Great Books Audio has begun podcasting The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I am sure I am not alone in not having read the story even though I am familiar with the characters. I look forward to finally getting a chance to ‘read’ the complete story.

According to Wikipedia, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1886. It is about a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the misanthropic Edward Hyde. The work is known for its vivid portrayal of the psychopathology of a split personality; in mainstream culture the very phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” has come to mean a person who may show a distinctly different character, or profoundly different behavior, from one situation to the next, as if almost another person. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was an immediate success and one of Stevenson’s best-selling works. Stage adaptations began in Boston and London within a year of its publication and it has gone on to inspire scores of major film and stage performances.

I have listened to the first installment and cannot wait to hear the remaining chapters as they are published. Go check it out over at Great Books Audio.

Each month ChristianAudio offers one of their audio books for free afterwhich they go back to the regular price. This month the free book is G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Add the audiobook to your cart and then just enter the coupon code “APR2008″ to receive this book completely free.

From the site:

All that G. K. Chesterton’s critics and comrades labeled him – devotional, impious, confounding, intelligent, humorous, bombastic – he wove into The Man Who Was Thursday. This page-turner sends characters bobbing around a delightfully confusing plot of mythic proportions. There are so many twists and turns that soon you’ll be tangled in a story that you cannot put down…even if you’re not entirely sure why!

The Man Who Was Thursday begins when two poets meet. Gabriel Syme is a poet of law. Lucian Gregory is a poetic anarchist. As the poets protest their respective philosophies, they strike a challenge. In the ruckus that ensues the Central European Council of Anarchists elects Syme to the post of Thursday, one of their seven chief council positions. Undercover. On the run. Syme meets Sunday, the head of the council, a man so outrageously mysterious that his antics confound both the law-abiding and the anarchist. Who is lawful? Who is immoral? Such questions are strangely unanswerable in the presence of Sunday. He is wholly other. He is above the timeless questions of humanity and also somehow behind them.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was born in London. He matured into one of the great journalists, philosophers, novelists, and personalities of the twentieth century. Chesterton offered inspiration to many others, including his fellow Brit C. S. Lewis. His much-loved works include The Everlasting Man, Saint Francis of Assisi, Orthodoxy, and the Father Brown series of mystery novels.