Hear Neil Gaiman Read Aloud 15 of His Own Works, and Works by 6 Other Great Writers: From The Graveyard Book & Coraline, to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven & Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Neil Gaiman is a sto­ry­teller. That title encom­pass­es quite a few pur­suits, most of which seem­ing­ly involve writ­ing — writ­ing nov­els, writ­ing radio dra­mas, writ­ing com­ic books — but he also occa­sion­al­ly tells sto­ries the old-fash­ioned way: speak­ing aloud, and to an audi­ence of rapt lis­ten­ers. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such sto­ry­telling hap­pened in a cir­cle around the camp­fire, but as a sto­ry­teller of the 21st cen­tu­ry — albeit a mas­ter of time­less tech­niques who uses those tech­niques to deal with time­less themes — Gaiman can tell sto­ries to the entire world. Today we’ve gath­ered all of Gaiman’s stream­able read­ings, both video and audio, in one place.

Near­ly every type of text at which he has tried his hand appears in this col­lec­tion, from nov­els (The Grave­yard Book) to novel­las (Cora­line) to poet­ry (“Instruc­tions,” above) to man­i­festos (“Mak­ing Good Art”). Suit­able as his voice and deliv­ery are to his own work, Gaiman’s live sto­ry­telling tal­ent also extends to the works of oth­ers, as you’ll find out if you lis­ten to the selec­tions on the sec­ond list below.

The mate­r­i­al varies wide­ly, from non­sense or near-non­sense poet­ry like Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham and Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky” to the work of his friend Ursu­la K. Le Guin to a clas­sic like Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” whose Goth­ic atmos­phere will no doubt appeal to Gaiman’s fans.

And Gaiman cer­tain­ly has his fair share of fans. If you already count your­self in that group, you’ll need lit­tle con­vinc­ing to do a binge-lis­ten of his read­ings here. But if you aren’t yet famil­iar with Gaiman’s work in all its var­i­ous forms, you might con­sid­er using these pieces of video and audio as an entry­way into his nar­ra­tive world, with its emo­tion­al chiaroscuro, it mod­ern-day mythol­o­gy, and its unflag­ging sense of humor. There’s plen­ty of Neil Gaiman out there to read, of course, but with his style of sto­ry­telling, some­times he must sim­ply be heard — if not around an actu­al camp­fire, then on that largest camp­fire ever cre­at­ed, the inter­net. These texts will be added to our list, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 Sto­ries & Nov­els by Neil Gaiman Online: Free Texts & Read­ings by Neil Him­self

Neil Gaiman Reads His Man­i­festo on Mak­ing Art: Fea­tures the 10 Things He Wish He Knew As a Young Artist

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Aman­da Palmer Ani­mates & Nar­rates Hus­band Neil Gaiman’s Uncon­scious Mus­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.