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.

Frankenstein. If you’ve never read it, the caricature of what it is has done it no justice. It is an incredible book.

@OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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2•2Y

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.

I definitely recommend Dracula — not only is it good, but it’s also the prototype for basically every subsequent vampire book/movie:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

DJDarren
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5•2Y

If ebooks are acceptable to you, then Standard Ebooks is the shit. Proper classics, formatted in a nice way, ready to drop onto whatever reading device you have.

“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.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61963/61963-h/61963-h.htm

end0fline
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3•2Y

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.

TheRealKuni
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1•2Y

My suggestion would be 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a book that I could not put down.

Well of course not. If you try it would just float up toward the surface.

The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany is fantastic; it’s a bunch of early fantasy stories by an Irish lord who was a huge influence on the fantasy genre.

Deftnerd
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3•2Y

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!

@Akasazh@feddit.nl
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2•2Y

Tolstoy’s work is all in public domain. Anna Karenina and War and Peace are great. Not the easiest to read, but unparalleled.

“Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K Jerome is hilarious.

Candide by Charles Voltaire is funny IMO

down daemon
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10•4Y

https://www.gutenberg.org/ has pretty much all of them

Dessalines
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2•4Y

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.

don quixote is great, i reread it recently and had a great time

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