so that if I fall asleep, my Windows Media Player stops at the end of a part rather than using up my bandwidth cap while I doze and get no benefit (except subliminal, perhaps; I haven't had much luck with sleep learning, although I suspect loud parts of TV shows and movies have affected my dreams).
Give this a try. You might also try your community's public library digital media collection for some newer titles. Here's mine as an example. Of course, there are pay books. Audiobooks.org has a list of pay and free sites to get more books.
If you have a Roku box, add the Internet Archive and iTunes Podcasts "private" (and free) channels. These two also have websites with even more content listed (Internet Archive.org and iTunes [software install required]).
Truly an embarassment of riches....
