Posted by Cori on December 31st, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Non-Fiction
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:
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(06:30)
Happy 2009 everyone — may all your ventures be productive and fulfilling!
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Posted by Cori on December 13th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction, LV Community Podcasts
The second of the December Madness LV community podcasts is out … petit and bijou at 13min 30sec, I didn’t get as much content as I’d hoped for, but it means I can do some New Release promotions and play a few bloopers (including a silly one of my own from Gibbon’s Decline & Fall.) I totted up the time my podcasts fill, and it’s now 7hrs 4min … that’s across 20 releases (I don’t like really long podcasts, I get fidgetty listening to them, let alone inflicting them on the world myself.)
LibriVox Community Podcast #92 (13:30min)
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I’ve also contributed a couple of readings to a lovely collection of kids’ stories: Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories by Various. Some of them are rather old-fashioned in their moralising grimness but the one I recorded was plain randomtastic. (Note: story may contain badgers.) I also recorded the Introduction, not terribly exciting.
The Accomplished and Lucky Teakettle (4:16min)
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http://librivox.org/childhoods-favorites-and-fairy-stories-by-various/
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Posted by Cori on December 7th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, LV Community Podcasts
I do like a challenge. Like, apparently, a podcast a week for LibriVox between now and Christmas. I have a plan, and the first one went well … so I’m hoping the content rolls in for the others just as easily. And that I manage to find hours in the day for the edits and my own recording. I’ve decided that 15-20 mins is about the ideal length, both for my patience in putting the thing together, and for me as a podcast consumer. I’m not sure I’ve listened to anything podcasty that lasted longer than 30 mins without looking at the clock at least once and wondering how much more there was.
This week’s show is about people’s favourite children’s books, and whether they’d record them for LV. Plus an advert for some current projects and a really nice rendition of a nursery rhyme to round the thing out (not me singing, obviously. I only include that when comedy is required.)
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(16:37min, 7.1MB)
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Posted by Cori on November 16th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction
This posted a little while ago, but forgive me, I’m just catching up! Wanted – 7 Fearless Engineers! by Warner Van Lorne (a pseudonym of F. Orlin Tremaine), is a recent addition to Gutenberg, which, at about 20k words, seemed like it might fit perfectly for a LibriVox London Chapter meetup. And so the five of us duly colour-coded the names, figured out a more or less even distribution of narrating and voicing, and went for it, recording the whole thing in an afternoon. The results are rather fun, methinks, and SFFaudio liked it too.
Get the files or the feed: http://librivox.org/wanted-7-fearless-engineers-by-warner-van-lorne/
Listen to the first part (narrated by Yours Truly):
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(16:58)
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Posted by Cori on November 14th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction, Miscellaneous Audio
Something new for me here — a non-LibriVox, fully-copyright recording. Nobodies and Somebodies is a short fantasy story recorded for the podcast at Abherrant Dreams. Free of charge, a neat story … and if you prefer reading to listening, it can also be found here.
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Posted by Cori on October 19th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction, Solos
Soooo, almost a year after I started working on it, and several months after Mandarine agreed to take on the huge task of editing this lovely-crazy book, ’tis done. The Wood Beyond the World, by William Morris, is available as a LibriVox audiobook.
http://librivox.org/the-wood-beyond-the-world-by-william-morris/
(Or stream each section through the online player here: http://www.archive.org/details/woodbeyondtheworld_0810_librivox )
It’s a great fantasy story, with interesting characters and strange plots, and it was splendid fun to read the pseudo-archaic language, even if I was tearing my hair out over it at times. Annoyingly, I think the archive.org counter has broken again, it still registers only 197 downloads so far, or else no-one’s downloaded it since the first day it was released — which is possible! SFFaudio set the original challenge and gave the book a good mention in their (excellent) recent podcast, but unfortunately, they DID refer to me as a ‘he’ throughout, so perhaps this is one of those books it’s better to read about than to read/hear. Or else they’d gotten confused with the other semi-freely available recording of the book, which can be found at AudioBooksForFree and runs a whole 10 mins longer than mine (a slower pace, not any deficiency of text, I hasten to note!) Read with a lovely British male accent, but only the lowest audioquality is available for free.
Here’s the first part — all about the lovely Golden Walter.
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(11MB, 22:56min)
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Posted by Cori on August 31st, 2008 — Posted in About LibriVoxing, Utterly Random
I was tagged by LibriVox ductapeguy, Sean McGaughey, and while I’ve done my time as Meme-Servant and moved on … I thought I could spin this one on-theme, so … here goes.
* The most common background noise you may hear in my recordings is that of seagulls — their piercing shrieks go straight through double-glazing and my sound-dampener. Luckily for me, I love the sound.
* The modern book I would most like to read is The Hungry Cloud by Tom Ingram. it has cult-status amongst those of us who’ve read it — it is a formidably good fantasy story for older children. Sadly out of print and apparently unheard of by anyone who didn’t read it, I’d still love to meet its author and say thankyou.
* My microphone is a Samson C01U. It was probably the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought in pursuit of a hobby.
* I’ve contributed 293 audio-files to LibriVox, MCed 75 projects past and present, and recorded in 4 languages (mostly briefly and badly, though!) In addition to that, I’ve hosted 15 LV community podcasts.
* I have 3 solos on the go at the moment and am about to start a 4th (but will work on finishing up the others once it’s begun.)
* I like getting feedback. It’s fun knowing who’s listening to what, and which bits they’ve enjoyed or have reservations about.
At this point I’m s’posed to tag on to another six people, but I’m just going to leave it open to anyone who’s not done this meme in a while, and is in the mood … if you-who-are-reading fancy a go, the rules are below, and feel free to drop a comment here with a link to your own post.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
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Posted by Cori on August 29th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry, Miscellaneous Audio
Euterpe Archipelago* have been putting their pick of public domain recordings to music for a while now, and my voice has popped up there now and again. Just stumbled across one that’s new-to-me … it’s an excerpt from Paradise Lost, with original music.
Paradise 101
* Alternative site, with other tracks.
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Posted by Cori on August 24th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry, Fiction, Miscellaneous Audio
I’ve spoken a bit of French, Latin and German within mainly English chapters, but my first beginning-to-end recording in a language other than English has just been released to the LibriVox catalogue, in Alphonse Allais’ À se tordre. I confess it’s only a *part* of the chapter, since the piece is a mini-play with four voices, but I’m proud anyway.
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(8:06; 3.8MB)
And one of my early recordings, a lovely E. Nesbit ghost story, is featured in this week’s Cthulu Podcast. I have a book of Nesbit’s other creepy stories, and really must get round to recording a few more of them.
So many books, so little time. It doesn’t help that I want to record nearly everything (old) I see … browsing the texts at archive.org, or the shelves at the nearest University library can be a very hazardous pastime. I currently have three official solos and a duet open, in addition to the usual collection of collaborative chapter claims. Let us not speak of the unofficial solo I somehow started yesterday. I urgently need more hours in the day!
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Posted by Cori on July 25th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Drama and Poetry, Non-Fiction
It’s been quiet on the cataloguing front in the last few weeks … I eased back on the editing I was doing, having acquired (happily-intermittant!) tendinitis in my mousing arm, which is little better with a trackball and heaps of anti-inflamatories, as yet. And I’m in the middle of lots of projects, none of which are anywhere near the catalogue stage. There’ll be a flurry in another few weeks, I’m sure.
So, the only two new entries are the Compare and Contrast of a chunk of Mill’s Subjection of Women and a little poem by Tennyson — The Miller’s Daughter. Mill I recorded a while back, and it fell due during the below-mentioned behemoth, so Starlite kindly edited it for me. I look forward to hearing the whole piece, because I start towards the end of Chapter 3, where Mill asks, and then answers, the question:
No production in philosophy, science, or art, entitled to the first rank, has been the work of a woman. Is there any mode of accounting for this, without supposing that women are naturally incapable of producing them?
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(20:22min, 9.7MB)
As for Tennyson, I did that by way of a warm-up for a Lamda Grade 6 exam in the Speaking of Verse and Prose. Haven’t had any exam results back yet, though it was fun to do and I think it went well. The poem is in the catalogue as part of a Weekly Poetry set, and was also fun to do. One odd note — not how many women recorded it … but how many apologised for recording it. It is Tennyson being rather stalker-ly, but still. The non-gendering of any text is one of the nicest things about LibriVox. Sure, generally the major parts of plays are cast “appropriately”, and I think we’ve done a very tiny number of books with gendered casting for some reason or another — but the very vast majority of projects are run on the “you want it? you read it” basis. And even those that have been voice-cast would be open to another version being made with a very different voice. So much more fun than someone saying “sorry, you don’t sound old/young/masculine/feminine/english/welsh/canadian/australian enough” — and that being the end of the story.
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(1:09min, 1.1MB)
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