Good Spanish audio for "passive listening?"

Along with practicing the audio and language lessons daily, I am trying to expose myself to as much Spanish as possible. Toward this end I sometimes watch Spanish TV programs (gotta love those telenovelas!) and movies, listen to music such as Santana's songs in sung in Spanish, and the Buena Vista Social Club, and attempt to read anything I can find written in Spanish. I would like to find some spoken audio to listen to in the car, while mowing the lawn, and doing other things when I usually listen to (American) music. Something on the order of the "books on tape" that one can buy. Does anyone have recommendations for books, stories, or other written materials that are available for download to an MP3 player? Thanks in advance for your ideas.

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/language/Spanish I have downloaded many audiobooks from here in English, but I never really tried the books in Spanish. Good thing you suggested Spanish audiobooks, I just never thought of it! Their books are all public domain, and many are read aloud by volunteers, but it should certainly should be worth the free download.

Here is another that I found, free audiobooks in Spanish. http://albalearning.com/

Great question and thanks for the links!

Do you know any other sites that would help increase my knowledge in Spanish that doesn't cost money?

http://www.studyspanish.com/ http://www.spanishdict.com/learn

Here are three more sites: 1. http://en.childrenslibrary.org/ Just click on the circle that says read books, then you can select books in Spanish, or a lot of other languages. 2. http://.123teachme.com Navigate around for what you want to practice/learn 3. http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html This is whole Destinos video. I enjoyed watching the entire series and working the lessons. ¡Disfruta!

Patrice: thanks so much for posting this link. At the stage of learning Spanish that I am at, children's books are perfect!

Hola todos My cable provider has a Spanish News Station they air 24/7, it's called InfoMas...like any news show they tell the same stories over and over during the day and add new stories so you get a repetitive story and fresh ones to listen to...the PSA's are great and the advertisements even prove worthy of watching and listening too...hearing phone numbers and dollar amounts and numbers over and over...this has proven to be a great tool for me as a new learner and I'd recommend it to anyone...I wear a headset and have it on as ambient background noise and it has helped in training my "ears"...good luck all

I found this free website for learning which is easy to use. http://www.duolingo.com/

I'm a bit of a late responder here, but just came across this thread. Great links above from jchamb, including spanishdict.com which I use. I find most free books are the older classics though, which I don't care for too much. I like current events, and subscribe to "News in Slow Spanish" podcasts. Their website is subscription based, but the weekly podcasts are free and about 35-40 minutes long. They also just came out with "News in Slow Spanish - Latino" a couple of months ago, which focuses on Latin America. They are downloadable on your iPod for on the go listening.