Just in case you hadn’t heard of Nash, he was a celebrated dandy and leader of fashion in 18th-century England and is best remembered as the Master of Ceremonies at Bath. According to Wikipedia:

His position was unofficial, but nevertheless he had extensive influence in the city until early 1761. He would meet new arrivals to the city and judge whether they were suitable to join the select “Company’ of 500 to 600 people at the centre of Bath society, match ladies with appropriate dancing partners at each ball, pay the musicians at such events, broker marriages, escort unaccompanied wives and regulate gambling (by restraining compulsive gamblers or warning players against risky games or cardsharks). He was notable for encouraging a new informality in manners, breaking down the rigid barriers which had previously divided the nobility from the middle-class patrons of Bath, and even from the gentry.

Here’s the LibriVox page, including a link to download a single zip file for the whole audiobook: http://librivox.org/the-life-of-richard-nash-esq-by-oliver-goldsmith/ and here’s me, reading the first section (Goldsmith didn’t really do chapters in a useful way):

Download audio file (lifeofrichardnash_01_goldsmith.mp3)
(13:54)

As audiobooks go, this probably isn’t the most obvious choice for beach-listening or an absorbing commuting option. But there’s nothing else like it in the catalogue (yet!) and I sincerely hope it hits the spot for lots of listeners. We-at-LibriVox would love to know future listeners’ stories … why HAVE you picked this book..? There’s a new feedback feature available, which could be used for exactly this, or just sign up to the forum and post.

Enjoy, World!

Download audio file (anatomy5_31_gray.mp3)

(18:26) — The Urinary Bladder.
If you think I’ve pronounced “ureter” or anything else wrong … I’m sorry, I did do my best, (including completely rerecording this chapter!) and Brit and US pronunciation vary all over the place.

http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-1-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-2-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-3-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-4-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-5-by-henry-gray/

I did contribute a chapter, on General Cookery, but mostly it was a giant glossary of French cooking terms, so I’ll spare you the horror of my Franglais here, and if you’re truly curious you can click through.

http://librivox.org/the-book-of-household-management-by-isabella-beeton/

On the plus side, this IS a very big deal as books go, as it was a “household-bible” for many, many years (in the UK at least) and sold like the hot cakes it taught you to bake. LibriVox doesn’t hesitate to tackle large books (c.f. Decline & Fall!) and the proof is in the pudding … this took just over two years! One surprising thing, that I’ve just noticed, is that only 33 people read for the project. It feels like it ought to have been so many more, but those recipe chapters were lengthy …

And then I took a holiday and recorded it, and now, here’s the free audiobook version of Royal Children of English History by E. Nesbit.

Download audio file (royalchildren_1_nesbit.mp3)
(First section, 12MB, 12:37min)

It’s a retelling of the stories of a number of kings and queens of English history, in full Nesbit style. Aimed at older children (there’s a scene of quite grim threat/peril in “Prince Arthur” and there’s a number of battles / wars described,) she’s attempting to make the “people behind the headlines” real. Not to mention that these were the headlines of the day, which, as she sort of says at the start, is a helpful way to think about History when the names and dates threaten to overwhelm. Fun stuff!

http://librivox.org/royal-children-of-english-history-by-e-nesbit/

I’ve been working on my solo recording of Anna Sewell’s “Autobiography of a Horse”, Black Beauty, all summer, as its short chapters and positive attitude were a pleasant change from the intense modern non-fiction book I was recording for Audible (not yet released.) Black Beauty was catalogued at the start of the month, and is averaging 30 downloads a day, which isn’t bad going for a book which has previously been recorded for LibriVox.

Listen to Chapter 1 here:
Download audio file (blackbeauty_01_sewell.mp3)
5:03min (128kbps)

Then there was a poem which I found for the LibriVox Weekly Poetry reading. This is more of a challenge than you’d think; finding a shortish poem, by an author who died more than 70 years ago (to maximise the countries in which their work is in the public domain) and which is in some way interesting for multiple readers to try recording, and hopefully, that then has differences in the interpretations that’ll appeal to listeners. Down the Bayou by Mary Ashley Townsend fits many of these criteria, to my mind. I did find I had to check I knew how to say “bayou” correctly, but once I’d done that, I was away! (Along with 11 others. :)
Download audio file (downthebayou_townsend_cs.mp3)
1:15min (128kbps)

There are three other poems, pending cataloguing … that should happen shortly, since both collections are nearly full. I’ve not read poetry for a while, so it’s been really nice to come back to it.

And finally, lady pirates! Yes, my long-ago-read chapter on the “Adventures And Heroism Of Mary Read” has now been entered into the catalogue, and you can hear it as part of The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms (Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers)! Or here:

Download audio file (piratesownbook_26_ellms.mp3)
10:04min (128kbps)

I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!

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: Download audio file (declineandfall_bk6_01_gibbon.mp3)
(06:30)

Happy 2009 everyone — may all your ventures be productive and fulfilling!

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?

Download audio file (subjectionofwomen_08_mill_64kb.mp3)
(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.

Download audio file (themillersdaughter_tennyson_cs.mp3)
(1:09min, 1.1MB)

It’s interesting to record with other people around … I feel like I made fewer mistakes with people listening to me (the editors of these chapters may disagree!) And it’s quite sociable, too, gives an instant and limitless source of conversation in wondering at the lengths of TF’s literary poaching.

Probably the least expected of all the chapters is the one collecting stories of Dead Hands – linked below for your listening pleasure:
Download audio file (strangepages_08_dyer_64kb.mp3)
(10:54, 5.2MB)
http://librivox.org/strange-pages-from-family-papers-by-t-f-thiselton-dyer/

This takes my total catalogued recording time up over 61 hours, which is nice, because, what with struggling to finish an old solo project, putting in long-ago claimed chapters, and editing the Midsummer Night’s Dream behemoth, it feels like I’ve not been doing much “real” recording.

Another gem catalogued recently was the splendid essay by Agnes Repplier, (1855-1950), titled “A Short Defence of Villains”, in which she argues that Modern Literature is impoverished somewhat by a lack of really good moustache-twirling villains for its heroes and heroines to quest against. You’ll need quite a good background in the literature of her time to make sense of all the references, but it’s a lovely piece regardless.
Download audio file (shortdefenceofvillains_repplier_cs_64kb.mp3)
(21:03, 10.1MB)

LibriVox catalogue page link

Download audio file (declineandfall_bk4_16_gibbon_64kb.mp3)

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!

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.

Download audio file (pi_50_onebreath_cs.mp3)