Fine Quality in Gutenberg Readings

Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) continues its amazing drive to publish a vast body of free e-books, many of them vintage texts. Currently, it offers some 17,000 titles for downloading; visitors are deriving some 2 million downloads from the project monthly.

Only recently did I realize the expanding scope of Project Gutenberg’s audio e-books. You can download numerous readings, both computer-generated and human-read. The latter are far superior, although fewer in number. I've begun by obtaining several unabridged Sherlock Holmes works, which Gutenberg reportedly passes along from AudioBooksForFree.com. From the notes at www.audiobooksforfree.com, I gather these are read by John Telfer, produced by Alec Reid Recordings. They’re fine reading performances and I eagerly recommend them.

Note: You'll want to use a high-speed connection to obtain these, unless you're willing to wait half an hour or so for the MP3 files to come through vial a dial-up connection. In the Holmes set, an entire volume might consist of a dozen or more separate files; a short story typically is broken into two files. Regardless, they represent a tremendous contribution to the cause of promoting quality literature.