The Beauty of Books (Scottish-style)

In Scotland, an inspired artist has been creating wonderful paper sculptures since March, as presents for libraries, cinemas, storytelling centres, and at the Edinburgh Book Festival. It’s all a bit wonderful — well worth a read through this well-illustrated, frequently-updated blog-post, at this point on the internet. I would advise not clicking through to the… Read more »

New audiobook: Reversing Over Liberace

My second romance this year, and this is just a wonderful book. Willow is a under-employed journalist, living a relatively sedate life in the house her hippy parents left her, trying not to strangle her quirky siblings, hanging out with her best friends — and strictly no romance. Willow has a little problem, you see… Read more »

LibriVox and the Cornucopia of the Commons

Or why “Have Fun!” is the most important thing you’ll ever hear in the LibriVox fora. From a classic discussion of self-interest as applied to shared grazing-land: Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin… Read more »

New audiobook: Around the World in Stilettos

Now, myself, I couldn’t make it across the lounge in stilettos, let alone out of the front door and onward. But the heroine of my newest audiobook, Sophie Farrier, can do exactly that, as travel writer and glamour puss extraordinaire. She loves her job, she loves her shopping (most particularly shoes) and … all she… Read more »

Wharton’s The Valley of Childish Things, and Other Emblems

I recorded this collection of short parables by Edith Wharton a few months ago, as a sound test for my latest recording booth. It’s just been catalogued and is now available for general listening: [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/short_story_049_1108_librivox/shortstory049_07_valleychildishthings_cs.mp3] (13:48) In the introduction to another of her short story collections, she wrote: “To a generation for whom everything which… Read more »

A Poem in Praise of Bees

My latest addition to the LibriVox catalogue (recorded a couple of months ago, but the collection took a while to be completed) — A More Ancient Mariner by Bliss Carman. It’s a sweet poem about the buccaneering ways of the honeybee, and it goes along with a lovely swinging rhyme. The general mood matches the… Read more »

The Life of Beau Nash

In between other projects, I rummaged around the LibriVox forum for something short and interesting to record … and ended up contributing a couple of chapters to Goldsmith’s Biography of Richard Nash, which has just been completed. Although this was a collaborative work, in the end only three of us contributed to it — Tricia… Read more »

Frankenstein post 1 – oh my!

So, I’ve recorded one book for Iambik Audio (the lengthy and wonderful Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, by Lydia Millet) and I have a second lined up, which I am genuinely very excited about. It’s a huge change from OPRH, different genre, totally different narration style, and likely a different audience. I’ve been doing practice… Read more »

Reassurance after a bad-recording day

Some ways I use to feel better about my recordings, when self-doubt sneaks in, or I discover I’ve plain voiced something very badly: I listen to someone miles better than me. For me, this works because my most loved voices are very calming, soothing ones, and really, nothing can be all that wrong in a… Read more »