Get Free Classic Audiobooks From Apple
iOS / MacOS: Apple is giving away six high-quality audiobooks of classic stories read by celebrities for free with no strings attached, which can be played on both desktop and mobile. You can download and listen to Pride and Prejudice , The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , The Secret Garden , The Time Machine , Frankenstein and a small collection of Disney stories about Winnie the Pooh . Most of these audiobooks are excellent, one is unreliable and the third is rubbish.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (11:43)
The narrative of Pride and Prejudice differs in a certain ironic distance from the characters, and the actor Kate Beckinsale conveys it with a subtle sly. Her natural accent, which makes Americans think all English are smart and stylish, is perfect for a romance novel.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , L. Frank Baum (4:20)
Kimmy Schmidt’s actor Titus Burgess sounds like he’s reading to the kids gathered at the foot of his rocking chair. He puts life and energy into words and “vocalizes” a little, but not enough to be distracted by 25 chapters.
Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett (8:00 am)
This book is a real challenge for the storyteller, as the accents and voices of the characters are a fluke and even a sign of little Mary Lennox’s character development. Avengers & Doctor Who actor Karen Gillan is a great voice actor – at least as far as an American can tell. She narrates in her natural Scottish manner, which, like the story, has a touch of fairytale fantasy.
HG Wells ‘ Time Machine (3:29)
Kelsey Grammer from Fraser is another well-chosen storyteller. His Mid-Atlantic accent shifts entirely to English to match the first-person narrative of The Time Traveler, a Victorian English scholar. It projects and narrates like Fraser Crane’s live monologue, as if the entire book was a Time Traveler TED talk. It’s a weird, lonely story that passes quickly and is probably a pleasure to hear while sleeping.
Frankenstein Mary Shelley (8:11)
In his podcast ” Lore,” Aaron Munke uses intermittent delivery as if he were inserting five commas in each sentence. This clearly works for enough people to make Lore successful. About Frankenstein, this is overkill. Manke’s pauses and flat speech make him sound like he didn’t practice before reading. Like most 19th century Gothic horrors, the original Frankenstein is drier than its later adaptations, and a dry storyteller can make it tiresome.
The Open Culture Free Audiobook Directory points to several other free recordings of this publicly available novel, including Christopher Lee’s three-hour abridged read on Spotify.
Winnie the Pooh by Disney Book Group (0:32)
Not even worth zero dollars. This is not an original collection of ten stories by A.A. Milna about Pooh . These are just three unrecorded stories that appear to be stylized as Milne’s originals, written in the same style but with a new plot. The narrator is fully competent, but her anonymity adds to the feeling that it was fished out of a Disney trash bin.
The company’s habit of raiding the classics and then copyrighting and trademarking its version seems particularly cynical about this sloppy publication. The three chapters are out of order and seem to lead to an ending that does not exist. Like promoting audiobooks, Apple is a flop. Readers are better off spending ten bucks on a version of Milne’s real, non-Disney book, as narrated by Stephen Fry.
It’s good to see Apple handing out top-notch books with top-notch storytelling, even if they threw away a piece of Disney trash. Of course, instead of paying more, you might just want more free readings. Open Culture contains links to 900 free audiobooks , mostly classics.