Recs of free audiobooks
Nov. 30th, 2010 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI listen to a lot of audiobooks from Librivox, which is a site where you can download free audiobooks of works in the public domain, recorded by volunteers. There are tons of audiobooks of varying quality over there, though, so I thought I'd do some recs. In fact, I often like these amateur recordings (along with podfics, of course) just as well or even better than professional audiobooks.
Probably my favorite reader is Karen Savage. She reads fairly quickly, but very crisply and clearly and with great dialogue. She's done Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, the first three books in the Anne of Green Gables series, and various other stuff (mostly children's books). Another great reader is Elizabeth Klett, who's recorded Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Eyre, among other things. Laurie Ann Walden has recorded A Study In Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I just love her voice. She has some sort of accent that I can't place, but it's very pleasant to listen to. Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes canon is on Librivox, and I've been listening my way through it. These two books have the best recordings, though.
I have a weakness for travel journals, especially ones from polar exploration. Most of these aren't recorded by single readers (that is, people do one chapter each), so the quality varies.
- South! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton. This one's pretty exciting, really. Mixed quality on the reading, though.
- The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen. More emphasis on the proper preparation than on having adventures--then again, that's why he got the job done.
- Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen. He was the one who drifted across the polar sea with the Fram, stuck in the drift ice.
They also have the journals from Scott's south pole expedition, but I haven't listened to them yet, maybe because I know there will be angst and scurvy and death. Other travel journals I like are Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum and The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams, which is a down-to-earth account of the daily life of a cowboy. Both are read by single (male) readers who are very pleasant to listen to.
I also like listening to fairy tales--they're oral storytelling to begin with, so it seems fitting to listen to them as audiobooks. There's Grimm's Fairy Tales, two different collections of Japanese traditional stories, H C Andersen's fairy tales, Celtic fairy tales, Scandinavian fairy tales, and various versions of A Thousand and One Nights. Most of these are read by lots of different readers, and I haven't listened to them all yet.
Hmm, what else? Of due South interest is Mounted Police Life in Canada: a record of thirty-one years' service, by Richard Burton Dean. Haven't listened to it yet, though. Oh, and there's also the Insomnia Collection, meant to help people go to sleep. It doesn't contain the RCMP manual, although there is a 35-minute section from "General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada". Also the first thousand digits of pi. *g*
Probably my favorite reader is Karen Savage. She reads fairly quickly, but very crisply and clearly and with great dialogue. She's done Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, the first three books in the Anne of Green Gables series, and various other stuff (mostly children's books). Another great reader is Elizabeth Klett, who's recorded Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Eyre, among other things. Laurie Ann Walden has recorded A Study In Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles, and I just love her voice. She has some sort of accent that I can't place, but it's very pleasant to listen to. Almost all of the Sherlock Holmes canon is on Librivox, and I've been listening my way through it. These two books have the best recordings, though.
I have a weakness for travel journals, especially ones from polar exploration. Most of these aren't recorded by single readers (that is, people do one chapter each), so the quality varies.
- South! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton. This one's pretty exciting, really. Mixed quality on the reading, though.
- The South Pole, by Roald Amundsen. More emphasis on the proper preparation than on having adventures--then again, that's why he got the job done.
- Farthest North, by Fridtjof Nansen. He was the one who drifted across the polar sea with the Fram, stuck in the drift ice.
They also have the journals from Scott's south pole expedition, but I haven't listened to them yet, maybe because I know there will be angst and scurvy and death. Other travel journals I like are Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum and The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams, which is a down-to-earth account of the daily life of a cowboy. Both are read by single (male) readers who are very pleasant to listen to.
I also like listening to fairy tales--they're oral storytelling to begin with, so it seems fitting to listen to them as audiobooks. There's Grimm's Fairy Tales, two different collections of Japanese traditional stories, H C Andersen's fairy tales, Celtic fairy tales, Scandinavian fairy tales, and various versions of A Thousand and One Nights. Most of these are read by lots of different readers, and I haven't listened to them all yet.
Hmm, what else? Of due South interest is Mounted Police Life in Canada: a record of thirty-one years' service, by Richard Burton Dean. Haven't listened to it yet, though. Oh, and there's also the Insomnia Collection, meant to help people go to sleep. It doesn't contain the RCMP manual, although there is a 35-minute section from "General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada". Also the first thousand digits of pi. *g*
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 03:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 09:40 pm (UTC)They're really very suited to the audiobook format, though--I mean, I find it hard to listen to anything too complicated as an audiobook, especially if the reading is fast. For example, I tried Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union", but had to stop quite soon, because it was just too dense for me. But the somewhat repetitive format of these travel accounts work really well for me to listen to ("February 15. We were now at latitude 81 degrees north..."). It just sort of flows in a comforting way, and the first person POV sounds like someone telling me a story.
Of course, I'm sure audiobooks work very differently for different people--this is just the way I experience them.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 08:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 02:38 am (UTC)Thanks for this useful collection.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 08:32 am (UTC)I'm unsure about the post office instructions. I mean, I'm pretty sure I couldn't hear "the Dominion of Canada" without thinking of that whole scene in "Mountie on the Bounty" and Fraser saying "you are now entering the Dominion of Canada!". Which is just not conducive to sleeping.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 03:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-30 11:25 pm (UTC)The Log of a Cowboy
single (male)
Because apparently I am twelve, it took me a moment or two to go, "Oh, right, THAT kind of log."
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 08:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 02:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-01 08:20 am (UTC)