Many of us grade the books we read, but Kurt Von­negut grad­ed the books he wrote. Let­ters of Note once tweet­ed out a list of the thir­teen grades he applied to thir­teen of his nov­els, pref­aced with his dis­claimer that “the grades I hand out to myself do not place me in lit­er­ary his­to­ry. I am com­par­ing myself with myself.” With that out of the way, he gives 1969’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, his sixth nov­el and best-known work, an A‑plus, and puts his fourth nov­el, Cat’s Cra­dle from 1963, in the very same league.

But you don’t have to take Vonnegut’s word for it. You can, of course, read these books your­self — or you can hear them read aloud, at least in abridged ver­sions, for free on Spo­ti­fy. What’s more, you can hear Von­negut, clear­ly not a man to dis­tance him­self from his fin­ished work, read them aloud in his own voice. The record­ings come from the label Caed­mon, pio­neers of the vinyl-album pro­to-audio­book begin­ning in the 1950s with a record of Dylan Thomas read­ing his poet­ry. Their Von­negut-read­ing-Von­negut releas­es came out through the 1970s.

You might as well begin by lis­ten­ing to the read­ings of Cat’s Cra­dle and Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Vonnegut’s “A‑plus” books. They also put out audio ver­sions of Wel­come to the Mon­key House, which the author grad­ed a bit more harsh­ly with a B‑minus, and Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, which, with a C, he ranked down among what he con­sid­ered his less­er works. But that dis­dain doesn’t affect his char­ac­ter­is­tic rich­ly weary deliv­ery of the text, and besides, some of his fans love Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons best of all. Bonus: Sto­ries from Wel­come to the Mon­key House is also an option.

If you don’t yet have the free soft­ware need­ed to play these or oth­er record­ings on Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here, start lis­ten­ing to these clas­si­cal­ly satir­i­cal, inven­tive, and cyn­i­cal mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can nov­els, and pre­pare to hand out some grades of your own.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? For exam­ple, John Malkovich read­ing Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons? Or James Fran­co read­ing Slaugh­ter­house-Five? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut Urges Young Peo­ple to Make Art and “Make Your Soul Grow”

Hear Hem­ing­way Read Hem­ing­way, and Faulkn­er Read Faulkn­er (90 Min­utes of Clas­sic Audio)

Lis­ten to 60+ Free, High-Qual­i­ty Audio­Books of Clas­sic Lit­er­a­ture on Spo­ti­fy: Austen, Dick­ens, Tol­stoy & More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hor­ror writer Howard Phillips Love­craft was a man who lived his life in fear—of peo­ple of oth­er races and nation­al­i­ties, of women, of real­i­ty itself. In a recent New York Review of Books write-up, Charles Bax­ter some­what deri­sive­ly char­ac­ter­izes Love­craft as a dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cent (and favorite of dis­en­chant­ed ado­les­cents), who “nev­er real­ly grew up. ‘Adult­hood is hell,’ he once wrote in a let­ter.” Yet his fic­tion depicts more than a tor­ment­ed adult world, but an entire uni­verse brim­ming with name­less ancient horrors—and occa­sion­al­ly named ones like the crea­ture Cthul­hu, whose like­ness he once sketched out in a let­ter to a friend.

The cephalo­pod-faced mon­ster crys­tal­izes Lovecraft’s dis­gust with real­i­ty in all its strange­ness and, for him, all its vari­ety. It’s a per­fect image of alien­ation (just this past week we saw tongue-in-cheek spec­u­la­tion over whether octo­pus­es are aliens; a plau­si­ble con­ceit) and presents us with an ele­men­tal uncan­ni­ness that char­ac­ter­izes his entire body of work. “Fic­tion like Lovecraft’s can be bru­tal­ly hyp­not­ic,” writes Bax­ter, “the young read­er, intel­lec­tu­al­ly unde­fend­ed and eas­i­ly shak­en enters the writer’s fear-drenched uni­verse and can’t eas­i­ly get out of it.”

The Call of Cthul­hu — Part 1

Whether you dis­cov­ered Love­craft as a young read­er or an old­er one, you may have found your­self sim­i­lar­ly entrapped by the hor­rors of his imag­i­na­tion. And you could count your­self in the com­pa­ny of not only her­met­ic, mis­an­throp­ic, death-obsessed young men in punk bands but also of media friend­ly, death-obsessed writ­ers like Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates. And, of course, thou­sands upon thou­sands of hor­ror fans across the world, includ­ing a great many actors, writ­ers, and direc­tors who over the years have adapt­ed Lovecraft’s fic­tion as old-fash­ioned radio dra­ma of the kind the author him­self might have con­sumed while iso­lat­ed from the wicked world in his New Eng­land home.

You can hear some choice exam­ples here: at the top of the post we have Richard Coyle’s read­ing of the novel­la At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness. (You can also hear his read­ing of “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth” here.)  Next, we have a 1945 drama­ti­za­tion of “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” per­formed by Acad­e­my Award-win­ning actor Ronald Col­man. And then hear the infa­mous “Call of Cthul­hu,” parts one and two, pro­duced by the Atlanta Radio The­atre Com­pa­ny, who have record­ed no small num­ber of Love­craft radio plays. Just above, lis­ten to a read­ing of “Behind the Wall of Sleep” from old-time radio sci-fi read­ings archive Mind Webs (which we’ve cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post). Final­ly, below, lis­ten on Spo­ti­fy to the HP Love­craft Radio Hour Vol 1, a col­lec­tion of dra­ma­tized Love­craft sto­ries. 

Should you hap­pen to tear through these record­ings and find your­self in des­per­ate need of more to feed your Love­craft obses­sion, fear not; you would have a very hard time exhaust­ing all the options. The World’s Largest H.P. Love­craft Audio Links Gate­way, for exam­ple, deliv­ers exact­ly what it promis­es. Should that expan­sive data­base some­how leave out a read­ing or drama­ti­za­tion, you’ll per­haps find it over at the H.P. Love­craft Archive’s size­able col­lec­tion. And you must, if you’re a Love­craft fan, vis­it the H.P. Love­craft His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, who host plen­ty of Love­craft merch, and links to much more Love­craft audio, includ­ing albums inspired by his work and a pod­cast.

And on the off chance you knew lit­tle or not at all of Love­craft before read­ing this post, beware. You may, after lis­ten­ing to some of his weird tales of hor­ror, come away a devot­ed Love­craft cultist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the sci­ence fic­tion author best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, start­ed writ­ing at the end of World War II and the begin­ning of the nuclear age, a time when tech­nol­o­gy promised to bring untold ben­e­fit to human­i­ty and had the poten­tial to utter­ly destroy it. So he wrote sci­ence fic­tion with some actu­al sci­ence in it, tales about space trav­el, alien encoun­ters and human evo­lu­tion.

The future was a con­tin­u­ing object of fas­ci­na­tion for Clarke. He proved to be uncan­ni­ly accu­rate at mak­ing div­ina­tions about the course of tech­nol­o­gy. Back in 1964, he pre­dict­ed vir­tu­al surgery, 3D print­ers and the inter­net. Of course, he also pre­dict­ed that we would have an army of mon­key ser­vants to cater to our every whim. You can’t always be right.

But thanks to the mag­ic of one of his pre­dic­tions – the inter­net – you can lis­ten to Clarke read two of his most acclaimed works – Childhood’s End and “The Star.”

The for­mer tale, writ­ten in 1953, is about a mys­te­ri­ous alien race that brings the Cold War to a screech­ing halt and kick starts human evo­lu­tion. But at what cost? Stan­ley Kubrick was report­ed­ly inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing the book until he set­tled on 2001. Lis­ten to Clarke read long excerpts from Childhood’s End at the top of this post.

The lat­ter sto­ry, pub­lished in 1955, might very well be the best sci-fi Christ­mas sto­ry ever. It was adapt­ed into a Twi­light Zone episode that thor­ough­ly freaked me out as a kid. Lis­ten to “The Star” just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur C. Clarke Nar­rates Film on Mandelbrot’s Frac­tals; David Gilmour Pro­vides the Sound­track

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.