So, there’s COVID. I’m retired, I’m at home. My volunteer job is “on pause.” Housework isn’t. I HATE housework. Dishwashing, laundry, dusting, etc. HATE it! Gotta do it. No longer have the excuse of showing up to work, going to the movies, meeting friends for drinks. Used to check out audiobooks from the library. My husband and I would listen together while I did a few chores. Now my husband doesn’t have the attention span and it “bothers” him when I try to listen. Besides the library is closed, too. I try a few audio book apps/ services, but they are a bad fit. And expensive. One of them offered me TWO books every six weeks. Oh sure, there was a lot of FREE stuff, meditation tapes, music, exercise stuff, motivational audios, etc., but I need stories. Books I’ve no shortage off. Always a reader, I married another reader 40 some years ago. If only our income grew like our book collection, I’d have someone else doing housework for me. But you can’t read a book and scrub the tub at the same time. So I discovered LibriVox short story collections. Perfect for house work. In fact, I use them to time chores. A Sherlock Holmes story is just long enough to clean one room. Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain get me through the dishes. Bret Harte . . . . never mind, bad example; Bret Harte, I usually stop what I’m doing and sit down and just listen to the story. Some readers are great and some not so, but I like them anyway. Extra marks marks for struggling through a story when you’re not sure how some of the words are pronounced. I like the randomness of the mix per collection. At first I was mildly irritated that the stories were in alphabetical order, but I learned to roll with it. I’m making this intolerably long, I know, but when I finish this review I have housework to do. LibriVox will not clean my kitchen, but it makes the job less painful.

Great readers especially since they’re all volunteers. Many sound extremely professional. Once in a while you will get a reader that’s not that good but for the most part I really enjoy listening. I’ve been using this app since it’s conception. I was really impressed with the selection of books, almost all the classics. Plus I found myself listening to authors/books that I didn’t even know existed. I suggest when you get a reader that you enjoy their voice and do a search for the reader’s name and you’re probably get some great suggestions for your next book.I love Elizabeth Klett and Karen Savage. They tend to read the classics. If you’re wanting something sweet with a happy ending I suggest “ The emancipation of aunt Crete”. If you need a few laughs you might want to start with “ My man Jeeves”. You can search for a book via the author, the genre or the reader. And you can save favorites and even download them. It’s only like $2.50 for no advertisement.I always get that because it helps cover the cost so they can make these free audiobooks.However that being said a few books I listened to had commercials in between the chapters. That is really frustrating!!! I don’t want to make a big deal about it because I haven’t ran across it that much. But I would like to know why that happens???

The concept of LibriVox has been great. A huge library of public domain books read by volunteer readers. It can be hit or miss with the readers, some are amazing while others can be terrible and ruin the book. Some books are collaborations with multiple readers reading different chapters. You used to be able to see the name of each reader next to each chapter, now that feature is gone. With the new update, If I want to take a break from a book, listen to another and then go back to the previous book then I now have a hard time finding the previous book. I have a hard time finding a lot of things in this new format. Even though it is nicer looking, a lot of things about it don’t make sense anymore. It doesn’t seem as intuitive to use. I hope the developers take this review and other similar reviews into account and fix the organization of the new layout.

LibriVox used to be the perfect app for free audiobooks, and as a English graduate student, I still use it daily for reading. However, I’m greatly disappointed by the new app update, specifically the changes to the speed settings. You used to be able to change the speed and see how fast you were setting it, but now it’s just a sliding scale with no numbers. The old version also allowed you to go much faster than x2 speed, which honestly is necessary with some of the slower readers (I think the old version went to x2.5 or x3 speed). If they could improve the speed controls I’m sure I’m not the only one who would greatly appreciate it!