GRE Audio Books

Now we move on to the big stuff. When studying for the GRE literature, it’s important to remember that you’re not going to know everything. Depending on how much time you plan to spend on studying, the best plan is to focus your attention on things that will take the least time. Vocabulary, poetic forms and meter, and poems themselves are well worth spending time on.  Novels, however, are more problematic. The best approach is to memorize the names of characters and a brief plot outline. If you try to read everything by Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte, you’re going to run into some time problems.

As someone who refused to use spark notes or cliff notes in high school, I feel a little cheap recommending them now.  But if you are the sort of person who can memorize facts from such bare bones outlines, these might serve you well. If you need a little more substance to make things stick, audio books are your answer. For the next several weeks I’ll be posting audio books of 18th and 19th century British prose and novels which are likely to appear on the GRE. I’m not going to post the whole book, because honestly you don’t have to read the whole book. Just getting a sense of the prose style and characters will probably be enough. Happy listening!