A way into books that starts with a single passage
Paginette lets you discover classic books the way you would in a bookshop: by opening one and reading a few lines. Every passage comes from a public-domain book, often with a volunteer recording, and leads straight to the full text.
Why passages
Most of us choose what to read from covers, titles and other people’s summaries. But what makes a book worth reading is its sentences. Paginette puts those first: a feed of passages quoted exactly from the books, so you can tell within a minute whether a voice is for you.
The books are in the public domain, so the whole text is there when a passage catches you. Many come with complete LibriVox recordings, read by volunteers and aligned to the text word by word.
What we hold to
- The books’ words are never rewritten. Passages are quoted exactly from the source text.
- Every passage names its book, its author and, for recordings, the volunteer who reads it.
- Anything written by AI, such as a translation or background note, is reviewed and always labelled “AI-generated · not from the original book”.
- Public-domain status differs by country, so the app shows only the works that are available where you are.
- No ads, no selling of data and no tracking across other apps or websites.
Where the books come from
Paginette is built on the work of public libraries and volunteers:
- LibriVoxLibriVox: public-domain audiobooks read by volunteers around the world.
- Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg: free e-books of public-domain texts, the source of the texts we show.
- Internet ArchiveThe Internet Archive, which hosts the LibriVox recordings the app streams.
- WikidataWikidata and Wikimedia Commons, for facts about authors and books, and for covers.
Paginette is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
In your language
The app speaks Simplified and Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Spanish and French. Book titles and descriptions are shown in your language where a translation exists; the passages themselves stay in the language the book was written in.
Where to find it
Paginette runs in any modern browser, and as an app for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets. Your shelf and progress follow you between them.
Everything in Paginette, one feature at a time →