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Literary Fiction on Audio

Classics of Contemporary Literature

Finding classic literature that is in the public domain (pre-1923) on audio is pretty easy nowadays. You can found thousands of free recordings on Librivox.org, along with great free recordings from ThoughtAudio.com, ejunto.com, and other great free sites. And for people that desire professional recordings of literature with great voice actors NAXOS AudioBooks features some of the best recordings of classic literature, and many other publishers have their own versions.

But if you're looking for literature that is a bit more contemporary, we're glad to be featuring a lot of classics of contemporary literature on audio download now as well:

Contemporary Literature Audio Downloads

Browse all Contemporary Literature on CD & Download

Here are some the classics of contemporary literature we now feature on audio download:

American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize)

Another Country by James Baldwin

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (Finalist for the 1989 Booker Prize)

Closing Time by Joseph Heller (Sequel to Catch-22)

Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone (Winner of the 1974 National Book Award)

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone by Tennessee Williams

Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (Winner of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize)

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (Winner of the 2001 Booker Prize)

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

Underworld by Don DeLillo (Finalist for the 1997 National Book Award)

Enjoy these modern classics!

Best Contemporary Literature Author Talks

Check out audio & video of 15 interviews and talks with top authors of contemporary literature. For the past four years we've featured dozens of free talks as part of our Free Resource of the Day Emails. From these resources we've selected the top 15 best free interviews and talks with the best contemporary literature authors. You can check them all out here:

Best Contemporary Literature Author Interviews and Talks

You can check out the top five by clicking the titles below:

1. Wired for Books MP3 Page

Wired for Books is offering a page full of downloadable MP3 interviews with many of the best authors in contemporary literature. Compiled from the 1980s CBS Radio show, Book Beat, these interviews feature journalist Don Swaim spending roughly a half hour with the author discussing their books. Swaim seems to have done his research and to have read the works of the authors he interviews. The interviews seem very relaxed and off-the-cuff. Here's a list of some of the people Swaim interviews: Douglas Adams, Maya Angelou, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, Ray Bradbury, William F. Buckley, Anthony Burgess, William Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Joan Didion, E. L. Doctorow, Bret Easton Ellis, Joseph Heller, John Irving, Erica Jong, Garrison Keillor, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Studs Turkel, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Elie Wiesel, and hundreds more. Just click to the MP3 page and remember to download these files by right-clicking on the Download File link and selecting Save Target As... Then it will allow you to download the file to an assigned place on your computer. Enjoy.

2. In Depth: Tom Wolfe

In this streaming video from C-SPAN's BookTV, Tom Wolfe talks about his career as writer from The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby which he wrote back in the 1960s all the way up to his latest novel I Am Charlotte Simmons which explores the college campus life in the present day. He fields call-in questions from people across the United States and tells us the secrets of his craft. Indeed, no writer today is as fun to listen to as Tom Wolfe.

3. Allen Ginsberg Poetry Readings

Allen Ginsberg's Howl is ultimate beat poem, and what better way to experience it than listening to Ginsberg read it himself. PennSound features two recordings of Ginsberg reading Howl, one from 1956 (the year he published it) and one from 1995 (a few years before his death). PennSound also features Ginsberg reading some other of his classic beat poems like Kaddish and Wichita Vortex Sutra. All these poems are available to download on MP3.

4. The Infinite Mind Interview with Kurt Vonnegut Live from Second Life

Recently American author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. passed away at the age of 84. Watch one of his last interviews which was conducted by John Hockenberry of The Infinite Mind series, and recorded live in the virtual on-line community called Second Life. It's a thoroughly entertaining interview with questions from the Second Life audience and Vonnegut's thoughts on America towards the end of his life. He also discusses his final work which is a collection of essays entitled A Man Without a Country. This streaming video is offered by Lichtenstein Creative Media and is available through Google Video.

5. An Evening with Ray Bradbury

Renowned science fiction author Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles) gives aspiring writers some encouraging insight in this short lecture provided on streaming video by UCTV. Beginning with a list of essential practices he feels all writers should adhere to, Bradbury then demonstrates how events and people in his personal life fed his classic stories. Inspiring, funny and delivered with irreverent wisdom, Bradbury's account of his career is a sincere argument for "writing what you know". This talk is available on streaming video through Google Video.

Over 350 Classic Literature Downloads

LearnOutLoud.com is pleased to now be offering almost the complete catalog of classic literature from the publisher NAXOS AudioBooks on MP3 Download. Along with their classic fiction, modern classics, Shakespeare dramatizations, and poetry, we're also featuring many of their nonfiction titles covering history, religion, and biographies. Also most of their titles feature music from the NAXOS classical music catalog. Listening to these audio books is an excellent way to experience the great works of literature.

Browse Over 350 NAXOS Classic Literature Downloads

Here's some of the classic titles we're offering on download:

Beowulf
Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes (abridged)
Great Poets of the Romantic Age by William Blake, William Wordsworth, and more
Hamlet: John Gielgud's Classic 1948 Recording by William Shakespeare
The Odyssey by Homer
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence

And here's some downloadable titles geared towards a younger audience:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm
The Story of Jesus by David Angus
Tales from the Greek Legends by Edward Ferrie

And here's a few of their contemporary literature offerings:
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
The History of the World Cup, 1930-2002 by Brian Glanville
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Here are some of the highlights from their library which we've recently added:

Ancient & Medieval Classics:
-The Aeneid by Virgil
-The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
-The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
-The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
-The Iliad by Homer

Shakespeare Dramatizations:
-Hamlet by William Shakespeare
-King Lear by William Shakespeare
-King Richard III by William Shakespeare
-A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
-Othello by William Shakespeare
-The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Classics for Kids:
-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
-Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
-Famous Americans in History by Barnaby Chesterman
-Grimm's Fairy Tales by Brothers Grimm
-Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
-Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
-The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

Unabridged Classics:
-Dubliners by James Joyce
-Emma by Jane Austen
-Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
-The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Nonfiction Titles:
-A Guide to Wine by Julian Curry
-The History of English Literature by Perry Keenlyside
-The History of Opera by Richard Fawkes
-They Saw It Happen
-Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Here's some of the new classic titles we're offering on download:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Unabridged) by Mark Twain
The Essential Dylan Thomas by Dylan Thomas
Great Expectations (Unabridged) by Charles Dickens
Great Poets: W.B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats
The Hound of the Baskervillesby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Odyssey (Unabridged) by Homer
Paradise Lost (Unabridged) by John Milton
The Prophet & the Wanderer by Khalil Gibran
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Spiritual Verses: Masnavi-Ye Ma'navi, Book 1 by Rumi
The Trial (Unabridged) by Franz Kafka
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

And here's some more downloadable titles geared towards a younger audience:

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Benedict Flynn
Thumbelina and Other Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Famous People in History II by Nicolas Soames

And here's a few of their other offerings that may be of interest:

Ancient Greek Philosophy: An Introduction by Hugh Griffith
Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Classics: A Very Short Introduction by Mary Beard
Introducing Postmodernism by Richard Appignanesi
The Life and Works of Beethoven by Jeremy Siepmann
The Life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Perry Keenlyside
Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction by Edward Craig

We could go on pointing out the great offerings from NAXOS, but why don't you take a look for yourself:

Browse Over 350 NAXOS Classic Literature Downloads

500 Free Titles From FORA.tv

FORA.tv offers over 2000 free videos from over 115 different partners covering the world's most interesting political, social and cultural issues. Their partners include bookstores, think tanks, colleges, institutes, and many other public forums (the word fora is simply the plural of "forum"). At LearnOutLoud we combed through these free resources and picked out 500 of the top titles that FORA.tv offers.

We feature 500 free titles on our site and have embedded the videos onto our pages so you can watch them directly on LearnOutLoud.com. FORA.tv has also provided the ability to download the audio of their videos on MP3 for almost all of their titles, making it easy for take FORA.tv programs with you. To download the MP3 files you'll just need to register on the FORA.tv site. On our product pages we've provided links to the FORA.tv pages where you can download the MP3 files. You can browse some of their top offerings on this blog post we've created:

500 Free Titles From FORA.tv

We've divided the FORA.tv titles up according to their providers. Here are the top providers you can browse:

Asia Society

Aspen Institute

Book Passage

Books Inc.

Cato Institute

Chautauqua Institution

Cody's Books

Commonwealth Club of California

Council on Foreign Relations

C-SPAN