Summer arrives, and with it the familiar liturgy of long distances: the great exodus, the highway to the village or the beach, hundreds of kilometers with a full trunk and children asleep in the back seat. Hours behind the wheel that, seen rightly, are a gift: time without screens, without meetings, without notifications. Time, in short, to think. Or to listen.
Because the audiobook has come precisely to rescue those idle moments: the car journey, the evening stroll, the mountain hike, the supermarket line. Some view the format with suspicion, but the audiobook does not come to replace paper, but to complete it. No one stops reading because they listen; on the contrary, those who listen to a good book on the road almost always end up buying it in paper to underline, reread, and lend it. Saint Augustine marveled at seeing Saint Ambrose read in silence, because in Antiquity books were read aloud: listening to the word is, in fact, the most ancient form of reading.
In that spirit, and taking advantage of the fact that Homo Legens has launched Legens.app, its audiobook platform—a project in collaboration with Ediciones InfoVaticana—we propose five titles from the catalog so that this summer the hours in the car are not time lost, but time gained. And with an advantage for InfoVaticana readers: with the code INFOVAT26 they can try Legens.app for 14 days completely free. Five brave books to listen to while driving… and, if you so choose, to reread later on paper, in the shade, with a pencil in hand.
1. Secrets of the Bible, by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
When Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, the general public was struck by a multitude of details that do not appear in the Gospels. Not so for those familiar with the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, the stigmatized German mystic, beatified by Saint John Paul II in 2004, whose accounts served as the script for the director. But the blessed’s visions do not stop at Calvary: they encompass almost all of Sacred History. Was Job an ancestor of Abraham? Did Abraham escape a massacre of children hidden in the same cave that would later shelter the Holy Family during their flight to Egypt? Whose bones did Joseph wear around his neck?
Listened to in the car, this book has something of a fireside tale: Sacred History told by a witness. Ideal for long family trips, because it captivates both adults and children, and because afterward no one reads the Old Testament the same way again.
2. Us. Ascetic Training Ground for Men, by Antonio J. Gómez Mir
After decades of soft, feel-good Christianity, many Catholic men have lost the ideal of the Christian gentleman who sustains his family and defends his faith. It seems that today there is room only for moderation and tolerance, which—as the author reminds us—is the virtue of those who have no strong principles. Us is exactly the opposite: a training ground, a spiritual boot camp for men, with concrete keys to discern God’s will and live the faith with strength, grit, and heroism.
Few things pair better with the driver’s solitude than a book that speaks man to man. Listening to it on Legens.app on the way to work or on the highway is to submit voluntarily to an examination of conscience lasting several hundred kilometers. Warning: you will leave different from how you entered.
3. The One Who Weeps, by Léon Bloy
On September 19, 1846, the Blessed Virgin appeared weeping to two young shepherds on the mountain of La Salette in the French Alps. Her message—the blasphemy, the profanation of Sunday, the warning about the decline of the clergy—was so uncomfortable that much of it was silenced for decades. Léon Bloy, the ungrateful beggar, the most incandescent Catholic writer of the nineteenth century, devoted this formidable book to that apparition, which Homo Legens publishes with a foreword by Juan Manuel de Prada.
Bloy is not read: he is endured and thanked. And listened to, his fiery prose gains even more. It is the title on this list for the reader—the listener—who does not seek easy comfort but truth, even if it burns. A judgment on Modernity delivered from an Alpine mountain, perfect for this summer’s mountain roads.
4. The Essence of Woman, by G. K. Chesterton (edition by José Ramón Ayllón)
Chesterton wrote about women, motherhood, the home, and the nascent feminism of London a century ago, and he did so—as always—against the grain, with that unbeatable mix of common sense, paradox, and good humor. José Ramón Ayllón has gathered in this brief volume a careful selection of those texts, which today prove more provocative than when they were written: where the world sees the woman liberated by the office, Chesterton sees the queen of an empire—the home—reduced to a subject.
It is the short book on the list: it fits entirely in a Madrid–Levante trip. Ideal for listening to as a couple and discussing (amicably) for the rest of the journey. Few things enliven a summer after-dinner conversation as much as a well-placed Chesterton paradox.
5. How to Be a Conservative, by Roger Scruton
If someone were to write The Anti-Postmoderns, Roger Scruton would figure among its great protagonists, alongside Chesterton, René Girard, or Gómez Dávila. Philosopher, specialist in aesthetics, activist behind the Iron Curtain, and foxhunter, Scruton arrived at conservatism by following the luminous trail of beauty, and in this book—a compendium of his vital and intellectual adventure—he explains why it is worth conserving: the family, the nation, the received heritage, the things we love. Chapter by chapter he rescues “the truth” that exists in liberalism, socialism, nationalism, or environmentalism, to show that conservatism is not just another ideology, but an attitude toward life.
An essential work in Spain, where conservative thought lives under a kind of taboo and is fragmented into a thousand ill-matched factions. Listening to Scruton on the road is to travel in the company of an English gentleman: intelligent conversation, elegant prose, and not a single moment of boredom.
Paper also available
Five books, five voices, many hours of road well spent. And one certainty: those who listen to these titles this summer will end up wanting them in their library as well, on cream paper with dog-eared corners. Because listening and reading do not compete: they join hands, like the journey and the return home.
All five are available in paper at homolegens.com and as audiobooks on Legens.app, the new audiobook platform born from the collaboration between Homo Legens and Ediciones InfoVaticana.
And remember: as an InfoVaticana reader, you have 14 days of completely free trial by entering the code INFOVAT26 when registering at https://legens.app. Safe travels and happy listening.