Those are all good suggestions, and I've had similar ideas myself. I was listening to an audiobook of 家 by 巴金 after reading each chapter, slowing it down. However, the starting point, as in my other similar attempts, seems to have been too advanced to let my ear catch up with my eye, and by the end of the novel I could still barely catch a word here and there in a text I had just read easily with my eyes, sounding each character in my head. I couldn't even notice any progress in my listening comprehension over the course of the book. What I'm saying is this: I wouldn't have been able to learn to read Chinese without carefully designed readers of graduated difficulty and restricted vocabulary. The difficulties of learning Chinese for the eye have been well addressed. There doesn't seem to be anything comparable for the ear.