I tend to like the volunteer-read audiobooks on librivox and recently was curious about their Sherlock Holmes books (never read or listened to before), but I’m wondering what else is out there and popular in the community.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ has pretty much all of them
I like how they organize by popularity. Just went off that list to pick out a bunch of good ones from librivox :D Thanks!
don quixote is great, i reread it recently and had a great time
I tried to read that but it was way too drawn out. I think I made it to page 200 or so and he didnt even leave his village yet. And it has 1000 pages. That was years ago so numbers might be wrong.
life hack: read the children version of the book to save time
the don quixote i have from when i read it in school is 170 pages long
One of my all-time favorite books. Be sure to get a good translation though.
Frankenstein. If you’ve never read it, the caricature of what it is has done it no justice. It is an incredible book.
I’ve actually been a big fan of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for a long time so thank you for bringing it up and indulging me in a happy nostalgia. I’ve heard it described variously over the years as possibly the first or at least early science fiction, as well as even proto-feminist in its more subtle themes. Might be a good time to return to it. There are some potentially Luddite themes as well but in an era when people were en masse encountering rapid technological advancement while philosophical approaches to that rapid advancement were still in their infancy it’s a forgivable flaw.
Treasure Island should be public domain. After reading it, watch Blacks Sails (TV show which plays before the book). Both are quite good. Also books by Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).
Edit: Just found out that there are two cool looking movies of “Around the World in Eighty Days”.
I loved treasure island growing up. Black sails is supposed to be kinda dark tho right? Treasure island was a fun adventure book.
Yes treasure island is a book for teenagers i think, but black sails is clearly for adults. With prostitution, violence etc.
Tha card by Arnold Bennet https://librivox.org/the-card-by-arnold-bennett/
The count of Monte cristo by Alexander Dumas: https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-by-alexandre-dumas/
I just finished count of monte cristo! I’ve never read a more epic and fulfilling revenge story. It was entertaining the whole way through.
The count of
Monte Cristo is hands down my favourite book that I’ve read. Absolutely a must-read.
The Complete Works Of H.P. Lovecraft. If you enjoyed them, you can then read the really good “H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life” by Michel Houellebecq (not public domain, but I don’t think he cares)
I definitely recommend Dracula — not only is it good, but it’s also the prototype for basically every subsequent vampire book/movie:
“We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the book that inspired both “Brave New World” and “1984” and my favorite of the three. If you go looking for it in paper form it’s sometimes credited to Eugene Zamyatin, as Eugene is the English version of Yevgeny.
Marx’s works!
I’ve read the manifesto and parts of Capital 1. Capital is interesting but the length and density is daunting. Do you have any recommendations for other texts to go to first, that are easier to get through?
Some easier works here: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/dessalines_marxism_study_plan.html
My response is pretty much the exact same as yours XD
I mean, basically any book prior to the 1800 should be in the public domain, I’m sure some more “recent” stuff (1800-1900) has to be in it, too, but there probably are some exceptions. So, yeah, a fucking lot of books.
Almost anything before 01Jan1923 in the US is public domain, there are a few exceptions.
Beware with Sherlock Holmes that only 10 of the books were published before 1923, the books published after 1923 are still the property of the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle.
More evidence that copyright law sucks, why should his grandchildren make money with his books? Just get a job like everyone else.
Had this idea for a less stupid copyright law for creative works: author’s death + 7 years. This way direct descendants have a magical grace period of 7 years to cash in if they want to, before everything becomes public domain, as it should be.
I never understood those people who advocate for that ridicously long copyright postmortem time. They essentially say «Our children should be able to get advantage from our fortunes and achievements! Why should copyright be any different from inheritance? Do you hate your children, is that it? Do you want to see them suffer, you sadist? What a vile and twisted idea of a human are you?!». Postmortem copyright, like inheritance, is stupid. Why should anyone get anything for something they didn’t do? If we can’t guarantee the well-being of our descendants without inheritance, then our system is pretty horrible.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: https://archive.org/details/dracula00stok
There are tons of books available here: https://archive.org/details/texts
I’m loving the answers to this two year old question!
My suggestion would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a book that I could not put down.
I notice that you specifically mentioned audiobooks, but if you’re interested in written ebooks, check out Standard EBooks
They take public domain books and run them through a detailed process of editing and typesetting them to create beautiful versions.
Personally, I’m a big fan of The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. There is an audiobook version on Librevox too!
This isn’t a specific book recommendation, but a project/site. The project’s called StandardEbooks and they clean up the projectgutenberg versions of books to make real good public domain books. At the moment they have some Kropotkin and the Manifesto
