Whilst traipsing about the Internet, I occasionally discover websites that impress my sensibilities but that fail to impress themselves upon my memory. This is always unfortunate. When I try to relocate these sites, my searches often fall hopelessly short. It makes me feel like the prince who had nothing but a glass slipper by which to find the girl who stole his heart at the ball. Weeks, months, or years pass with no success, and often I completely forget these sites that had so enthralled me. Sometimes, however, I happen upon a lost website again in a chance encounter. Such a reunification, while it doesn't quite permit me to live happily ever after, is still usually rather satisfying. It was by just this kind of chance encounter that I recently rediscovered the site I want to share with you today.

LibriVox.org is a website that offers free audio recordings of classical literature and public domain texts. The project was founded in 2005, it's non-profit and advertising-free, and the audiobooks it offers are recorded by volunteers from around the world. The large and growing catalog of recordings includes works by such fashionable authors as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, Oscar Wilde, John Milton, Mark Twain and William Shakespeare—among many others. You can download the audio books as mp3s, or as patent-free and technologically superior Ogg Vorbis files.

Since LibriVox relies on disparate volunteers to produce its recordings, the narration quality varies a lot from book to book and chapter to chapter. Nonetheless, the few speakers I've heard so far had clear diction and easily read with enough dramatic flair to keep my interest. If you think you could do a better job of reading, don't forget that you can volunteer to record books for the site too! I would happily contribute to this project myself if I only had a quiet place to read uninterrupted.

Anyway, I'm very happy to have found this site again. I love to read, but I find that while school is on I am too busy reading for class to ever read for pleasure—I'd have time, I suppose, but not the energy. LibriVox is the perfect solution: it's free, it's online, and audiobooks let me delve into literature for pleasure while giving my eyes a rest after a long session of reading for school. If your situation is similar, I hope you'll give this site a try. Alternatively, old favorite Project Gutenberg is still there for those who prefer just the text. Either way, there's no longer any excuse to keep from experiencing those great old books you've always been meaning to read!

Free audiobooks: LibriVox
Free e-texts: Project Gutenberg