I love audiobooks. My wife got me a 1-year Platinum membership to Audible.com where I got 24 credits, and I used them all up in less than 6 months. Our local library has audiobooks, and I've had to supplement my habit by borrowing them. Two weeks ago, I got over 25 hours of listening enjoyment and I'm almost finished with them. Talk to my wife, and she'll tell you I love them a little too much. So I was thrilled to stumble upon www.BooksShouldBeFree.com. They have recordings of thousands of public domain books.

 

I can't take credit for finding this on my own. A blurb appeared in Lifehacker. As soon as I found it, I stopped what I was doing (nothing important - just work) and went over to their website. I wasn't entirely sure where to start, but I found the best place is the Top 100. I have two issues with the Lifehacker article. The first is they say registration is required. I didn't find that was the case. I downloaded my first book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, without registering. Today I downloaded another classic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. Again, no registration required. I tried both the iTunes download and the zip file. For what it's worth, the zip file appears to contain the exact same files as you get through the iTunes link. The only odd thing about the iTunes download is that it puts it into your Podcast directory. I prefer my audiobooks in the Audiobook directory, but that is easily accomplished by selecting the Options for your tracks and changing Media Kind to Audiobook.

 

The second issue I had was that while Lifehacker said the reviews are helpful because they focused on the actual audio recordings, I found that there aren't very many reviews on the site, yet. I personally plan to change that as I go through these recordings, and I hope that others will actively participate by posting their reviews. It would definitely be helpful to have more feedback on the recordings. After listening to several chapters, I can tell you that books aren't always recorded from beginning to end by the same person. That can be disjointing as different people record with different levels of quality. Plus they use different pronunciations, such as changing the way a character's name is pronounced. But these are volunteers, so what do you expect?

 

What I love about this site is the same thing I love about new media and broadband - no physical product required. No trip to the library, no need to worry about late fees, etc. It's the same things I love about Audible.com without the fees. It certainly won't replace my Audible subscription (the selection is too limited and the recording quality is variable), but I recommend everyone who is interested in audiobooks check them out.