Posted by Cori on June 25th, 2009 — Posted in My Recordings
Esther Waters is a book I saw recommended somewhere online a long time ago, bought in hard copy from the dingy basement of a London bookshop a year ago, and have now contributed two chapters to its audiobook incarnation. It’s a realist novel about a housemaid whose virtue is lost - outside the sanctity of marriage - to a roguish young man and the consequences of that action. It’s unusual for the period in that the world doesn’t end with a woman’s fall … things go on, and they are Victorianly grim, but also quite vivid and imaginable. It’s a long listen, at 14 hrs, but I reckon well worth it.
I’ve just found that a poem I recorded a long time ago, by Julia Ward Howe, has been used as part of a history podcast. The segment starts off with a lovely combined voice recording of her Mother’s Day Proclamation, and then continues with my own recording of her inspired Mother Mind. The show was released on 7th May, which I think fits in with the US Mother’s Day celebration … though we in Britain did it somewhat earlier on 22nd March.
I must confess, I hadn’t read this poem in a “Mothering Sunday” light at all, nor had I realised the poet had written “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I am now better informed and have thought about the poem further. I also like her idea of a Mothers’ Peace Day observance far more than the commercial orgy of flowers and chocolates. Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” like your children being alive, safe and happy, rather than wounded or killed in any kind of war.
More information about the Talking History podcast here. Or listen: (03:44)
(Howe is Segment 2, Segments 1 and 3 are titled “The Good Mother: A History of American Motherhood.”)
Posted by Cori on May 14th, 2009 — Posted in My Recordings
I recorded this short story more than a year ago now … and it took me almost that long to get around to editing it, since in the raw state it was about 70 mins. Now it’s trimmed to a perfect 49 mins 37 seconds and it’s available for general listening.
There are also some other stories of hers in this collection, although read by a different voice. My story has one of my favourite lines in any literature anywhere:
“The main thing” — his voice sank to an impressive whisper — “is not to infringe the copyright.”
And I don’t believe I did. Rule of Shorter Term, American author, first publishing there.
My original idea for this website was to create an Encyclopedia Piratica, hence the domain name. However, I never found the time and energy to do the vast amount of work required; too much time spent proof-reading and recording audiobooks. However, this weekend I’ve sat down and used a few different resources to pull together a listing of piratey works … which can now be found at:
This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.
Collections included so far:
Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive
To come:
Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them
So, I read this story for the Sci-Fi Collection ages ago, and then it sat on my computer in an unedited state while I worked on other things. And in the end I got a round tuit … and decided that it really wasn’t science fiction at all, and might fit better as a general fantasy story in the Short Story Collection. It contains one of my splendidly bad attempts at a cod-Californian accent (don’t tell me how bad it is, it was just for fun!) and is a tres random story, all in all.
(14:33)
It was catalogued today, and also in that collection is a group reading of a very silly Dickens story, The Lamplighter which I joined in with. I have yet to listen to how it came out — it was recorded on a handheld recording device, sitting in a chilly pub garden in London with some far-flung visiting LibriVoxers and a persistant blackbird. Very good company. :)
Charlotte wrote these poems while in debtors’ prison with her husband … luckily, the collection was successfully published, which allowed her to pay for their release. David and I alternate on these readings … which took a bit over a year to finish (that’s my fault entirely; I procrastinate too much.)
They didn’t deserve that wait … some of these sonnets and poems are really lovely, though I’m not sure I’d listen to them all in one sitting, that might be pretty bleak! In amongst them is my new favourite poem title of ALL TIME. I’m so lucky that the order fell out right in order for me to record it, too.
Sonnet LXX. On being cautioned against walking on a Headland overlooking the Sea, because it was frequented by a Lunatic.
(1:17)
Posted by Cori on March 9th, 2009 — Posted in My Recordings
My newest solo has been released at LibriVox. I needed a bit of light relief after the splendidly wordy William Morris, so the Moving Picture Girls by Laura Lee Hope, seemed like a good choice. It’s set in early 20th century New York city, the home of a burgeoning movie industry, and is a very family-friendly fictional account of how a reputable theatre actor and his two daughters make their way into the business. I particularly like it for its description of how a movie is made and for a perspective on how movies were initially looked down on by “legitimate” actors — this is fictional, but not too far from the truth, I think.
There are no swear words of even the mildest sort, no sex (not even kissing, just some blushing & giggling romance), and the closest we get to violence is a light scuffle in an apartment building. It’s 7 hours of the cleanest fun!
Posted by Cori on March 8th, 2009 — Posted in My Recordings
I’ve recently found that my first commercial audiobook recording was released at audible.co.uk in late November — I finished production at the start of November, and was puzzling over what was taking it so long to be made public. Anyway, Hooray!!
It does include the most epic misspelling of my name to date, but hopefully that’ll be sorted out between the publisher and Audible soon. In the meantime, I’m marvelling over how quickly I read in the sample (it’s not a good thing, really, I must work on slowing down just a little) … and loving seeing my hard work available. I’ve never recorded a whole book in such a (relatively) short space of time before, it was quite an experience.
I just discovered the audible.com link; same name misspelling, completely different pricing, and a semi-okay review (nice for me, but not going to improve sales overall.) Ah well.
My next commercial recording is completely different - watch this space.
My New Year Revolutions didn’t really get made this year, but I have some ideas in my head about numbers that I’d like to hit this year, including 100hrs of LibriVox recordings, something about posts, something about podcasts, something about blog posts.
I’m signed up to the One-Book-a-Week challenge again, but knowing the pace I normally read at, I’ve had a binge this month on short novels, and am currently have completed 10. Ha!
I also spruced up this website a little, adding actual widgets and Gargle Analytics. I’m not completely happy with them yet, I can feel a little tinkering with the CSS coming on, but still, close enough.
And finally, it was suggested to me that it might be much fun to Wordle the recordings I produce when I announce them here. Which is definitely a plan. I’ve already made the picture for the next (very short) piece I plan to record, which I know will have an audience of about one, assuming I listen to it myself. But perhaps that’s what Posterity is all about. Talking to ourselves and hoping mebbe someone else will want to overhear. We shall see.
All six volumes of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire have been recorded, in full, and are now available for free through LibriVox. I’ve made a contribution to each volume, and in Volume 6, I even got to read the first section, all about the Crusades and Richard the Lionheart (bad guy) and Saladin (nicer guy). Listening to the entire lot will set you back 119 hours, 16 minutes and 14 seconds, and will make a lovely set for the various people selling our recordings on eBay.
It’s also the 2,000th book that LibriVox has sent to archive.org. It’s not quite the 2,000th book catalogued, due to a little confusion during the archiving process, which makes it actually 2001 in Librivox numbering, but the more the merrier. It took 26 months to record the first thousand projects, and 14 months to record the second thousand, so reaching the third is likely to happen in 2009. I’d note that the total includes things like the Weekly Poetry, Short Story Collections, classic literature, non-fiction, modern (but out of copyright) science fiction novels and so I really ought to talk about “projects” rather than “books” throughout, but let’s not quibble over definitions. The winter holiday has been flying by and I’m looking forward, tomorrow, to sitting down for a bit and planning my LibriVoxing for the New Year. Sooo many books, sooooo little time.
The start of Volume 6: (06:30)
Happy 2009 everyone — may all your ventures be productive and fulfilling!
