Posted by Cori on January 14th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
Ah, it’s lovely to have archive.org behaving again … all sorts of long-ago recordings of mine are finding their way home, finally. Like my contribution to A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens … I read the chapters England Under Richard the Second and England Under Henry the Fourth, Called Bolingbroke last June. Most of it is fairly straightforward prose, but Dickens does have occasional really splendid turns of phrase which remind me of the Horrible History books now … such as here, on greeting an unwanted visitor:
‘Fair cousin of Lancaster,’ said the King, ‘you are very welcome’ (very welcome, no doubt; but he would have been more so, in chains or without a head).
Posted by Cori on January 13th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
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:
Posted by Cori on January 12th, 2008 — Posted in My Recordings
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..?
Frustratingly, archive.org is all over the place at the moment, and is not accepting new uploads as easily as it used to. Which means I have a heap of recordings just sitting around waiting for things to straighten up. I’ve finished my latest solo (E. Nesbit’s Nine Unlikely Tales - quirky fairy stories), and have contributed some poetry to Weekly / Fortnightly collections which are also waiting. I seized upon the last section of Paradise Lost and it is recorded, but I’ve not found the momentum to edit it yet, since even though that would complete the book … the upload’s in limbo. The Mystery Story Collection, which homes my favourite self-recording to date, is also goin’ nowhere right now. It’s all so annoying. I know archive.org’s free and performing a great service and all that … but I Want It To Work Now.
The one thing that HAS improved there in the last few days, and which had been broken for weeks, is the download counters. Currently, for my solos, Austen’s had 2,336 downloads, Stein is sitting pretty on 816 and Kingsley is at 3,618. Jane Eyre, to whom I contributed a single chapter (but the one where she meets Rochester!) is rapidly approaching the quarter-million mark, today it’s at 247,927 downloads and is LibriVox’s top book. Cool, cool.
Posted by Cori on December 22nd, 2007 — Posted in My Recordings
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!
Posted by Cori on December 11th, 2007 — Posted in My Recordings
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
Posted by Cori on December 3rd, 2007 — Posted in My Recordings
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.
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.
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!
Posted by Cori on November 28th, 2007 — Posted in My Recordings
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.