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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.openculture.com/2015/06/isaac-asimovs-favorite-st...
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