Posted by Cori on December 22nd, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry, Fiction
The Bird’s Christmas Carol linked below just wasn’t enough. Additions to the Public Domain for this December now include the following three seasonal sillinesses:
A Cornish Christmas Play – recorded during a London LV meet, with four people, two rolling pins, a briefcase, a frying pan and no strict adherence to the script (just as its author intended.) (2.7MB)
The Conscience Pudding by E. Nesbit – I found this as a standalone book in the library, but actually it turned out to be the second chapter of a full-length book (in progress as a solo recording by another Librivoxer.) I thought it was too much fun not to put into this collection, not many other Chrimbo stories will include the wisdom which ends: “If this simple rule was followed there would not be so many wars and martyrs and law suits and inquisitions and bloody deaths at the stake.” (16.5MB)
To An Old Fogey (Who Contends that Christmas is Played Out) by Owen Seaman – Owen is an old friend of mine, back from when he used to edit Punch. When I saw that there was just one space left in this collection, and only a few hours to the closing date … well … it’s seasonal poetry time. Especially poems that start “O frankly bald and obviously stout!” (1.1MB)
And with these three, this brings my LibriVox contribution total to 200 recordings … about forty hours. Bring on the holiday time-off and New Year!
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Posted by Cori on December 11th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Drama and Poetry
I recently lucked into recording a section of Paradise Lost. I wasn’t planning to get a literature-nerd crush on Milton, and I definitely wasn’t expecting to have to edit “oooooh, cool!” out of the middle of a recording, once I’d finished reading a particular paragraph. But there’s a lot of unaccountable events in this life, and the above happened. Normally I wait until things are catalogued before writing about them here … but … c’mmon, movie tie-in! :D
The whole book is going to be well worth a listen — it’s much more accessible and vivid than I was expecting <imagine some muttering here about T.S. Eliot> But in the meantime, here’s just the minute of text Pullman sourced his trilogy title from: http://www.studioae.com/LibriVox/cori/misc/paradiselost_darkmaterials_milton.mp3
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Posted by Cori on December 3rd, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction
Yes, it is heading towards That Time of Year again … and though I have plans for something of Nesbit’s to celebrate the season (note to self – get that copyright clearance, ASAP!) I rescued a poor little orphan chapter too, part of The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin. A sweet little children’s story — I’m looking forward to listening to the whole thing … only not on the bus, because the ending looks to be sniffle-inducing, in a good way.
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Posted by Cori on December 2nd, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Fiction
LibriVox Volumes 1 and 2 are now available to the public, ten stories in each … and now we’re busy filling up the third. I’ve contributed one story to each so far, and I’ll need to stock up with more readings, since these things tend to go quickly!
The strangest thing about my contribution to Vol 1 is that it’s the only text I’ve knowingly recorded by a still living author (not counting various recordings of forum posts and FAQs and stuff.) US copyright law is plain odd: where a story by (alive) Harry Harrison published in 1962 can fall into the public domain — but where Kafka, who died in 1924 (more than 70 years ago which is the current US copyright term) still retains a US copyright on The Trial and The Castle (in original German and thus subsequent translations) until at least 2021. Note, I am not a lawyer in any country. Even the limited calculation I do with these laws makes my head hurt. But this is my working understanding of the state of play.
Still, it’s not like there’s any shortage of books to record, and since my legal understanding includes the “rule of shorter term” which in dangerously-abridged form I think means “if it’s by a USan author, and Public Domain in the US, the UK will just go along with that copyright status, thankyewverymuch,” I can be kept very happy reading Sci Fi shorts amongst everything else.
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Posted by Cori on December 1st, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Non-Fiction, Utterly Random
http://librivox.org/insomnia-collection-vol-1/
I invented this before the Short Non-Fiction Collections came along, so it’s part-filled with people begrudgingly handing over things which THEY thought were really quite interesting, but conceded the rest of the world might find a bit nod-worthy. I contributed the starting piece of fiction on Shakespeare’s Insomnia … which IS a spoof, even if it does quote convincingly from his works at the start. Completely pointless literature. And if nothing during the recitals of reagents, walnuts and osteopathy gets the listener to sweetly slumber, I’m pretty convinced repeat play on the last track (first thousand digits of Pi) will do the trick.
During proof-listening, the only subject which incited actual snores was Some Mooted Questions In Reinforced Concrete Design but I’m looking forward to the ongoing feedback from a wider audience. Comments welcome!
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Posted by Cori on November 28th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry
I’d never read any of Thomas Hardy’s poetry … it was enough to be forced through an entire novel (FFTMC) during GCSE English, and the bits of prose I’ve dipped into since convinced me to keep my distance. Thoroughly gloomtastic is our Mr Hardy.
But, given the opportunity to actually LOOK at his poetry, I was rather taken with various pieces, and picked out three to read for a new Librivox Collection. (33, 34 and 35)
To Shakespeare After Three Hundred Years is a really sweet tribute to Will. This Heart – A Woman’s Dream is the most ‘traditional’ Hardy, being a wife who dreams of finally understanding her husband – after his death. And Great Things has echoes of my previously-recorded Brooke in The Great Lover and starts off with an entire verse about how Great cyder is. And with that, I cannot argue.
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Posted by Cori on November 15th, 2007 — Posted in Miscellaneous Audio
“There are tens of thousands of audiobooks available in the world, in various languages, ranging all the way from education to entertainment.”
http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/audiobooks
One thousand of those books are, of course, by LibriVox. In a kind acknowledgement of that, when demonstrating beta software, Nokia have converted a few LV books to play as minature-size audio files on some of their mobile phones. Splendidly, when they were choosing five out of our wide range — they included Freud’s Dream Psychology, which I contributed a chapter to.
With regard to the freeness: our books are all free, the compression format is an open standard, and the converting software is freeware. Plus a chap from Nokia took the time to sign up to the LV forum to assure us of the latter, which gets them added Nice People points, too.
I don’t have a mobile myself, and obviously I can’t condone people irradiating their head just to listen to me, (though I will be flattered,) but I’m sure with some kind of hands-free equipment, and an adequate shielding of tin-foil, owners of various mobile devices can benefit safely. Enjoy!
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Posted by Cori on November 9th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing
Just finished making a static page which lists and links all of my recordings so far. Since I’ve completed 179, this has taken a while. Still, it’s a good list. And hopefully keeping it current won’t be too complicated, since a fair bit of what I record now, I am also organising behind the scenes (BCing or MCing in LV terms), so I’ll know exactly when it goes into the catalogue.
http://piratelibrary.com/hear-me/
After a bit of tinkering with a spreadsheet, I can say that this represents 35 hrs 46 mins of audio. Not counting podcasts, King Lear or Life in the Clearings, since I didn’t actually talk for very much of those (and it’s probably balanced by including all of the group readings – The Monkey’s Paw and Many Voices.) It also doesn’t count recordings completed but not yet catalogued, which will take me over 40 hours.
My longest single recording is 49 mins, the shortest 40secs (hardly time to get the disclaimer out! Hoorah poetry!) Longest work is The Water-babies, at just over 7 hrs.
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Posted by Cori on November 8th, 2007 — Posted in LV Community Podcasts
This was a very random idea on Saturday morning, just before a very busy day offline commenced. “Hey, no-one’s gotten dibs on this week’s podcast. What could I do … hmm … ah, I know: something with crazy sci-fi sound effects.” By that evening, I had some support for it … by Sunday morning I had 4 interviewees lined up … and the audio parts for all 6 people was downloaded ready for editing by Monday evening. It took until Wednesday night to work out how to fit Holst in … and actually, the way that turned out was plain serendipity.
Though, GOODNESS, do these things take a long time to put together! 28 mins of audio = the larger part of several hours of tinkering about with it.
Notes on the show and credits
Direct download link (25.6MB)
And SFFaudio are among the first people to hear and comment on it — which is particularly nice, since I gave them a good plug for the lovely work they do in reviewing and promoting our recordings (in amongst many other people’s, of course.)
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Posted by Cori on October 25th, 2007 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Fiction
Sometimes, things just get a bit out of hand. When a little sci-fi story by Fritz Leiber wasn’t renewed as per US copyright requirements, who knew that 49 years later, people around the world would leap upon it to record for audio posterity.
My version is first into the catalogue, thanks to the editing of Mandarine. (Here, 17MB, 35mins)
Kaffen has recorded it too, and submitted it to a newly created sci-fi short story collection. Thistlechick has ALSO recorded it, and once she’s edited, I guess perhaps she’ll pop it into a Short story collection.
It *is* a good story. I’m not sure if it warranted three recordings, but then, who knows why LibriVox has a full-cast dramatic reading of Richard II completed, but not Macbeth, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream. These texts seem to have a will of their own, sometimes.
http://librivox.org/librivox-short-story-collection-vol-019/
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