Free Books: App Review

BreakingModern — The Free Books app for Android grants you quick access to more than 23,000 classic books using nothing but your smartphone or tablet. Think about that for a second. Think about how just a mere 30 years ago, no one, no matter how rich or powerful, could do that, and now just about anyone and everyone can. Welcome to the mobile age.

free books

The Classics

The Free Books app includes just about every classic public domain book you can name. Are you interested in reading the classic works of William Shakespeare? They are all here. Perhaps your tastes run more to the macabre, like mine tend to do, then you’ll want to check out the collective works of Edgar Allan Poe. The choices are nearly endless and I don’t think you will run out of good choices for a very long time.

Reading from your smartphone using the Free Books app may not be the absolute best way to consume the classics, but it does work surprisingly well. You flip through pages by swiping left or right and the app remembers what page you were on when you come back to the app. The interface is about as intuitive as an app can get.

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Of course, as is the case with all “free” apps, advertisements will be displayed every once in a while. But thankfully they are easily closed and don’t really block reading or become unduly annoying. There’s always a price to pay for an app that provides so much.

Audio Books

If you choose, for an additional $3.99, you can opt to get almost 5,000 of the listed classic books in audio form as well as in text. The paid version of the app also eliminates all of the advertisements. If you’re an avid listener of audio books and want to partake in some classic material, this is a really good deal.

Think about it. If you were to listen to a couple of H. G. Wells books using the Audiobooks service, for example, you would pay just about as much as you would pay for access to over 23,000 classic books ad free, with many of those also available in audio format. That’s tough to beat.

free books

Take It With You

The Free Books app is one of the best free Android apps around and if you enjoy reading books at all it should be installed on every smartphone and mobile device you own. The ability to access a classic book from anywhere is a modern convenience that should be enjoyed and celebrated. This level of access is unprecedented in human history — who knows where it will lead us. Free Books is free to download for Android on Google Play (and alternatively on Apple iOS).

For BMod, I’m .

Featured Image: Library books. Wikimedia Commons

All Screenshots: Mark Kaelin

Mark Kaelin

Author: Mark Kaelin

Based in Louisville, KY., Mark W. Kaelin is a tech and gadget writer who also covers fine living for us here at BreakingModern.

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