In The Future
Hopefully this page won’t get too ridiculously long, though I am constantly seeing wonderful books that I absolutely must … well … acquire independent means to have enough free time to record. You know how it is.
Recommendations, votes and suggestions very welcome — though please remember that unless special arrangements are made, I will only record books in the public domain both in the UK and US. (Usually, both published before 1923, and by an author who died before 1938). Books listed below in no particular order.
Things I am definitely probably going to record:
The Mysteries of London by GWM Reynolds - a Penny Dreadful novel
Living Alone by Stella Benson - dedicated to a magically-inclined minority
The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton (an auto/biography)
Things I am considering recording:
The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton (I haven’t finished reading this yet — I may change my mind!)
Sappho: 100 Lyrics by Bliss Carman
Tenting To-night by Mary Roberts Rinehart
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward J. Ruppelt (depending on the UK copyright situation)
Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock
Trilby by George du Maurier
Things I would dearly love to record if they were out of copyright, or if their rights-holders liked my voice enough to commission an audiobook:
The Hungry Cloud by Tom Ingram - this is an amazing book … its only online presence is a handful of people raving about it! Count me among them.
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes - I’ve linked a review which says almost everything I’d want to say … except I wouldn’t characterise this as a comedy — it has unexpectedly dark shadows for the time it was written, and although the children in the story may not understand, it’s uncomfortably obvious for many adult readers what the author is hinting at. Just brilliant. Lord of the Flies with girls, pirates and subtlety.
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater - a wonderful adventure story for children. It’s brilliant bedtime reading, dark, but with those with derring-do always win out. Truly random in places, and I loved it for that and for being a book with girl-heroes. (Somehow those were thin on the ground when I was younger; though I still love Biggles and the other boy-hero things I read, I’d LOVE to record more adventures for girls that did not take place largely in haberdasheries or ballrooms.)