The Water-babies by Charles Kingsley has had, according to the archive.org ticker, 10,148 downloads! Hoorah! Now, admittedly, their counter has good days and bad weeks, and it also counts any file as a download … so that could be 600 people downloading all 17 files separately, or it could be 10,000 people downloading the zip file once each. Plus, many LV books are available via BitTorrents, other audio download sites, and on eBay. So it’s an entirely arbitrary milestone, but it’s my milestone and I’m proud of it anyway!
My other solos are pootling along in reasonable form. Love and Freindship by Jane Austen, has been downloaded 4,891 times — as it has only 3 parts, that’s a minimum of 1690 downloaders. Rather cool! Dear Gertrude, released only a month later, is lagging the set with just 1,735 downloads of its three files / zip collection. This does not surprise me in the least … while it was storming fun to read, I can’t imagine listening to it unless I was contemplating a spectacular mashup in words, music and visuals. (I *hope* someone does that soon, it HAS the potential!) Nesbit’s Unlikely Tales has had 2,858 downloads in 3 months … which is actually rather less than I thought. Mathilda, the Mary Shelley novella is romping along with 2,375 downloads in six weeks - much more than I thought. It IS interesting to know what people want to hear.
I conclude from all this that I do not have even *slightly* popular taste in solo-project books. That said, collaboratively, I am a part of Jane Eyre, which is LibriVox’s top downloaded archive.org book at 391,407 times. (Boggling Big Number.) There’s a “sneeze and you’ll miss me” contribution to Oliver Twist, 181,604 downloads. The other Austen’s I have contributed chapters to clock in at 120,446 for Mansfield Park, 88,659 times for Northanger Abbey (and Persuasion’s 36,591 isn’t in the Top 50!) Unexpectedly, Reviews, by Oscar Wilde is my other entry in the Top 50 with 74,963 downloads. That has 99 files, though, and it’s the sort of thing I’d expect people to pick at, rather than dousing themselves in the whole lot. (Yes, it’s Oscar, and Yes, he does have some droll moments, but nothing in the sections I read (3 or 4?) has stuck with me as über-quotable.)
Still. If it were all about the numbers, I’d be pirating Potter. If it were all about the fame, I guess a solo recording of Jane Eyre would be a solid bet. Since it is, in fact, all about the Posterity, and I strongly believe in the right of all of my authors to audio representation for Posterity … we’re all good. Plus, this shows very decent credentials as a team player, which is nice. So, hmm, what under-loved specimen of literature will I pick on next?
Chapter One is mine, and no, I don’t know what happens next, but I look forward to finding out! It’s a mystery story, I know that much … and any story that starts at sea is starting well in my book.
This week’s community podcast is themed from the forum thread for “One book a week in 2008″. (I’ve only read 12 so far — I think I’m behind?) There was a bit of discussion there about whether listening to a book was the same as reading it. Of course, it comes down to definitions. If the aim is to take possession of a story, then for sure, reading, listening, Braille or graphic novels all work as methods for an author to communicate with other folks. As snobby as some book groups may be about “those who listen” as compared to “those who read”, there’s usually little difference at the end of the day in the speed of the book-discussion going off on a huge and permanent tangent.
Books expand one’s vocabulary — visual has the advantage of teaching the brain spelling, while audio conveys a version of the pronunciation. (Please do not try to pronounce “isthmus” as I do, though, it just ain’t right.)
Paper books are traditionally more sensual than audiobooks, they allow for cosying under blankets, torchlit exploration, the physical response of scent and touch bibliophiles get walking into an old library or second-hand book shop and running their hand over book spines. However, audiobooks have had a recent boost in this area, thanks to the ol’ iPod, which gets owners in a sleek, elegant design froth in no time flat. Steampunking an iPod would seem to be the ultimate win.
Audiobooks suffer much more from “out of sight, out of mind” — I don’t rifle my hard drive of a Sunday afternoon trying to decide what to listen to, in the same way that I peruse my bookshelves. And there’s the unspoken horror of obsolescence (you have a generation 1 iPod, darlink, how retro!) in the hardware and format (MP3s have been going strong since at least 1991, but … how much longer will they last? And how good will they sound shifted into whatever replaces them?) Plus, literacy isn’t grokking the story of Don Quixote … it’s being able to understand how to complete an accident report form or fill in a bank account application.
I’m a firm both-ist. Losing either format would cut down on the richness of my world. Have been thinking about this for a while, and there’s a bit of a waffle in this ‘ere podcast. It hardly even begins to get into the nuances … what about (dubious) learning preferences for visual, audio or kinetic (wonder if that last is the act of LibriVoxing a book — certainly reading the text aloud is a pretty amazing method of consuming it.) I tried not to produce an Audiobook Party Political Broadcast, or the preface of a book (simultaneous publication in paper and MP3, please). Dunno how successful I was. Rest assured, the other people contributing sound great!
Posted by Cori on April 10th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. IV by Edward Gibbon … my sections were #17 and #18. It’s beginning to blur into a bit of a Gibbony mass, now, so I confess I don’t remember what these were all about. But I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve recorded of his so far, if that helps.
Must crack on with my bits of Vol 3, too — though I mean to get a community podcast done tonight somehow, and am showering a baby tomorrow night, so … weekend looks good!
I went absolutely nuts in this week’s comunity podcast and talked for at least 3 minutes! And sang (for about 10 seconds in total, fear not.) Plus I also used the 148yr old voice recording that’s been doing the rounds this week, and commissioned a great interview — chocoholic talking to ExEmGe (LibriVox’s ‘golden voice’.)
<thinking out loud> It’s a shame, in a way, that my first podcast ever was so lavish and fun and planned weeks in advance … it means that subsequent, normal ones are feeling like a bit of a comedown. I think there’s only so much “goodness, we’re all amazing, let’s do more” that listeners can take, but still. I do have a couple of fun ideas that I need to muster time and energy to put into action, and I have lots of neat interviews lined up, which is prolly my favourite thing to listen to, out of all the things that can be in a podcast. But … none of that’s as glamorous as “Sucking at reading audiobooks - and how not to!”. Admittedly, most of the glam came from how funny it is to hear people doing it so terribly wrong. But still. It enticed several new people to start reading, and that’s a very neat thing indeed. And something I’d like to do again, if only I could work out how. <still thinking>
Posted by Cori on April 1st, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
Now available for your listening pleasure, 9hrs 41min of glorious Milton. Oh, this HAS been a long time coming. At the beginning of January, I posted that I’d snapped up the last section — unfortunately this didn’t turn out to be quite true, since another chapter was part-read, but then had to be orphanned. Still, it’s done now, and you can find me in the second half of Book Two and Book Four.
Book Two: (29:17)
Book Four: (29:58)
I confess I don’t actually listen to that many audiobooks, but I am going to have to queue this one up, I can see. The bits I recorded were just *so* much fun.
Also just into the catalogue, but really not in the Paradise Lost league by, oh, several thousand lines, the little poem I recorded the other week to try and get back into the swing of things after the long voice-savaging cold. Wrinkles, by Walter Savage Landor is short and lovely. All the authorly S Ls are fine by me, so it was nice to put something of his into audio.
(1:11)
I can’t say as it really helped with the recording side of things; I’m still feeling incomprehensibly stymied. Probably just a phase…
I updated my Hear Me page and associated spreadsheet today and can proudly announce – I have reached 50 hours of recorded contributions to the public domain! 50 hours and 16 mins, to be precise, (which I need to be with all that Pi in there.)
Think I might start counting the podcasts, too … okay, they don’t have that much of my voice in them, but it’s still audio I’m slaving over, and (incredibly) they do take longer than my own recordings.
Talking of podcasts, here’s my seventh: with super toe-tapping music this week, and an interview with the LibriVox “voice of Mark Twain”, John Greenman. Not that I DID the interview, I commissioned it. It’s called Delegation, you know. *wink*
Posted by Cori on March 17th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
My first recording in weeks … and is it the Gibbon I owe..? No. A bit of J.S. Mill..? Nope. More Elegaic Sonnets..? Unfortunately not.
It’s the first fifty digits of pi, read in a single breath (for one file) and in the World’s Most Awful Pirate “Accent” (separate file, and you’ll have to look it up if you care, I refuse to link such dreadfulness directly.) I’m not the only fruit-cake around, there are 54 other variations on the theme. Almost completely pointless (especially for people living in countries where the date will never read 3/14), but a huge amount of fun to put together. And if anyone ever DOES find a good use for this little lot, I’d love to know about it!
Should this, however, merely have whetted your appetite for number recitals, you can find a great recording of the first one-thousand pi digits in the Insomnia Collection. ’nuff said.
My latest solo work is finished. I post-processed Mathilda, by Mary Shelley, for Project Gutenberg (that is, smoothed the proofread pages into a single document, both plaintext and HTML) so was very familiar with it (and with Mary’s quirky spelling which I tried to keep intact in the final work.) I actually started reading this about a year ago, and recorded the second half of it last month — but I really wasn’t happy with the shift in quality, since I’d upgraded my microphone in the intervening time, and learnt to be a bit more patient in reading speed. So, here we go … a mournful tragedy:
Two things to note — although this story is about an incestuous relationship, it’s not salacious. If it were a musical, it’d be seriously Emo. Or, my grandmother could have listened to it without her hair curling. Second, anytime Mary writes “I will be brief”, you can be sure she’s about to be anything BUT brief. The runtime is somehow only 4hrs, though.
Posted by Cori on March 5th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
I saw this project get started, and was muchly excited … Yonge was a very popular author in her day, but I’ve never read any, and ought to remedy that. After hovering politely for a couple of days, I pounced happily on Chapter 1. Now it’s all finished, and I can download to listen to the rest. Since this is for children, and I know she wrote a lot for adults too, I’ll need to read some more of hers. Between Gutenberg and my local library, I can get 61 books by her (a little over half her writings.) Choosing will be difficult. Has anyone read anything else of hers..? Suggestions..?