An audiobook (or talking book) is a recording of a text being read.

Your relationship with "reading" is modified by the use of hearing, instead of sight which is traditionally attached to printing. Technological advances (mostly in terms of recording and sound reproduction), availability of new features and many other advantages (saving time, more mobility, less physical storage space, experience sharing, listening pleasure, literacy learning, etc.) contribute to the considerable growth of the audio book in recent years.

Simple to use, the audiobook attracts different age and socio-professional categories, often for different purposes, sometimes for opposite reasons: only solution for some categories of disabled people (visually impaired for example), reading comfort for the elderly , mobility and new training experience for younger people, saving time for the productivity geeks (can be used while commuting or doing other physical tasks), listening pleasure and user-friendliness...

If you are looking for free audiobooks to download, here are some websites I can suggest for your listening pleasure.

 

Librivox
Free public domain audiobooks. More than 10 000 audiobooks available, read by volunteers from all over the world.

 

Project Gutenberg 
The oldest digital library (established in 1971).

 

Open Culture
900 free audio books from one the best cultural and educational media on the web.

 

Thought Audio
Free audio books for a selection of classic literature and philosophy titles.

 

Learn Out Loud
Your destination for audio learning. Thousands of the best free audiobooks online.

 

Digital Book
Browse thousands of free audiobooks. Either download entire audiobooks to listen offline or use their simple online audio player to listen directly in the browser.

 

Loyal Books
Free Public Domain Audiobooks Downloads. About 40 genres.

 

Free Classic Audio Books
Digital Narration for the 21st Century. The downloads are available in mp3 and in m4b formats.

 

Educational Technology Clearinghouse (Lit2Go) 
A free online collection of audiobooks in mp3 format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF file.

 

Many books 
About 2000 audiobooks. Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews.

 

Youtube 
Great content, both in terms of quantity and quality.

 

If you understand French (or are trying to learn it), you may also want to check these recommendations.

 

Wishing you a good listening time.