Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Listen to the Voices of the Authors

For years, Don Swaim had a CBS radio show called Book Beat. This show aired a 2 minuute interview with writers. But in order to get that 2 minutes, 30-45 minute interviews were taped. Now you can listen to all of the unedited interviews for free at Wired for Books.

These are interviews with some of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. They include: Maya Angelou, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Clancy, Christopher Buckley, Kurt Vonnegut, Calvin Trillin, Paul Theroux, Amy Tan, Anne Rice, Alison Lurie, Andrew Greely, Janet Daily, James Dickey, Dick Francis and way too many more to list fully.

Wired for Books' mp3 page has an alphabetical listing of the interviewed authors in addition to some free audio books that include Alice in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol, In the Land of Men, The African American Oral Tradition, The Illiad in ancient Greek, the Aeneid in Latin, and some of Shakespeare's works.

Happy Listening!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Free Fiction Audio Books

It can be pretty hard to find full length fiction audio books for free. But it can be done. Your best bet is to head over to Podiobooks.

Podiobooks is a collection of serialized audio books which are made available in podcast format. What's this mean? Well, you get a section (usually a chapter) of an audio book sent to you automatically at the interval of your choosing (once a day, once a week, etc.) You can also get the entire book sent to you all at once. For more information read Podiobook's FAQs.

You'll need to sign up for an account in order to get the audio books sent to you. But there is nothing to pay ever, unless you choose to make a donation to the author for a title that you particularly liked. Most of the audio books are from new, or relatively new, authors that are trying to get more exposure for their work.

You can also download chapters directly from Podiobooks if you are willing to take the time and/or don't want to set up a podcast.

There are 117 titles to choose from in a variety of genres, including fantasy, horror, children's, historical and more. So spice up your listening with Podiobooks.

Happy Listening!

Monday, May 28, 2007

Memorial Day Audio Books

It's Memorial Day here in the US. What has become a long weekend of picnics, BBQs and camping. But it was set aside as a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service.

What better way to remember their sacrifice than by celebrating freedom? Below are two great sites that have audio versions of speeches and works dedicated to freedom.

FreeAudio is, in their words, "a non-partisan organization dedicated to the spread of liberty." Works that you can find there include Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the Bill of Rights. It is a wonderful site and I encourage you to head on over and add some liberty to your day.

AmericanRhetoric is a large collection of speeches (over 5,000) in text, audio and video formats. You can listen to a huge variety of speeches including presidential (past & present) and other great American statesmen.

So show your appreciation to all those who have served our country by enjoying, celebrating and increasing your freedom.

Happy Listening!

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Free Audio Documentaries

I'm fortunate enough to live in a country where I can freely express my views and opinions. Even better, others can do the same. And I've found a place where you can listen to some of those thoughts for free.

SoundPortraits has free audio documentaries that you can download and listen to. They are dedicated to bringing the stories of neglected American voices to a national audience.

Most of the feature documentaries at SoundPortraits are less than a half hour long and a lot of the "American Talkers" are less than five minutes long. If you normally listen to fiction audio books, you now can have a quick break from the usual and if you already listen to nonfiction, now you can listen to stories that aren't often told.

Just head over to the "On Air" link for the audio files or go there directly from here.

Happy Listening!

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Traveling with Kids and Free Audio Books

Lots of people, at least here in the US, are traveling this weekend. And traveling with kids too. This can be at times pretty darn painful. But audio books aren't just for adults. Put one geared for kids on and see how they quiet down and listen to a good story.

Storynory has free audio stories for children. Titles includes Cinderella, The Billy Goats Gruff, Snow White and The Gingerbread Man. They are also in the process of making Alice in Wonderland available chapter by chapter. Storynory also has titles in sections for Christmas, modern stories, longer stories and more. A new story is added each week so you should be able to find something that suits your needs.

So if you are going to be traveling with kids any time soon, check out Storynory and get something for the kids to listen to. The kids will enjoy it and you will all arrive at your destination just a little calmer, happier and maybe with more of your sanity intact than if you hadn't.

Happy Listening!

Friday, May 25, 2007

504 More Free Audio Books

You can get 500 free audio books at LearnOutLoud. And they offer a new audio book free each month. In order to get your free audio books at LearnOutLoud, you'll need to set up a free account and when you do, you'll have the option to receive a free audio resource of the day from them. Now you can get even more free audio content!

May's free audio book of the month is Wallace Wattles' The Science of Being Great. I was absolutely tickled to get this as it was his first work The Science of Getting Rich that attracted me to audio books in the first place. Better hurry over to LearnOutLoud to get your free copy today, May is almost over!

Most of the free resources I have given you so far have pretty weighty audio books, mostly classics and self-improvement titles. So here are 4 short story audio books for you to sit back and enjoy. Although, judging from the cover art, they aren't light hearted stories! You can get them here.

As an aside, LearnOutLoud has a great selection of educational and self-improvement audio books, including a lot of exclusive material. You can buy their titles in CD, cassette and downloadable mp3 format. And at some pretty great prices too. Check them out. Chances are LearnOutLoud has something that you've been looking for.

Happy Listening!

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Where to Find The Free Audio Book Downloads

The Internet abounds with free resources, but tracking them down can be a time consuming job. Fortunately some people have made the job a lot easier.

Due to the wonderful ideas of a few and the hard work of many, it is possible to get access to a lot of public domain material. Public domain material is that which copyright has expired and is now freely available to the public.

The hard part used to be getting your hands on it, but now a few sites have made a wealth of public domain material easily available to the public. These include Project Gutenberg, Librivox and Literal Systems.

Project Gutenberg has over 20,000 free books in their catalog that you can download and read. They also have free audio books, although their selection is smaller. They have computer read books available here and human read ones here.

Librivox is on online collection of public domain audio books. Their goal is to make all public domain books available as audio books. Is that a great goal or what? Right now they are well on their way with over 600 titles available as of this writing. And in case you were wondering, all of the material is read by real human beings who have generously given of their time and efforts.

Literal Systems is another site dedicated to providing free public domain audio books. Their list of titles isn't as huge as Librivox, but they still have some material worth listening to!

So if you have any classic material on your "to listen to" list, head on over to the above sites and start whittling it down for free! If you don't have any classic material on you list, then consider adding some. Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Daniel Defoe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Aesop, Frank L. Baum, Charlotte Bronte and more await you.

And if any of the above sites make a significant contribution to your life consider a donation and/or volunteering some of your time to them to keep them going.

Happy Listening!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Introduction to Free Online Audiobooks

Sometimes (OK usually) I come a little slowly to the benefits of new technology. Its not that I don’t understand how it works, it just takes me a while to really see how it will make my own life better. Take MP3s for instance. Sure, I thought, handy little device, no more CDs to get scratched and you can take it anywhere. But I’m not a teenager who has to constantly be listening to music. In fact, I’m a stay at home mom so when I want music I turn on the radio. Why would I need an MP3 player?


Then one day I got an audio book that I wanted to listen to repeatedly. Unfortunately, not everyone in the house felt the same way. So I figured I would pick up an inexpensive portable CD player and all of my problems would be solved.


Well, it didn’t quite work that way. Every time I moved, the player would skip. And since I was usually cleaning while listening, there was a lot of skipping. This of course was too annoying to tolerate. My first plan was to buy a better quality CD player. But then it hit me.


Why not rip the sound tracks to mp3 files and load the whole book onto an MP3 player. (Aren’t I a genius?) The advantages seemed pretty appealing – no more worrying about scratched CDs, no more having to switch CDs in the middle of the book, no more skipping and the player would be a lot smaller to carry around. Small enough to fit in a pocket or on a handy armband. They cost a bit more than I really wanted to spend, but the advantages made it seem more than worth it.


Yep I finally realized how this new technology would benefit me personally. So I convinced my husband that I needed one for my birthday.


For a while, everything was great. In fact, it was so nice that I found myself listening a whole lot more. And after a while I wanted something new to listen to. Boy was I in for a shock. Sure there were a few audio books out there for around $10, but most were in the range of $25-40. Being a one income family with three kids to keep in clothes, shoes and sporting gear, that was a pretty hefty expense for me. Even if I was “improving my mind”.


So off I went on a journey to figure out how I could get more content without depriving my kids of new shoes. And I found so much great stuff that I wanted to share. After all, everybody should be able to improve their mind while still getting their kids new shoes!