Posted by Cori on November 1st, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, Book Reviews, Non-Fiction, Solos
I came across this lovely book about a month ago. Shortly after, a partner-in-crime whizzed it through Distributed Proofreaders in most accomplished style, and it was stored at Project Gutenberg. Preserving all its charming illustrations, and quite a bit of the book’s layout, I might add!
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.
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(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/
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Posted by Cori on October 22nd, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, About Recording Audio, Drama and Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Solos
This month, I have catalogued a book, some collaborative contributions, and — finally, more pirates!
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:
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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. :)
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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:
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10:04min (128kbps)
I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!
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Posted by Cori on March 16th, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, Drama and Poetry, Solos
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.
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(1:17)
http://librivox.org/elegiac-sonnets-and-other-poems-by-charlotte-turner-smith/
(1:22:53 of 3:04:49)
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Posted by Cori on March 9th, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, Book Reviews, Fiction, Solos
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!
Listen to chapter 1 below, download the book from this page, or visit archive.org to stream the whole thing.
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12:06min, 64kbps
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Posted by Cori on March 8th, 2009 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction, Solos
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.
Audible.co.uk link | Audible.com link
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.
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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 April 25th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About LibriVoxing, Solos
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?
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Posted by Cori on March 8th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, About Recording Audio, Book Reviews, Fiction, Solos
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:
http://librivox.org/mathilda-by-mary-shelley/
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.
Audio for Chapter 1:
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Posted by Cori on January 13th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Book Reviews, Fiction, Solos
So, Mystery Story Collection Vol. 1 is now catalogued, and ready for the world’s listening pleasure, and my contribution to it is the rather long short-story, A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell. It is, apparently, a ‘cosy/cozy’ mystery for those who discriminate, and for those who don’t, I can tell you that the lead characters are female and the action takes place in a kitchen. A man is strangled in his own bed, but whodunnit — and why?
I *LOVED* recording this story. It’s been on my To Do list for months, ever since the first time I read it — and cried too, it packed a punch for me. When Gesine invented the Mystery Collection, it was a natural fit, and so, I link here my free audio recording of:
A Jury of her Peers by Susan Glaspell – 53 min 26 sec
Source: E-text
[mp3@64kbps - 25.6MB]
[mp3@128kbps - 51.3MB]
[ogg vorbis - 26.8MB]
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I’ve also found a variant text as a play, which is retitled Trifles … same author, same plot, similar dialogue. Good stuff!
Now to download the other stories in this collection …
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Posted by Cori on January 12th, 2008 — Posted in * My Recordings, Fiction, Solos
Hooray — finally, archive.org is behaving itself again, and my next solo is complete. Nine Unlikely Tales for Children by E. Nesbit is a 1901 book I found in the library a while back … and there isn’t an online version of the text, so I thought it would be jolly to scoop a reading of it. Nesbit is a pure joy to read aloud: the stories go along at a great pace for the kids, and there’re enough nods to an adult sense of humour to make an entertaining listen no matter how old one is. Now, that said, folks have to cope with me Doing Voices, which isn’t to everyone’s liking. But, I don’t believe in fairy tales without them, just wouldn’t seem quite right in my listening world. And how, exactly, would YOU voice a bouncible ball, anyway..?
http://librivox.org/nine-unlikely-tales-for-children-by-e-nesbit/
Zip file of the entire book (145 MB)
Total running time: 5:01:57
Hope everyone enjoys them — Comments welcome!
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