Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Hacker News Reader

Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free

openculture.com

Welcome to the internet 2020

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version 2 https://youtu.be/rjqjSP7kOO4

The only book I've checked before going to comments.

See also https://librivox.org for free public domain audiobooks.

I've been listening to Jane Eyre through librivox while I do the dishes. Excellent service, excellent voice actresses.

Another Librivox treasure is David Clarke's reading of The Count of Monte Cristo:

https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-version-3-by-...

Treasure Island v2 read by Adrian praetzellis is ... Also a treasure

Ah, Adrian Praetzellis! Such a fantastic reader. I also suggest his readings of...

The Wind in the Willows:

https://librivox.org/the-wind-in-the-willows-by-kenneth-grah...

The Thirty-Nine Steps:

https://librivox.org/the-thirty-nine-steps-by-john-buchan/

https://librivox.org/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy-2/

Anna Karenina, as read by MaryAnn, English

https://librivox.org/anna-karenina-deutsch-by-leo-tolstoy/

As read by Eva K., German

These kinds of sites really could use a "Top 100" or "Most Popular" feature for when you just want to see what's on tap and don't necessarily have a specific book in mind.

Amazing resource, though. After recording a short story I wrote, I have even more respect for people who volunteer their time to librivox. I had to do a surprising amount of editing and re-takes just reading my tiny story. Could barely get through a paragraph without some sort of error, even if it was just a weirdly timed breath.

Librivox content is hosted on archive.org and can be sorted and searched more easily there

On iOS, for those of us addicted to convenience, the Oldio app provides free Audible-style listening to Librivox

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/oldio-audiobook-classics/id135...

Thank You!

Also, most public libraries have extensive audiobook and ebook archives, and there are apps that bring all that content straight to your phone. If you live somewhere that has library access, you can greatly and easily expand your access to books, new and old through that method.

Even if you don't live somewhere that has library access, there's a number of options available. Here's a few options: https://weightywords.net/best-non-resident-library-cards-for...

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries#Wid...

If you're in the US some cities will give access to their library system as long as you live in the state. Overdrive has a good UI, and with waitlists, I always have something to read.

I listened to hundreds of audiobooks by borrowing boxes of CDs. Now, many libraries have accounts with Overdrive and similar services that make audiobooks available for free (as well as e-books and similar resources).

I feel kinda bad that I haven't been inside my local branch in a very long time. I love libraries and are very grateful for how much material they have lent me over the years. I am glad that they continue to provide those services for people, and hope that the shift to digital resources doesn't result in closing branches. They're still needed.

I have a 3.5 year old. Prior to that I have not step into a public library for a very long time. I will admit at least the ones in Gwinnett County (Atlanta) they have kept up and I've gone there several times.

Just last week on a Saturday, I took my daughter to Numbers Camp and it was a librarian teaching patterns. There were activities on patterns (stamps, bracelets to make patterns), and books about patterns. The room was full of families.

If you are looking for free german audio books, checkout

- https://www.vorleser.net/

For a free conversion tool, checkout

- https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool

- https://github.com/gonzoua/AudioBookBinder

- https://github.com/yermak/AudioBookConverter

Thanks for the conversion tools. I was lost trying to deal with m4b audio books and SubSonic not supporting them.

Thank you so much for that resource. It is greatly appreciated.

If anyone is looking for some free modern genre fiction, I can highly recommend the Worm audiobook: http://audioworm.rein-online.org/

It's longer than the entire Games of Thrones series, plenty of content there. It is a fan created recording and the early parts are a bit rough, but gets more professional over time and eventually becomes extremely polished.

This is a sample (standalone, relatively spoiler free since this is 100% flashback) chapter from the sequel story Ward. Read Worm first but this specific chapter can be read by itself. http://parahumanaudio.com/podcast/gleaming-9-x/

Worm really opened up a whole new section of "books" for me. Previously I thought that most web serials were on par with fan fiction in quality and subject matter. That being said another free audio book that is also a web serial (not sure if it's complete just yet) is Mother of Learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjR6qnMXU9o&list=PL1R6q3pUbd...

Does anyone else have an issue with audiobooks as literature? Like, if I'm not able to control the pace at which I'm paying attention, it's problematic. I can't guarantee I'll pay 100 percent attention to noise that otherwise would almost be background to me. Regardless, the selection here is pretty bad-ass.

Is there something inherent in literature that requires it to be visually consumed? Yes, it's too easy to let one's mind wander while listening to an audiobook but I find it helps to have a group/book club with which to discuss the book afterward.

One significant negative of audiobooks is that I tend to listen while doing "active but mindless" activities (mowing the lawn, commuting, cleaning my office, doing dishes/chores) which means I'm not in a position to stop and take notes in the margin or in a notebook. To really absorb a work and make it your own I think you need to take notes and summarize the main points of each chapter, in your own words, after finishing each chapter.

That said, listening-only is far better than having no exposure to these great works. Would I would love even more is to have commentaries or Joe-Rogan-Style recorded discussions about the books by academics so I could read the book, listen to discussions about the book, then read the book again with these critiques in mind.

Guess blind people are just kinda SOL then.

Check out In Our Time on BBC4, there's a podcast.

A much shorter answer: yes, it's possible. Before getting into a serious self-study of literature I highly recommend reading and studying this book first: https://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Classic-Intelligent/dp/...

For over two decades I have listened to audiobooks while painting - excellent activities to pair.

Not too long ago I finally gave podcasts a try. For a while I was hooked. Most importantly, in Spotify it was trivially easy to increase the speed from 1x to 1.25x and 1.5x. After a while, for certain sections I could listen at 2x and still understand everything, and it was much more engaging! As long as I could control the playback speed, I think I could get into audio books, too (though I haven't yet. My commute is short...)

I love audiobooks for forcing me to keep going through material. I’ll reread sections often in print. Not being able to do so as easily with audiobooks helps me by keeping me going through material. Sometimes it’s the difference between having a “click” and not. Or keeps me going when my attention might otherwise slip by reading too much into something that’s not there.

If it feels like audiobooks aren’t having an impact on you then I’d suggest trying to relisten to them and not treat them as a once-through.

not really. i'm absolutely addicted to audiobooks[0][1] -- to the point where 95% of all books i consume are audiobooks.

it took me a while to get "used" to them but now i can easily focus on them while doing chores (washing the dishes, walking the dog).

[0]https://i.imgur.com/w1EiD66.jpg

[1]https://i.imgur.com/oFj5fvX.jpg

It's like anything else; it takes practice. For my first months of regular audiobooking I had to reread sections pretty regularly. Five years in I listen between 1.6x and 2.6x, depending on the subject and reader, and almost never have to reread anything (unless something taxing pops up suddenly and I don't pause immediately). Over 100 of the books I read last year were audio.

Agreed. This is a skill you develop over time. The instinctive pause, and 30 second rewind, have got me to where I feel my Audio Book listening is on par with with normal reading. But this took 5 years listening to at least 1 book per month.

But even with physical books, I could often drift mentally when I was reading and would need to reread a page or two when I noticed I hadn't been fully present.

No, it's actually better for me. I come from the unfortunate generation in USA that grew up with "hooked on phonics" .... as a result, my reading skills are utterly abhorrent.

Audio books impose a strict pace on me; I have no choice but to keep up. Personally, I like also being able to speed them up. My brain accommodates the new transmission rate just fine after some time. So, what would normally be unintelligible becomes a really low-effort way for me to ingest content.

For me, background noise creeps in when I'm trying to read by sight. It can be exhausting.

My 2¢

I do find that audio books do set a pace that's slower than normal reading. But often my mind takes off with it and enables a richer experience than I'd have if I read at my normal speed.

However many audio book players allow you to control playback speed. I do find the occasional voice actor that's just too fast or slow for my comfort.

I considered whitelisting the website on uBlock but then I noticed 25+ different blocked requests (that number usually explodes after whitelisting too). Is this really necessary?

If your favourite book isn't available as an audiobook, give us a try:

https://auditus.cc

Very nice quality — though it still sounds robotic a tad. There is no “breathing” breaks.

Nice work though!

Don't worry it's coming soon :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22029803

We're working on releasing an API for Replica - we'll eventually be able to provide even more realistic voices you could use.

https://replicastudios.com

Auditus looks like a great idea.

Does this use Google Text to Speech service?

That uses Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML), which can achieve realistic pauses gaps in speech.

https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/docs/ssml

Sounds more like Polly :)

Voice quality and price seems good enough for me to use a lot - as most books / media I want to read are too niche for Audible, etc.

I tried to order, but it errored out because of some file not readable error, but error was fatal and with no recourse but doing everything again.

I would use this all the time if it was a little smoother. Hit me up if I can be helpful. (see my profile here for email)

Will do, thanks for letting us know about the error.

Update: these guys were great.

They quickly reached out to me with the fixed file and the output is really good.

This is the first voice synthed audiobook that I can actually stand to listen to at length, and it plays well using Podcast Addict on Android, and the voice speeds up well too (encoded at 93%, listened to it at ~1.7x)

FYI - the "Explore Voices" link gives a 404.

Thanks for letting us know about the issue, we are working in a fix. For now, use the voice explorer on the homepage: https://auditus.cc

What do you use to listen to audio books files? Some normal audio player is rather cumbersome, due to missing progress tracking.

For android I use "Listen Audiobook Player". Automatic progress tracking for multiple books, and generally all round great for daily audiobook usage.

I also use Listen Audiobook Player [1]. Loaded with well thought out features. The app also saves your progress/stats in a json file in your audiobooks directory, so you can easier move it to a new phone/tablet whenever you want.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroi...

on desktop, vlc

on mobile, vlc

On Android, we have a nice FOSS choice named "Voice", an unfortunate name collision with Google Voice making it hard to find. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiob...

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.ph1b.audiobook/

On iOS, searching by title in Overcast's turns up Loyal Books' index of free written and audio books, which seems to have the RSS feeds for the LibriVox audio books.

http://www.loyalbooks.com

I really like Smart Audio Book Player. It is freemium. I think I don't need any the premium features, but I liked so much the usability of the app that I paid for it.

Cool site, but for myself, I will stick with Audible because of the convenience. I have probably spent about $1000 on Audible books and I feel like that has been a good value, over many years.

Some advantages I have experienced:

When I read James Joyce "Ulysses" several years ago, it was somewhat difficult to follow the narrative. I then listened to it as an audio book with a half a dozen good actors reading the parts and the book came to life for me.

I have some arthritis in my hands, and any time not using a keyboard, holding a physical book, or an eBook reader helps.

When I am working in the yard, cleaning up the kitchen, etc. it is good to listen to a book.

The one thing that bothers me is the possibility of losing a large investment in Kindle and Audible books if I ever lost my Amazon account. I mitigate this somewhat by buying some eBooks and audio books on Google Play and on Apple's store. --> don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

If I could suggest on your last point, that if you are fearful of Audible ever going the way of the dodo, that you look into OpenAudible. I've used it to keep an offline Archive of my content.

Not sure what you’re criticizing. If you’re already spreading your eggs around to different baskets, this site just provides a few more baskets, a few more ways of obtaining audiobooks - mp3, free on Audible, etc.

Not what I expected to see: Iggy Pop reads Edgar Allan Poe

http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/iggy-pop-reads-edgar-alla...

I prefer TTS machine generated voice than non professional readers such as librivox, so for me it's either a professional reader or TTS.

Do these free audio books collection also has transcripts? I want to use them to train my Speech to text model.

The books that are read are typically available in their original textual form at places like Project Gutenberg which curate texts in the public domain.

As for timestamps, I'm not aware of anything other than the chapter markers.

If you don't already know about it, you'll probably be interested in Mozilla's Common Voice data: https://voice.mozilla.org/en/datasets

How do we know they're great? There's no review section like on Audible or Librivox.

Is there an app on iOS that indexes ubuweb, I noticed Junky read by Burroughs there which would be a fascinating listen, but it comes in lots of pieces and consuming it on the run seems somewhat tricky

Was surprised to see the free books in Audible, turns out that this is free only if you sign up and you only get one book, which is pretty misleading

As oppose to having some books free but riddled with vpn and pill commercial very 10 mins?

They need to make money somehow.

Amazon "sells" classics for free, I thought there was something similar in Audible that I was not aware of

If you have an Alexa they now give you access to free audiobooks to listen to for the month:

https://www.audible.co.uk/ep/alexa-free-audiobook

Caveat being, audiobooks can be rather long and it might be a push to fit them into the month!

So, what software/app do you guys use to consume audiobooks? I haven't found a decent one that works with external downloads.

In android I use Voice

on ios LibriVox doesn't support external files but seems to list many of the free audiobooks from the link above.

On Android, Listen Audiobooks [1] is my go to and has been for years. As long as your books are DRM free it's the best UX I've had.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeandroi...

Smart AudioBook Player on Android works great for me.

I use subsonic to host the audiobooks and play:Sub/AVSub on iOS to listen to them. play:Sub can speed up the books which is very nice for some slower voice actors.

Looking at LibriVox specifically (linked to by many of the entries in OP), each audiobook has an RSS feed, so I'll just be listening to them in a podcast app. If you have a decent one that keeps track of which "episodes" you've listened to and allows downloading for offline listening (ideally automatically), seems like that should cover the audiobook usecase pretty well.

First link I click on is a dud (Asimov, Isaac - "The Last Question" ) due to copyright claims. Not a great start tbh.

Both "The Last Question" and "The Last Answer" are fantastic shorts that I can't recommend enough to everybody. Don't let this version being a dud stop you from reading them. They're available in text form from other websites.

This is great! thank you

Why is this sorted by author name ? Site is very spammy and unusable

And the the domain keywordblocks.com is directed to media.net which is blocked by Ublock origin.

Not encouraging!

Also all "free on Audible.com" links simply go to their own page telling the reader to sign up for a free trial with a referral link, instead of audiobooks that are free on Audible. Uhm, so it is NOT free on Audible, and that seems fishy and scammy as well. I understand making money in general (Audible) and referral links (this site), but just tell me, don't skirt around it please and pretend something is free when it isn't.

...why shouldn't it be sorted by author name?

I think this (pre-recorded) audio book thing is a short-term phenomenon that's creating an economic distortion. Recording audio books requires extra labor, but not much (how many person-hours does it take to record War and Peace compared to person-hours spent by each publisher publishing a new edition, even assuming the use of an existing translation?). Yet Audible rakes in huge amounts of cash by charging a premium (particularly popular titles) for audiobooks over regular ebooks. Sometimes it's because they get famous people to read books, which is a blatant cash grab by the voice artist and/or by Audible. You could find 10 people who have better reading voices than any particular famous person, unless your only objective is to hear your favorite famous person read a book, any book.

Also, subscription plans are designed around most people not using them fully, and not optimizing their purchases.

Soon enough neural net TTS + ebooks will be nearly equivalent, and doesn't cost any more than the base ebook. Plus TTS allows synchronizing between print and speech which you can't get between ebooks and audiobooks; i.e. it would be nice to read in print, then switch to TTS while commuting or working out, then back to print.

> You could find 10 people who have better reading voices than any particular famous person, unless your only objective is to hear your favorite famous person read a book, any book.

It can work. There's an Indian celebrity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappi_Lahiri ) who is famous for his great love of gold. And for the Hindi dub of Moana, he was cast as the voice of Tamatoa.

With a Platinum subscription, Audible books work out to $11.50 each, which is sometimes cheaper than even the e-book version let alone a physical copy.

Narration quality is a big deal. I am pretty impressed with the latest TTS but if I'm going to spend 10-50+ hours listening to a single audiobook I will be happy to pay a few bucks for the best narration.

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