It seems the times I enjoy Audible the most is when I travel. A great audiobook can make a 9 hour drive go by in the blink of an eye. When I am at home I spend a great deal of time reading books on my Kindle, currently I am reading On Writing by Steven King which is proving to be an interesting read. I was trying to get my brother-in-law to read the book, but despite my best attempts he is just not a reader. I suggested he download the Audible app for his BlackBerry and in a single road trip he completed the Audible version of On Writing. As I started to browse Audible I realized most of the books I have read over the past 7 years are available in audio format.
Despite the common belief the BlackBerry is packed with a wide variety of quality apps. With the Audible app you can either stream or download books in your library. If you need a new book you can also use your credits to purchase new books while on the go. If you happen to be a fan of audiobooks regardless of the device we did put together several posts talking about how to turn a book on CD into an audiobook:
If your not a huge fan of creating your own Audiobooks or purchasing from Audible there are many sites that give you access to free Audiobooks.
- Free Classic Audio Books: Many classic stories here (Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, etc.).
- Librivox is a fantastic place to find audio books. This is usually the first place I go to find books for my iPod.
- Podiobooks is an interesting way to get audio books; they offer complete books in episodic form so you can get just a chapter at a time via RSS or by iTunes; in addition, you can simply click and listen to a story online.
- OpenCulture Free Audio books: Long list of really good free audio books here; you can also find poetry and podcasts here.
- AudioBooksForFree is a large site that offers hundreds of audio books for free download; the only hitch is that their books and lectures come in small files (you can download a book all at once for a fee).
- ThoughtAudio has a good selection of classic audio books available for free download.
- Learn Out Loud is a gigantic collection of free audio books, lectures, and educational podcasts. One of the best resources for free audio books.
- Lit2Go: from the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse, a collection of stories and poems in audio book format.
- BooksShouldBeFree gives you a dozen plus categories to choose free audio books from, anything from Anthropology to War.
- Project Gutenberg has a huge selection of human-read audio books available. You can search by author, title, language, and more.
At any time I have a list of 10 books I want to read or listen to. There are countless ways to read/hear some of the best books ever written. If you enjoy podcasts it is possible you will enjoy audio books and vice versa. The right book can make a reader/listener out of anyone!
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