← The Library · About the book
The Original Field · Book One
Choose an edition.
Paperback, ebook or audiobook. Choose the form that fits your life.
Would you like to begin before choosing? Read the free opening →
There is no best way to read this book. There is the way you will actually read it — on paper, on a screen, or in your ear while your hands are busy. All three are the same text. Choose the one that fits the life you have, not the one that sounds most serious.
The ebook
The whole text, on whichever shelf you already keep your books on.
Kindle →Still arriving: Google Play Books. The book has been sent; the shop has not shelved it yet.
The audiobook
Fifteen hours and twenty-seven minutes, across forty-five tracks, read in the House’s digital voice from the author’s own text.
Audible →Still arriving: Libro.fm, Storytel, Chirp, Kobo, Nextory, BookBeat, Audiobooks.com, Audioteka and BookMate.
Listening? The Listener’s Companion writes down the Hebrew and Greek the book teaches, so the words underneath the words can be seen as well as heard. Free, and no address asked for.
From a library
Borrowed, not bought — and the House would rather you read it than buy it. The ebook has been lodged with OverDrive / Libby, hoopla, cloudLibrary, BorrowBox and Everand. If your library does not have it yet, it can request it; the numbers below are all a librarian needs.
Anywhere else in the world
If none of the shops above serves your country, any bookshop or library can order the book by its number — that is what these are for. The paperback is carried by Ingram, which prints in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Türkiye, the UAE and South Africa, so in many countries it is printed near you rather than posted from America.
- Paperback
- 979-8-234-10832-6
- Ebook
- 979-8-9977245-1-1
- Audiobook
- 979-8-9977245-2-8
The audiobook above is on Spotify as a show rather than a listed audiobook, which means it plays in every country Spotify serves — not only the handful where Spotify sells audiobooks.
Holding the book
Beside some marks in the printed book you will find a small number. Enter it in the House and the passage opens — with the Keeper ready to sit with you in it. Open a passage →
Book One’s opening excerpt is free to read here; the Archive keeps a quiet index of the reading and book introduction. What the House is, and what it refuses to become, is set out in the Foundations.
The invitation was never withdrawn.
The door has been open the entire time.
Go deeper.
Read at your own pace, in the form that helps you attend.