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I love to read books, but lately have not been able to find the time to finish them. I am currently reading Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford. It is a very interesting look at the history behind the NSA…so far. I have been reading this book for over a year now and am only about half way through it. It is over 700 pages long, but that has never stopped me before. I’m no speed reader, but I should have finished this book in a month. At my current pace it will take me over 24 months to complete. However, between commutes, I have been able to listen to and complete audiobooks. Most recently The Da Vinci Code. Yeah, I know, everyone read this years ago, but that is how far behind I have gotten. I hope with the help of audiobooks to be able to catch up on many of the books I have been meaning to read. Which brings me to my topic…

I was searching on iTunes a couple weeks back and came across a couple of audiobooks that were free. They are not classified on iTunes as audiobooks but rather as podcasts, but they are audiobooks nonetheless. A wonderful group from LoudLit.org and LiteralSystems.org have taken upon themselves to create audiobooks based on the texts found in Project Gutenberg. If you are unfamiliar with Project Gutenberg, it is basically the attempt to digitize all written works into an eBook style format. Mostly these are works that have fallen out of copyright and into the public domain. For instance, I am currently listening to A Tale of Two Cities. I’m on the fourth chapter and have found it to be a very high quality audiobook, especially when you consider that it was free. The best part about all of this is that you can get the audiobook and the written text and read along. Of course, not me. If I had the time to read along with an audiobook I would just finish Body of Secrets.

The problem, as I see it, comes down to finding these books. iTunes is massive and it can be quite difficult to hunt something like this down, especially if you just want to browse what is available. There are two ways around this that I have found. First is to search the Project Gutenberg site because they have created some audiobooks in MP3 format themselves. However, many of these are computer generated and sound like WOPR from War Games. Just imagine listening to a computer generated voice reading:

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us,
we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven,
we were all going direct the other way--
in short, the period was so far like the
present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Though I salute their efforts — and I suppose for the visual imparred this is a Godsend — it is very difficult to listen to. The second option is to search LoudLit.org and LiteralSystems.org. I’m not exactly sure what the difference is between the two groups as they seem to work together on some of these projects, but between them there must about 30-40 free audiobooks of some of the great works of literature. If you love to read like I do but don’t have the time, then do yourself a favor and look into these wonderful resources.