Audiobook

"How beautiful old Athens used to be!" muses Nikos Boukouras, as he discusses the secrets of the Ilissos River with Aris Lintzerakos, 40 years his junior. In Nikos' small apartment in the heart of downtown Petralona, where he now lives alone on a disability pension, the pair's discussions every Thursday range from Athens in the 1980s and 1990s, to model-making, to the Patra Carnival.

Major retailer Public is entering the growing category of audiobooks, with the company investing in the largest platform active in Greece at the moment, Bookvoice.gr.

Dinlebi, Turkey's largest audiobook platform, has secured 515,000 euros of funding during its second seed round.

Dinlebi plans to use the investment to expand its userbase both in Turkey and in foreign markets, according to a company statement.

Curling up with a paperback may be a forgotten luxury for many thanks to today's busy lifestyles, but listening to a book on the go, while shopping or jogging, is fast becoming the new norm.

Gone are the cumbersome cassette sets that could cost three times as much as an old-fashioned book and often featured only excerpts to cut down on costs.

Bookworms can sink their teeth into thousands of free e-books available for free online. Just click on the links and start reading?

1. Project Gutenberg - offers over 46,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

2. The Online Books Page by the University of Pennsylvania hosts a book search and database.