Audiobooks

Listening to books is a wonderful way to get more reading done.   Any time you listen to a story or book read aloud, you are exercising very important auditory skills.  If you're a parent or teacher, you probably appreciate how important that is.   But if you're a student, here's what you'll like:  listening can be relaxing and exciting at the same time!

If you have access to the internet (looks like you do) you already have thousands of books available to you for free.  You can go to a site, find what you want, and just start listening.

If you have an MP3 player, chances are it has enough memory to hold several books.  If you don't have an MP3 player, you may consider getting one after you give audiobooks a try.

Now, what exactly is available online?  A simple google search for "audiobooks" will give you results for some free sites, some paid sites, some good sites, and some not-so-good ones, too.  At some sites you can download books, at others you can only listen to them, but most sites let you do both.  Here is a run-down of the best resources available. 

Librivox.org - This is by far the biggest listing available.   Librivox can provide audiobooks for free because people volunteer to read and then donate their recordings.  You could help with the librivox project, too  --  it would be a great experience and a pretty cool project!  If you're interested, go to librivox.org/volunteer-for-librivox.

Booksshouldbefree.com is an excellent site that uses librivox recordings, but organizes the best ones for you so

that it's easier to browse and find something you like.

There are several smaller sites with more narrow selections, but they are also worth giving a try:

Loudlit.org - very high quality recordings independent of librivox

Audiobooktreasury.com - more recordings independent of librivox

Freeclassicaudiobooks.com  - listing of the most popular classics 

Thestoryhome.com - for children's stories

Storynory.com - also for young children

Ejunto.org  - for writings on philosophy and historical documents on government and politics

If all this seems overwhelming, you may want to take a look at the selection at myaudioschool.com.   It's a nice sampling and you can listen online without having to download anything. 

Are you still wondering how all this can be free?  If you've been following the links to these sites, you've probably already noticed that the selections do not include anything that's been written lately.  If a published book has an existing copyright, you will not find a free recording of it.  If you really like audiobooks, though, and you want to expand your choices, take a look at the site audible.com.  A monthly membership fee gives you access to a huge selection of more recent literature and they've got separate pages for kids and for teens.

So, what will you listen to? 

And where will you be listening? 
In the car?
In a hammock?
While you walk the dog?
Before you fall asleep at night?

Give it a try!