Library
Free books to read in a language you are learning
418 books across seven languages. Every one is public domain, downloads as an EPUB, and opens in any reader — including this one. Pick the language you are learning, and each shelf is sorted so you can find the rung above whatever you last finished.
Choose a language
Each shelf is books written in that language, for people learning it.
- English 170 books Standard Ebooks
- French 40 books Project Gutenberg
- German 40 books Project Gutenberg
- Spanish 39 books Project Gutenberg
- Italian 39 books Project Gutenberg
- Portuguese 40 books Project Gutenberg
- Dutch 40 books Project Gutenberg
Only these seven have enough public-domain material to be worth a shelf. Project Gutenberg holds nine Russian books, one Arabic, and none at all in Turkish, Vietnamese, Hindi or Indonesian — copyright expiry has been far kinder to Western European literature than to anywhere else.
Or start with one of these ten
Read and chosen by hand across three languages, with a note on what each one costs a learner. Pick one of these if you would rather not choose.
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The plainest vocabulary on this shelf, and you already know the story from the film — which frees all of your attention for the words.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Call of the Wild
Short, concrete and physical. Almost every noun is something you can picture, which is exactly what makes guessing from context work.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
Anne of Green Gables
Long, but cut into short chapters with a warm, modern voice. Good when you want something to live in for a few weeks rather than finish in one.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The best structure on this page for a learner: twelve self-contained stories, each about twenty minutes. You finish something every session, which is what keeps people reading.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Time Machine
A whole novel in an evening or two. Wells writes clearly and explains his own ideas, so the hard part is the concepts rather than the prose.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
Around the World in Eighty Days
Episodic by design — a new country every few chapters — so putting it down for a week costs you nothing.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Great Gatsby
Short, and the prose is genuinely modern — it was written in 1925 but does not read like it. Entered the public domain in 2021.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
The Metamorphosis
Very short, and the sentences are plainer than the reputation suggests. Pairs with the German original below if you want to read the same book twice.
Download free at Standard Ebooks -
Die Verwandlung
The German original of The Metamorphosis above. Read a paragraph in one, then the same paragraph in the other — the most useful twenty minutes available to a German learner.
Download free at Project Gutenberg -
Candide
Thirty short chapters, each a small disaster. The pace does the work that a graded reader usually has to do for you.
Download free at Project Gutenberg
Open one and tap a word
Download any of these as EPUB, import it into ClickBook, and tap a word you do not know. The explanation is written on your phone, in your mother tongue, without a connection.
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Coming soon
New to EPUB? Read how to open one on iPhone and Android.