Hi, can anyone point me to a source of current Spanish literature in audiobook form, unabridged, of an author like Gabriel Garcia Marquez for example? I’m looking for the audiobook in mp3 form so I can listen while reading the original in print.
Thanks.
Chris
Have you tried googling audiolibros?
Yes, I’ve tried all the usual resources and am only finding either public domain literature or a bunch of popular American books translated into Spanish for mass market audiobooks. No literature per se, e.g. a book by Marquez.
Chris
What’s the problem with public domain literature?
There’s a bunch of it here: https://catalog.librivox.org/search_advanced.php?title=&author=&cat=&genre=&status=all&type=&language=Spanish&date=&reader=&bc=&mc=&action=Search
A google search for Marquez audiolibros found this http://www.freelibros.com/audiolibro/cien-anos-de-soledad-gabriel-garcia-marquez-audiolibro.html and several other books I didn’t look into. I haven’t tried to download the book, so I have no idea how “safe” the site is… Marquez’s work is surely still under copyright, and you would expect to have to pay for a copy in any format.
Chris, I am in your same situation. Audiobooks seem to be very unpopular in Spain, even more than in Portugal. I haven’t find one website that only sells audiobooks. There is nothing similar to Audible in Spain… 
Elric, there is nothing wrong with public domain audiobooks, but sometimes people like reading or listening to contemporary books as well.
It was a tongue in cheek comment, but I understand. However, Spanish hasn’t changed nearly as much as English or Portuguese for the last several hundred years. If you take a text like “Don Quijote”, it’s perfectly understandable, whereas an English or Portuguese writer contemporary of Cervantes would be much harder to read.
An alternative: Check out the YouTube channel, plumaypapel : Tres versiones de Judas - Jorge Luis Borges - YouTube The channel owner reads long excerpts/chapters, and whole novels, i.e. Borges’ Ficciones, Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. The length of his videos range from 15mins - 1hr30mins long.
I have found that unabridged audiobooks of contemporary writers in Spanish are very hard to find, even when willing to pay for commercially available, there just are not many around. (i.e. Ernie’s link is already shut down.) I even called a publisher of audiobooks here in the USA and Mexico and he said they just don’t sell and so most of the commercially available audiolibros are extremely shortened abridgements of classics. I personally own the Dan Brown Trilogy (Angeles y Demonios, El Codigo Davinci y El simbolo perdido-these are huge!) as well as Harry Potter 1, Ciudad de las bestias (casette); Pedro Paramo, La sombra del viento, and a few others which I purchased. I have a Garcia Marquez but it is a very bad copy (only 25 Mbps) and some others I have found here and there. Contact me if you are interested and maybe I can point you to where you can get these. Buena suerte and let us know if you come across anything good!
thanks for the links. I did manage to download an intact reading (mediocre quality) of “cien anos” from the above link. The same site, freelibros, had a lot of other interesting books but every attempt to download (books by Borges or Marquez) resulted in either file not found, corrupted files, or FBI warnings. It seems there are some legit pay-for audiobooks for big hits like Dan Brown, but for literature of the 20th century written in Spanish I haven’t been having much luck. Roberto Bolano ditto. The youtube readings are nice but I can’t listen to them on the move. I think someone in the Spanish-speaking world could make a nice business with an audible type service. I’ll continue searches and report back if I find something.
Chris
jolanda, Thanks for the links! Through them I found a favorite of mine translated from Russian, read very clearly w/ a Castillian accent. It was the first Russian novel I slogged my way through in the original–it took me months. However, it is probably not to everyone’s taste, as it is pulp science fiction, the story of an expedition to a subterranean world. This I’ll definitely download. Plutonia - Podcast en iVooxpag.3 . The ivoox site has lots of material, much of it read by humans, often quite clearly, and there are some modern Spanish writers represented, for cjcrawford, it would seem. Great links.
jolanda, thank you for posting the links!
I will check ivoox.com again. I am quite sure I already saw it but couldn’t find any good, unabridged Spanish novel, but I will get back to it soon…
I’ve been looking for Spanish audiobooks as well, and it’s been frustrating, especially compared with French. So far albalearning.com is the best recource I have found. Right now on lingq, from that website, I am reading and listening to a popular short story of mystery ‘Casa Tomada’ by Julio Cortázar. It’s from 1951, so I don’t see how it would be public domain, but it’s there.
There also seems to be some other short stories a few hundred years newer than Don Quixote on the site. It’s better than nothing.
lapoubelle,
albalearning looks good.
(just to change the subj. for a moment)
I know of 4 or 5 good French audiobook sites featuring works written before about the second decade of the 20th century: i.e., works in the public domain. Do you know of anything that offers more recent works? For commercial recordings, there is audible.fr (which looks like it has a new site, I see), and CDs from booksellers, such as amazon.fr or decitre.fr . Do you have any other suggestions?
Actually, I probably wouldn’t mind recording English language short stories (American accent), now that my voice has recovered from its problems, in exchange for stories in French or Russian. . . . Novels would be too ambitious to start w/, I think.
(Now back to discussing Spanish audiobooks.)
Ernie,
Newer books are hard to come by for free. I have noticed that there are some available on sites like litteratureaudio.com, but these are usually works by unpublished authors.
As for buying French audiobooks, I would also try Amazon.ca. I would think they should have a good variety of French books, and shipping might be cheaper than from France. I also once ordered something from fnac.com, I recall it came fairly quickly. They should have a good selection of audiobooks.
(now back yet again to Spanish audiobook discussion!)
Some time it is not easy to understand how to manage the use from the site.
Some applications are only in Russian.
http://greylib.net/spanish/spanish-audiobooks/
you will find many languages:
j;-)
lapoubelle, thanks much! Free recordings would not be needed, actually. At this point I’m so slow, listening to French, that I would definitely get my money’s worth (dollars / hour) at regular prices. 
The last time I looked, shipping from Canada to the U.S. was about the same as from France, believe it or not, but this may have changed. One can hope. And I found this site online, which looks promising: http://www.livraphone.com/ .
Another digression: I don’t know if you like science fiction, but this looks like a great blog. The only problem is that they should say more. http://russkayafantastika.hautetfort.com/ .
jolanda, Thanks much, also! Russian is no problem. (Reading Russian is no problem, that is.) The site looks very interesting. I already saw there a few authors I had never heard of but who sound like writers whose books I’d enjoy
Now this thread should again return to Spanish, and I to Russian.
Ernie,
That’s an interesting link. Yes they should say more, maybe offer a few links to some mp3 recordings of those books, accompanied by the complete text in an electronic format easy to copy and paste into lingq.
I had no idea there was such a French fanbase for Russian sci-fi/fantasy literature, to the point where people would be attempting to independently finance translations. That’s great.