January’s offerings: Nesbit, Doyle, Stein and Lawrence

It’s like buses, there are no projects for months (though I’m as busy as ever) and then several come along at once.

Such a range of options, too. Closest to my heart is Dr. Watson’s second outing in The Sign of the Four. It’s another dramatic reading, where I read all the narration and the ‘he said/she said’s’. And then each character has their own voice. It’s not a play, but entertainingly close. Arielle Lipshaw plays Holmes again, and we have an extremely verbose villain, played heroically by Laurie Anne Walden. It runs to just over four hours and the usual download options are available at the link above. I love Watson more than I can say. He’s so much more than a slightly goofy sidekick (or at least, that is my understanding of him.) He tries so hard to always do and say the ‘right thing’. He has a passion for telling a good story that Holmes, preferring bald facts, rather under-appreciates. And he’s not so very stupid, just a light year or two behind Holmes.

Something else that is quite dear to me is a little piece called Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, by Gertrude Stein. It’s often credited as being the first use of the word ‘gay’ to convey homosexuality. Also the second use, third, fourth … up to the one-hundred-thirty-nineth. And that’s all in less than 13 minutes reading time. 🙂 You know how it goes with Stein. I’d been wanting to record this for some years, but couldn’t face doing the whole book it’s contained within … nor did I think this gay little piece would be especially welcome within the Poetry or Short Story collections. So when Arielle started Geography and Plays I was In Like Flynn! If you’d like a little bit of crazy as you read the rest of this post … listen here!
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/geographyandplays_1301_librivox/geographyandplays_03_stein_64kb.mp3]

Finally, a couple of non-LibriVox recordings. Legamus is a sister project to LibriVox, operating under European copyright law (life+70). Sorry, Americans, Mexicans, Colombians: this does mean this collection of Short Stories by D. H. Lawrence is not public domain for you. If you live anywhere else in the world, then go for it. My story is the first, “A Modern Lover” and I like it exceedingly. It’s just over an hour long but comes in two parts for your lunchtime listening convenience. Some of the stories were published, censored, earlier but these are (as far as I know) the un-futzed-about-with versions via Project Gutenberg Australia.

And a non-free recording! But it’s quite cheap! I recorded E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children over the summer for Iambik Audio. It’s available at audible if you have a membership and a love for Nesbit. Or, you can download it DRM-free directly from Iambik. If you do that before the end of January, it is a mere $3.49! Use code railway-january when checking out. It’s normally $6.99 at Iambik and $11.19 or $7.49 at audible (I’m guessing that’s to do with membership privs.) It runs to just over 6 hours and IS unabridged. I didn’t think of myself as a super-speedy reader, but I can’t imagine how two other audible narrators have drawn it out to 6hrs 45min? Perhaps there’s a long music intro for each chapter. Anyway, it’s there and if you do buy it, I really hope you enjoy it. If you’re not in a buying mood, there is also a great LibriVox solo by Karen Savage for free.

More books to come in the very near future. Including a new, slightly-bizarre idea that I shall have to blog about shortly to give you a bit of a laugh, even though the recording won’t be released for a while.