I regularly listen to Librivox, you will find it a bit hit and miss with the readers, my advice would be to find someone you like and can listen to then search out for other books read by them.

It took me a while, I enjoy science fiction and crime and I've listened to 10+ books read by Mark Nelson and Ralph Snelson, the latter will grow on you, stay with it!

They have both covered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoon series - the book that the film John Carter was based on, the Land that Time Forgot series of books). There are also a few Philip K Dick and Jules Verne stories on there as well by other readers that I've enjoyed.

I have the app on my phone and listen on a night when I go to bed, I'm not a very good sleeper so it can take me a couple of hours to fall asleep....these have helped!

Just don't expect them to be up there with the production standard of Radio 4 / Radio 4 Extra dramas!

Hope that's useful.

thanks..........any recommendation?

I regularly listen to Librivox, you will find it a bit hit and miss with the readers, my advice would be to find someone you like and can listen to then search out for other books read by them.

It took me a while, I enjoy science fiction and crime and I've listened to 10+ books read by Mark Nelson and Ralph Snelson, the latter will grow on you, stay with it!

They have both covered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoon series - the book that the film John Carter was based on, the Land that Time Forgot series of books). There are also a few Philip K Dick and Jules Verne stories on there as well by other readers that I've enjoyed.

I have the app on my phone and listen on a night when I go to bed, I'm not a very good sleeper so it can take me a couple of hours to fall asleep....these have helped!

Just don't expect them to be up there with the production standard of Radio 4 / Radio 4 Extra dramas!

Hope that's useful.

I've tried these free audio books and found them just too annoying, a skilled narrator makes all the difference. I use Audible which works at about £5 per book, not cheap I acknowledge, but worth it in my opinion.

A lot of the books sound like they've been narrated by Stephen Hawking. Robotic American accents lol!

It's worth remembering there's tons of professional audio content on BBC iPlayer, download it via the iPlayer or iPlayer Radio app.

Remember, that the most skilled professional reader almost certainly started off like the Librivox readers (who give their time, sometimes considerable time, freely and without charge)

Most Uk librarys subscrible to overdrive.com where you can legally rent thousands of audiobooks in mp3 or protected wma using your library card, i use it all the time.

I find that most of the SOLO narrators are pretty good. And, even if not to your liking, it's easy to bail right away without being surprised by a different reader per chapter.

Jeez it's free. If you don't like the narrators don't use it. If you want professional actors pay for it.

Love the classic sci-fi. Phil Chenevert is a good reader.

There seem to be more podcasts than you can shake a stick at. However, I've noticed that some of the plays get withdrawn after a relatively short period, so it's better to download and store in a podcast app. I suspect the iPlayer app deletes them automatically. R4 Today has a 7 day expiry cap.

I tried this - only found one book that was worth listening to, and with that one I didn't particularly like the voice of the narrator.

No hoops. Annual membership 12 book plan @ 69.99 = £5.84 per book, then because you are a member you will get the "3 books for the price of 2" offers that pop up 4 or 5 times a year, plus the odd free book they throw at you, it probably works out at £4.20ish per book in the end.

Does Dick Hill read any?
The man's a legend.

OP .. thanx for this, this may actually prove very useful ..... :-)

A good place to get suggestions is ths forum topic where listeners have liked a book or reader enough to bother to send Librivox a message thanking them for it.

There are a lot of good readers if you dig around, though obvs with 8000 books and anyone can read, there is a lot of variation in quality. In general you will get more consistency with solo recordings, but that's not to say there aren't some good group recordings.

Some good readers I've found, by no means an exhaustive list
Elizabeth Klett
Ruth Golding
Andy Minter
Alex Foster
Alan Chant
Stewart Wills
Mil Nicholson
Tadhg Hynes
Mark Nelson

Should be enough to convince most people there is some good stuff on there.

Google "oneclickdigital", I use it along with my Derbyshire library card to listen to a massive number of audiobooks......an app is available that remembers your position etc. Lots of really good books available