In the old days, and I mean very old here, humans used to sit around camp fires in the evening relaying the day's events to each other in the only way they knew how: by telling stories. Story telling was a vital form of communication between people and because key messages could be explained in stories, often complex ones at that that related to fundamental survival factors such as how to build shelters, how to light fires and so on, it was an advantage for individuals to be able to listen and understand the spoken narrative.

If you learned of the location of a new food supply via a story, then you had an advantage in raw survival terms over someone who didn't listen or process the story so well. As generation gave way to generation, those with this slight advantage prospered better than those who did not and in turn lived to child-bearing age more frequently and thus we evolved to be good listeners to stories.

And so it remains today. A good story can transfix us, transport us into another world and give us insights and entertainment at the same time. But what has changed is the medium through which the story can be told. Now it is easy to record a story onto an ipod or an MP3 player or just a CD or a Flash chip and then play it back when and wherever you want.

But stories are at their best when read by professional actors who paint pictures in your mind that have an intensity and clarity of their own so we are now seeing a rapidly increasing library of stories available online that have been narrated by first class actors.

These stories, ranging from short tales, through poems and speeches and on to the great and lengthy novels are now becoming much more widely available from websites that have been set up for this specific purpose. Good audio book download sites now give you instant access to a growing range of top quality audio entertainment so when you are in the mood for some entertainment, education, enlightenment or just some comic relief you can download the stories you want immediately. Downloadable audio books are quite an advance on camp fire stories but they nonetheless appeal at that same deep, instinctive level.

Go and listen to a good story now and you'll hear what I mean.