Where to find ebooks and audiobooks in French?

haertig · 11-23-2022, 12:50 AM

My daughter is wanting to brush up on her French. She studied the language for many years in high school and college, but that was a few years ago. Now she wants to brush up her knowledge by reading or listening to some books. I have no idea where to find any. Purchase, library, a Guttenburg like website - it doesn't really matter. I found some French books on Amazon's Audible, but wow are they expensive.

Any ideas of where I could help my daughter look to find some (we are in the USA)? She did give me a few titles she is interested in starting with - I believe because she may already know the story, at least in some cases. I have no idea if these are current books or if they are past copyright - I can't read French.

La Toile de Charlotte
Le Petit Prince
Le Chatte Botte
Arsene Lupin
Contes de la rue Broca
Le Petit Nicolas
Les Trois Mousquetaires
Le Rêve de Mademoiselle Papillon

colinsky · 11-23-2022, 02:05 AM

Check if your local library has an "Overdrive" collection, it's very likely they may have audiobooks of some of these titles for free download.

Comfy.n · 11-23-2022, 03:19 AM

found this, read by a French teacher:
https://www.lifeinfrench-bordeaux.com/le-petit-prince

tomsem · 11-23-2022, 11:51 AM

Gutenberg has a number of French ebooks.

For audiobooks, have you looked at LibraVox?

https://librivox.org/search?primary_...rm=get_results

The other way, of course, is to use TTS with any French text.

haertig · 11-23-2022, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by colinsky

Check if your local library has an "Overdrive" collection, it's very likely they may have audiobooks of some of these titles for free download.

Thanks!

I did look (only for two or three random ones). But I didn't find any using the French titles. I will try to go to Google translate and find out the English names for the books. Maybe I will have better luck searching Overdrive for the English names.

haertig · 11-23-2022, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

found this, read by a French teacher:
https://www.lifeinfrench-bordeaux.com/le-petit-prince

Fantastic! I really appreciate you finding this one.

haertig · 11-23-2022, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomsem

Gutenberg has a number of French ebooks.

For audiobooks, have you looked at LibraVox?

https://librivox.org/search?primary_...rm=get_results

The other way, of course, is to use TTS with any French text.

I will check Guttenberg again. I had not checked LibraVox, but will do that now. I think I ran into the same problem on Guttenberg that I ran into on Overdrive. For the few test books I searched for, I was searching their French names. Maybe if I search their English names that will turn up better results.

Thanks!

Quoth · 11-23-2022, 01:06 PM

Arsène Lupin (series) and Les Trois Mousquetaires are certainly PD /out of copyright and I'm sure I saw the French versions somewhere.

Also try https://www.fadedpage.com/index.php as it's Canadian, so has some French. Also plenty of their books meet the USA expiry rules.

I've read most of Arsène Lupin in English. Very entertaining.

Pocketbook on Android will use whatever speech engine and languages installed. Seems to work well even on Android 5, but not Android 4. Oddly the Android 5 Huawei does more natural speech (in British English) than Android 10 on a Lenovo.

There should also be Jules Verne.

Note there are other gutenberg sites other than the USA gutenberg.org and search on author may work better on Gutenberg or other sites as titles are not always what is commonly known.

haertig · 11-23-2022, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also try https://www.fadedpage.com/index.php as it's Canadian, so has some French.

Good idea. Thanks!

---

So far I have gotten Le Petit Prince completed. I found an HTML version here:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300771h.html

Calibre did a good job of converting that downloaded HTML into EPUB/AZW3 (with a little manual editing to clean things up). I checked this with Calibre's internal viewer and it looked great. I haven't tried sideloading it to a Kindle yet. I'm assuming a Kindle will display French text just fine though. But I've never tried that. Maybe there will be some issue with fonts or something, I don't know. We'll see when I get around to testing it.

And I was able to download the individual MP3 files for each chapter of this book from the link that @Comfy.n mentioned. I then turned those into an audiobook for playback on my daughters MP3 player or by the Smart Audiobook Player app on her Android phone.

Shpounz · 11-23-2022, 03:32 PM

https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php
You can try this site for out of copyright books like Les trois mousquetaires

haertig · 11-23-2022, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shpounz

https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php

Thanks a lot! This one looks really promising! It's a bit hard for me to navigate since it's in French. I searched out "Arsene Lupin" and found what looks like different books with different titles. I don't know French, so I can't tell if these are indeed different books, anthologies, collections, or what. One appears to be a "bibliography summary" (?) and one is in PDF only. But there are eight more after that. So I sent the link to my daughter and asked her to figure it out and find direct EPUB download links for the book(s) she wants. I can then follow those links and convert the downloads from EPUB to AZW3 so she can use them on her Kindle (she doesn't have Calibre installed herself, and just uses my library instead).

Shpounz · 11-23-2022, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

Thanks a lot! This one looks really promising! It's a bit hard for me to navigate since it's in French. I searched out "Arsene Lupin" and found what looks like different books with different titles. I don't know French, so I can't tell if these are indeed different books, anthologies, collections, or what. One appears to be a "bibliography summary" (?) and one is in PDF only. But there are eight more after that. So I sent the link to my daughter and asked her to figure it out and find direct EPUB download links for the book(s) she wants. I can then follow those links and convert the downloads from EPUB to AZW3 so she can use them on her Kindle (she doesn't have Calibre installed herself, and just uses my library instead).

The search engine is not always very accurate I think. The easiest way for you is to search by author in the drop-down list. Do not hesitate if you need help

Little.Egret · 11-23-2022, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

Thanks a lot! This one looks really promising! It's a bit hard for me to navigate since it's in French. I searched out "Arsene Lupin" and found what looks like different books with different titles. I don't know French, so I can't tell if these are indeed different books, anthologies, collections, or what. One appears to be a "bibliography summary" (?) and one is in PDF only. But there are eight more after that. So I sent the link to my daughter and asked her to figure it out and find direct EPUB download links for the book(s) she wants. I can then follow those links and convert the downloads from EPUB to AZW3 so she can use them on her Kindle (she doesn't have Calibre installed herself, and just uses my library instead).

Note that Amazon Send to Kindle will convert EPUBs so your daughter can do it herself.

Also Amazon.com has ebooks in french. Search French edition

https://www.amazon.com/Fl%C3%A9au-Ch...dp/B01LXFYENA/

English title Curse of Chalion Lois Bujold

https://www.amazon.com/Ars%C3%A8ne-L...9243102&sr=8-3

Also Google Translate works fine on web pages

tomsem · 11-23-2022, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by haertig

I will check Guttenberg again. I had not checked LibraVox, but will do that now. I think I ran into the same problem on Guttenberg that I ran into on Overdrive. For the few test books I searched for, I was searching their French names. Maybe if I search their English names that will turn up better results.

Thanks!

Gutenberg Advanced Search lets you select language.

BionicGecko · 11-24-2022, 04:41 AM

Radio-Canada (the French language branch of the CBC) has a lot of free audio books in French. They are mostly from French-Canadian authors however, so will be different from the books on the wishlist, but there's quite a wide variety and they're all free.

Here's the link to the "Jeunesse" (i.e. "Youth") section, however clicking on "Tous les livres" opens up the whole library.

11-23-2022, 12:50 AM	#1
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,758 Karma: 26012554 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Fire HD8 Gen7, Moto G7, Sansa Clip v2, Ruizu X26	Where to find ebooks and audiobooks in French? My daughter is wanting to brush up on her French. She studied the language for many years in high school and college, but that was a few years ago. Now she wants to brush up her knowledge by reading or listening to some books. I have no idea where to find any. Purchase, library, a Guttenburg like website - it doesn't really matter. I found some French books on Amazon's Audible, but wow are they expensive. Any ideas of where I could help my daughter look to find some (we are in the USA)? She did give me a few titles she is interested in starting with - I believe because she may already know the story, at least in some cases. I have no idea if these are current books or if they are past copyright - I can't read French. La Toile de Charlotte Le Petit Prince Le Chatte Botte Arsene Lupin Contes de la rue Broca Le Petit Nicolas Les Trois Mousquetaires Le Rêve de Mademoiselle Papillon

11-23-2022, 11:51 AM	#4
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,534 Karma: 26955571 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	Gutenberg has a number of French ebooks. For audiobooks, have you looked at LibraVox? https://librivox.org/search?primary_...rm=get_results The other way, of course, is to use TTS with any French text. Last edited by tomsem; 11-23-2022 at 11:56 AM.

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11-23-2022, 02:05 AM	#2
colinsky Addict Posts: 233 Karma: 3232318 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: Sony PRS-300, PRS-T1, PRS-T3	Check if your local library has an "Overdrive" collection, it's very likely they may have audiobooks of some of these titles for free download.

11-23-2022, 03:19 AM	#3
Comfy.n want to learn what I want Posts: 1,046 Karma: 6422750 Join Date: Sep 2020 Device: Calibre E-book viewer	found this, read by a French teacher: https://www.lifeinfrench-bordeaux.com/le-petit-prince

11-23-2022, 01:06 PM	#8
Quoth the rook, bossing Never. Posts: 11,642 Karma: 87590587 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper11	Arsène Lupin (series) and Les Trois Mousquetaires are certainly PD /out of copyright and I'm sure I saw the French versions somewhere. Also try https://www.fadedpage.com/index.php as it's Canadian, so has some French. Also plenty of their books meet the USA expiry rules. I've read most of Arsène Lupin in English. Very entertaining. Pocketbook on Android will use whatever speech engine and languages installed. Seems to work well even on Android 5, but not Android 4. Oddly the Android 5 Huawei does more natural speech (in British English) than Android 10 on a Lenovo. There should also be Jules Verne. Note there are other gutenberg sites other than the USA gutenberg.org and search on author may work better on Gutenberg or other sites as titles are not always what is commonly known.

11-23-2022, 03:32 PM	#10
Shpounz Member Posts: 21 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2020 Device: Kobo Libra H2O	https://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php You can try this site for out of copyright books like Les trois mousquetaires

11-24-2022, 04:41 AM	#15
BionicGecko Addict Posts: 206 Karma: 1500001 Join Date: Aug 2016 Location: Czech Republic Device: Kindle Voyage, Oasis 3 and Scribe	Radio-Canada (the French language branch of the CBC) has a lot of free audio books in French. They are mostly from French-Canadian authors however, so will be different from the books on the wishlist, but there's quite a wide variety and they're all free. Here's the link to the "Jeunesse" (i.e. "Youth") section, however clicking on "Tous les livres" opens up the whole library.

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