Listening to LibriVox audiobooks

[philchenevert]

I am planning to visit a few local high schools in the Spring to suggest that their faculty may want to encourage students who dislike reading the classics to try listening to the books instead. Some of them may be auditory learners and enjoy the process. (Let's face it, not everyone loves to read like we do)I would naturally want to demonstrate the easiest ways for them to get the recordings on their smart phones, either iphones or android but I don't know the current best ways of doing this. Every student has a phone and commute time these days.

Thus my question to you good people is what you have found to be the best and easiest way to listen to LV books on your on personal phones. I find the app "Librivox Audio Books" to be very easy to use on my iphone but haven't tried it on my Samsung android. But there are ads of course and it costs $2.50 a year to remove them. So, what would you suggest?

By the way, I realized this need to provide other avenues for young people to 'read' the tons of books they must go through when talking with my granddaughter and her boyfriend recently. She is a natural reader but he struggles to understand written texts. When I suggested that he might listen to them he had no knowledge of how to do this and was interested. Anyway, that;s what my goal is, just to show some high school teachers and students how to listen to books on their phones, nothing fancy.

any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

[KevinS]

Excellent idea! Excellent idea!

The best teachers in this regard may be our young people here, but I wouldn't doubt that others are well-versed.

Myself, I have no idea how to use my mobile phone except to call from it.

[RSlabaugh]

I have never tried the app, but I expect that might be better than my method.

My first step is always to download the book to the laptop and from there to my phone. I'm not sure if I could have done a direct download with my old phone, an android, but my current iPhone doesn't allow it. That may also involve settings... I can listen directly from the catalog as long as I have good cell service, but that isn't really practical for more than sampling a book or narrator.

I don't know if I've really answered anything, but that's how I do it

[ej400]

Because I am homeschooled, a nice thing is that I can record some of my schoolwork and upload onto LV as an audiobook for possible other homeschoolers. I think it's a great idea the LV is used for educational purposes whatever way you do it. Nice idea Phil, and I hope things work out for you in doing this!

[philchenevert]

Because I am homeschooled, a nice thing is that I can record some of my schoolwork and upload onto LV as an audiobook for possible other homeschoolers. I think it's a great idea the LV is used for educational purposes whatever way you do it. Nice idea Phil, and I hope things work out for you in doing this!

Elija, how do you listen to audiobooks? Younger people like you know a lot more about this than I do do. And if you were to listen to another LV audioblok, how would you go about doing it? Thanks by the way for all you do.

[RSlabaugh]

I'm not sure if I could have done a direct download with my old phone, an android, but my current iPhone doesn't allow it. That may also involve settings...

I stand corrected, my phone proved me wrong today! You can simply hit download, and wait a while, maybe even a fairly long time depending on the amount of service you have, then it will put the zip file into... your files. You then need to choose where to place it within your files. From there, tap on the zip file, which will create a folder with all of the sections.

What I have not figured out is how to get it into music from there (without using a laptop) so as to have it as continuous playing. Maybe someone has a tip for that, because it is rather annoying to always have to select and start the next file in order to keep listening.

[philchenevert]

I'm not sure if I could have done a direct download with my old phone, an android, but my current iPhone doesn't allow it. That may also involve settings...

I stand corrected, my phone proved me wrong today! You can simply hit download, and wait a while, maybe even a fairly long time depending on the amount of service you have, then it will put the zip file into... your files. You then need to choose where to place it within your files. From there, tap on the zip file, which will create a folder with all of the sections.

What I have not figured out is how to get it into music from there (without using a laptop) so as to have it as continuous playing. Maybe someone has a tip for that, because it is rather annoying to always have to select and start the next file in order to keep listening.

Rosebud. What do you do before you hit 'download'? What do you need to tell your iphone first or what site do you need to go to?

[RSlabaugh]

Rosebud. What do you do before you hit 'download'? What do you need to tell your iphone first or what site do you need to go to?

I’ll give a scenario, and hopefully it’ll make sense. I’m a Pansy fan, so I want to listen to more of her books. I go to the LibriVox home page and enter 'Pansy' in the search bar.

Several results pop up, so I choose (in this case) one of the bottom 2 options which take me to 'Pansy' or Isabella Macdonald Alden's page with her books listed below the description of her life.

'Interrupted' is a book I have not yet listened to and the title looks interesting. Just below the title is a download button that I could use, but first I want to get an idea of the story, so I hit the title name to see more about it. There is a summary at the top, followed by each section as an individual track. Below that are four options, but download is the top and the only one that I use.

There are different ways of finding the books you want, like exploring a genre, a language, or a reader you like to listen to.

Sorry for the drawn out explanation! Hopefully it’ll be helpful to somebody.

[annise]

If you have an iPhone , have you tried using the M4B file option, found in the links on the left hand side ? I use it all the time. Unfortunately it seems to only work on iThings but it is great to listen with.

Anne

[mightyfelix]

Rosebud. What do you do before you hit 'download'? What do you need to tell your iphone first or what site do you need to go to?

I’ll give a scenario, and hopefully it’ll make sense. I’m a Pansy fan, so I want to listen to more of her books. I go to the LibriVox home page and enter 'Pansy' in the search bar.

Several results pop up, so I choose (in this case) one of the bottom 2 options which take me to 'Pansy' or Isabella Macdonald Alden's page with her books listed below the description of her life.

'Interrupted' is a book I have not yet listened to and the title looks interesting. Just below the title is a download button that I could use, but first I want to get an idea of the story, so I hit the title name to see more about it. There is a summary at the top, followed by each section as an individual track. Below that are four options, but download is the top and the only one that I use.

There are different ways of finding the books you want, like exploring a genre, a language, or a reader you like to listen to.

Sorry for the drawn out explanation! Hopefully it’ll be helpful to somebody.

This is pretty much what I do, too. Since an entire audiobook usually is a pretty large file, even in zip format, I will plan to download the book I want only when I have Wifi available. When I tap "Download," it will download the zip file into my download folder. From there, I can unzip it into my music app (for me, this is a built-in app that came with the phone, called "Mix"), where it will be saved as an "album." When I play that album, the files should (and usually do) play in the right order, one after another, without me having to tap anything.

However, I only do this above process if I'm planning to listen to a book during a time that I expect to have little or no cell service. For instance, if I have a plane ride or a long car trip through the middle of nowhere. Downloading a whole book takes up a lot of space on my phone, and I usually don't have much free memory available. Plus it's kind of a pain to go through that whole process. So if I'm pretty sure that service won't be an issue for me (which is most of the time), I just stream the book instead of downloading it. I don't use an app for this, just my regular internet browser on my phone. First, I go to the catalogue page for the book I want (like maybe this one). Then I scroll down to the link that says "Internet Archive Page." This takes me away from the LV catalogue altogether, and into Archive's website, where the files are stored. Here, I can start the book playing, and it will play in order, one chapter after another, without me having to tap anything to start the next one playing. Another benefit to this method is that my browser will usually remember where I left off listening, and will start there when I start up again. It even has a "rewind 10 seconds" button, which is very helpful if I miss something and want to back up and hear it again. My music player doesn't do either of those things, so this is actually my preferred method.

[RSlabaugh]

If you have an iPhone , have you tried using the M4B file option, found in the links on the left hand side ? I use it all the time. Unfortunately it seems to only work on iThings but it is great to listen with.

Anne

Thanks for the suggestion! No I haven’t. So often when I’ve found one thing that gets me where I want to go I don’t try out other things that might be better. I’ll check it out, thanks!

[ej400]

Because I am homeschooled, a nice thing is that I can record some of my schoolwork and upload onto LV as an audiobook for possible other homeschoolers. I think it's a great idea the LV is used for educational purposes whatever way you do it. Nice idea Phil, and I hope things work out for you in doing this!

Elija, how do you listen to audiobooks? Younger people like you know a lot more about this than I do do. And if you were to listen to another LV audioblok, how would you go about doing it? Thanks by the way for all you do.

I just go to librivox.org and search the book I'd like to listen to for in the search bar. Then I click that and open up the chapter I was last at, making sure I follow along through gutenberg and listen while reading. I like hearing someone read it... the narrator in my head is the same one and gets old after a little bit.

Thank you for all you do too, Phil

[RSlabaugh]

If you have an iPhone , have you tried using the M4B file option, found in the links on the left hand side ? I use it all the time. Unfortunately it seems to only work on iThings but it is great to listen with.

Anne

Thanks again, Anne, it worked!

There you go, Phil. You might want to jot that down for folks with iPhones. But I realize, as Devorah mentioned, that not everybody will have space available for downloading. I like the idea of her archive method, but I wasn’t able to get it to work for me yet. (I likely did something wrong )

[mightyfelix]

But I realize, as Devorah mentioned, that not everybody will have space available for downloading. I like the idea of her archive method, but I wasn’t able to get it to work for me yet. (I likely did something wrong )

Really? What do you see when you go to, for instance, this page? I see the cover art and then a list of sections, which I can listen to in order, or click on specific chapters to jump there.

[RSlabaugh]

I had seen everything, but got impatient when it didn’t start playing immediately. So once again, my fault, and I’ve proven it does work if you give it time to download. My phone doesn’t have the best of service at home, and I’m lucky if I have 2 bars of LTE. So I’ll make that my excuse.