Audio Books Videos

The 12th and final episode of Brand Gamblin s scifi tale, Tumbler, has been added. Now you can can enjoy any and all episodes at your leisure!

One of the oddities in the LibriVox catalog is our recording of James Joyce s Ulysses. It gets not-infrequent complaints, well-deserved I suppose if a listener is expecting, oh, an audiobook of James Joyce s Ulysses. While some of the chapters of that book are read straight up, it was an early project where creative interpretations were encouraged, and there are some strange chapters in there. The first chapter, one I participated in, seems to stop many listeners in their tracks. The recorders of chapter one have been called: fools, jerks, jocks, idiots, criminals and worse; the recording has been called: an insult to Joyce, an insult to listeners, an insult to literature, a travesty, a hoax, a bad joke, and embarrassing, among other things. One listener suggested that his dog would do a better job of making the recording. Of course I tell every complainant that we ll put up alternate versions along with the originals if they wish to record it for us, as is standard LibriVox policy; so far no one has produced another recording for us. Still I thought it worthwhile to give a bit of context to our version of Ulysses. LibriVox started in late August 2005, really got rolling in September 2005; by the end of October 05, we d completed eight (yes, 8) books: Conrad s Secret Agent; Frank L Baum s Road to Oz; Dostoyevsky s Notes from the Underground; Washington Irving s Old Christmas, Henry James International Episode (both requests from the Internet Archive), Call of the Wild, Frankenstein, and PG Wodehouse s Psmith in the City. All reasonable, approachable, easy books. And relatively short. And so when I proposed Ulysses as a book we should tackle, in early November 2005, just two months and change after LibriVox came into being there was something of a gasp in our little (at the time) community of free-public-domain-audiobook makers Ulysses? Joyce s Ulysses? Yikes. We were only figuring out how to manage more than a handful of projects at the time. We were just a bunch of strangers who thought it would be fun to make free audiobooks, and we were cobbling together a way to get it done by anyone in the world who wanted to help out. But: Ulysses? In the spirit of taking on impossible tasks (our objective, after all, is to record every public domain text in the universe and give the audiobooks away for free), we jumped in. Ulysses project start date: November 8, 2005; finish date: June 16, 2007 (19 months later). Because Ulysses seemed like such a crazy project, we added some special rules to go along with the recording of this, probably the most intimidating book in the English language: 1.editing allowed but not required you can record it as is. bad sound, backround noise, whatever, will add to the experience, I *think* JJ would approve 2. extra points for recording in a pub or public place (on the street is good) 3. bonus points if you record in dublin 4. you are encouraged to get others to help you record your chapter 5. more extra points for getting several people to record with you in a pub. 6. square those points if those other people are strangers 7. Target completion date: midnight, June 14 (2006) [actual completion: June 16, 2007] [You can see the forum discussions from the project thread when it was launched]. And with that set of special guidelines, off we went, with little regard for anything except trying to make a free audio version of Ulysses, or at least something like that. This project was and is truly different than anything else LibriVox did because we were so liberal in approach to the text. But to me, anyway, it paralleled the madness of LibriVox itself. We were driven not by thoughts of who might listen, but rather by the wonderful craziness of the idea of getting a bunch of amateurs to try to record the darned thing; and that crazy idea was translated, I can report, into wonderful craziness on the evening of the recording of Chapter One of Ulysses, at my house. An indescribable night of art and performance and bacchanalia, at the end of which there was an audio document, an mp3. It would take a year-and-a-half before the rest of the chapters would be finished, and published. Would anyone listen? Who knew? Who cared? [I can't remember what the total downloads we'd had in those first couple of months of LibriVox, but it couldn't have been more than a few hundred, possibly a few thousand]. As for the other chapters of our Ulysses, there is so much variety in that audiobook: from the chaotic and impromptu, to the straight, to the ambitiously artistic (see: Chapter 15f [mp3]) and the abstract (see: Chapter 18 [mp3]). The point with LibriVox in the early days (and, I would argue, still) was just to make these recordings, and to keep making them, to encourage more people to make, and give away, recordings of books they cared about, until we d finished recording all the books there were to record. We just hoped that someone somewhere might find some use for some of these audiobooks at some point. Our focus though has always been on the readers, the volunteers, the people making recordings they are our true constituents; that the rest of the world gets a library of free audiobooks has always seemed to me to be a wonderful fringe benefit of our true work, which is helping people make and give away recordings of texts they love. And of course, we ve always had the following policy: if you do not like any of our recordings, please record an alternate version for us and we ll post it along with the first. Still, knowing that Ulysses is a strange beast, our catalog page states the following: NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual LibriVox procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as creative group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text. Listener be warned! So, if you find yourself listening to our recording of Ulysses agreeing with our previous correspondents who think we are insulting poor James Joyce s memory by allowing such an audiobook to exist, here are some practical responses: We encourage multiple recordings of the same text. Your version of any chapter of Ulysses would be welcomed heartily (so far we ve had no takers for adding other versions of the existing Ulysses chapters which is another good reason to have such an idiosyncratic first chapter perhaps it is so hard to listen to that someone finally will get fed up and gives us another version two-and-a-half years later, we re still waiting). There is, as of today, a catalog of 2879 non-Ulysses audiobooks for you to choose from I can recommend a few if you like There is no other recording like Ulysses in the LibriVox catalog everything else is recorded to the best of our ability to conform to the text (Oh, actually somewhere in there is a New Year s recording of Shakespeare s Sonnet XXVIII [mp3] [text] that is not far off the Ulysses aesthetic). So, perhaps you won t like our recording of Ulysses. Or, perhaps you might pour yourself one of your favourite beverages, and sit down to listen to, and enjoy a chaotic performance of Joyce s chaotic work. But the thing we wish, more than anything else, is that you would make a recording for us: of Ulysses, or any other public domain text that you love dearly, and think ought to be available in audio format to the whole world, for free.

Dr. Sloper speaks with his sisters Mrs. Penniman and Mrs. Almond.

Dit vierde luisterboek staat weer barstensvol heerlijke muziek en humoristische liedjes. Voor kinderen maar ook voor hun ouders een uitermate aangename luisterervaring! Leeftijd: 4+ Uitgegeven door Uitgeverij Rubinstein (2009) Spreker(s): Job Schuring

When lawyer, Jenny Cooper, is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she s hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets, and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny s curiosity is aroused. In the face of powerful and sinister forces determined to keep both the truth hidden and the troublesome coroner in check, Jenny embarks on a lonely and dangerous one-woman crusade for justice which threatens not only her career but also her sanity.

It's a freezing winter day in London, 1895, when two young girls have a chance meeting. The pair turn out to have much in common: both are poor, both are parentless. But Minnie Maude, only eight, has even worse problems: the uncle with whom she lived has just been murdered, and if that's not enough, the family's donkey has run away. Her new friend Gracie, all of thirteen, feels obliged to help her, and so the girls team up to solve the mystery and find Charlie the donkey.

Please welcome back Nathan P. Butler to the site. Today he s making available in its entirety the serialized audiobook of his novel, Greater Good: In the world of tomorrow, the American Regime dominates our hemisphere, ruled by a new nobility: telepaths. While this powerful new minority rules over the normal human majority, society enjoys stability and security. However, with this new world comes new prejudices and oppression. Now, a powerful telepathic killer from the future has come to our present to eliminate this new world a serial killer today, a genocide for tomorrow. It is up to a law enforcement officer from the future and an unwitting FBI agent to stop him before he can act in the name of the Greater Good. Since all 16 episodes are already released, you ve got options. Want to mainline them all? Grab the default feed and change your podcatcher s settings to get all episodes. Or if you want to enjoy them one at a time, take a custom feed. You choose when the next episode comes to you. And the next. And the next

How do you spend your time in the car? Audio books are awesome, and you can even use a Netflix type of rental system, here's the link to one of the biggest providers, Audible http://bit.ly/vu4bx

Teel McClanahan III is back. And this time, there very likely may be dead zombies everywhere. Cheating, Death starts now: When the walking dead fill the streets, who can cheat death? Who can survive? Featuring a zombie outbreak that devastates Denver, an indecisive adulterer, and a series of violent, disturbing, and perhaps even heart-rending events of the sort you d expect when the dead rise up to eat the living, Cheating, Death is a roller-coaster ride through a horror show both of death and of the heart. Cheating, Death is the fourth glimpse of the storybook universe first seen in Lost and Not Found, and gives a detailed look at the zombie outbreak that put the events of Forget What You Can t Remember in motion. Listen to one for fun, then read and/or listen to them all to get the rest of the story. We re starting out with a single episode, though Teel is very good about putting new episodes up weekly until the book is finished. Grab a default feed to listen at his pace, or a custom feed to listen at your own.

Today, I had a chance to meet in person with with U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman (D. California) about a matter I feel very strongly about: Children's Literacy. Now, it's not news to anyone that literacy rates among children have dropped dramatically over the past decade. Though many people like to blame schools or the home environment, my personal belief is that children of all ages aren't reading because they are not inspired to. In fact, it took a boy wizard to prove this simple theory. After Harry Potter's initial release, libraries all over were inundated by kids who were inspired to read more because they discovered the joy of books and the unbridled thrill of imagining these stories come to life in their own minds. I have on many occasions postulated that the erosion of readership among adults has come not from laziness nor the proliferation of entertainment choices like video games, television or the internet, but from the fact that people are generally sick of cookie-cutter choices major media has given us in the name of cloning one success to hopefully breed another. Children are amazing beings capable of making this distinction, though they may not know why. Children everywhere, by nature, love to explore the depths of their own imaginations but those imaginations require inspiration to blossom. How many of us remember those moments from our own childhoods or have seen in our own children the wonderful moment inspiration strikes and the voracious desire to consume more and more of that which had inspired us. Books make up a vast universe full of adventure, fantasy and wonderful characters and literacy is the ticket to that world. We live in the era of the mp3 generation. The iPod and the computer are two of the most ubiquitous sources of entertainment consumption by today's youth and those audiences are skewing younger than ever. I firmly believe we can use audiobooks to inspire children to seek out stories and inspire them to fall in love with the fantastical worlds that exist out there in books. What I would like to do is plant this seed of a concept in the mind of U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman. All politicians respond to united voices. Please join me in sending this message to Congressman Sherman (Sherman@BradSherman.com) by e-mailing him a simple statement saying, more or less: I agree with Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff that children's literacy can be inspired through audiobooks . Feel free to change the message as suits you most. I only ask that you reference my name so Congressman Sherman can know better why you are writing based upon my meeting with him. And please, for your own sake, don't try to be funny and send him the kind of messages that will ultimately get you into trouble. Please understand this is not a joke nor some elaborate prank of some kind, it's one of those very rare moments I am being completely serious about something I believe very strongly about. Those of you who know me, know that I never hesitate to speak up about a cause that I feel is important and I hope that you too, feel that children's literacy is a matter you care enough about to send just one email. And those of you who are writers yourselves, please join me in this effort because inspiring today's kids into becoming tomorrow's readers means a future that's brighter for everybody.