LibriVox – Page 66

FREE LISTENS Review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Review

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Source: Librivox
25 Zipped MP3s
Length: 5 hr, 43 min UNABRIDGED
Reader: Nichole Doolin

The book: A young lady, charmed by a young gentleman in London, agrees to take up a job as a governess to his orphaned niece and nephew. After arriving at the country estate where the children live, the governess begins to see figures around the estate that do not seem to fit with any of the servants currently living there. She learns from other servants that the former governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, Peter Quint, died mysteriously shortly before she was hired. Are the figures she has been seeing the ghosts of this couple or is it all in her mind?

James keeps up this ambiguity throughout the book, constructing dialogues and events that seem diabolical under one viewpoint and another perfectly innocent by another. The book is told from the 1st person perspective of the governess. This narrator is the only one who seems to notice the ghosts and their effects on the children, but we as readers are not sure we can trust this young lady. The degree to which James draws out the governess’s decent into horror is a bit frustrating at times, but really, this is a short book and a classic in psychology.

Rating: 7/10

The reader: Ms. Doolin sounds like a professional. Her reading is polished, using pauses and inflection to great effect. I found it interesting to compare the voice of the narrator from the first chapters where she is bright and innocent to the later where you can hear the suspicion in her voice. The other characters are not given full-fledged voices, but Ms. Doolin alters her diction and pitch enough to let us know who is talking. The recording is clean and noiseless.

Posted by Seth

Call Of The Wild by Jack London FREE @ SimplyAudiobooks.com (too bad it sucks)

SFFaudio Online Audio

September’s Free Download over on Simply Audiobooks website is Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild.

The Call of the Wild – Jack London’s classic 1903 story of Buck, a courageous dog fighting for survival in the Alaskan wilderness, is widely considered to be his masterpiece. Sometimes wrongly considered simply a children’s novel, this epic vividly evokes the harsh and frozen Yukon during the Gold Rush. As Buck is ripped from his pampered surroundings and shipped to Alaska to be a sled dog, his primitive, wolflike nature begins to emerge. Savage struggles and timeless bonds between man, dog, and wilderness are played to their heartrending extremes, as Buck undertakes a mystic journey that transforms him into the legendary “Ghost Dog” of the Klondike.

Call OF The Wild
By Jack London; Read by Michael Scott
WMD – [ABRIDGED]
Provider: SimplyAudiobooks.com / ThoughtAudio.com
Available: September 2008

Unfortunately, after a simple entry of a name and email address the download comes in a WMD file (Windows Media Download) making it virtually unusable. The MP3 files are in there, but they are very hard to get at. Unless you want to fiddle with it for more than an hour (that’s how long it took me) you’ll have to play it using a windows media device (a Zune presumably) or in a windows media player (sitting in front of your computer).
It’s absolutely not worth it. It turns out the audiobook pictured is not the audiobook you get. Simply Audiobooks displays the free audiobook as the UNABRIDGED Tantor Media version, as read by Patrick Lawlor, but instead what you actually download is the ThoughtAudio.com version (which is ABRIDGED and read by Michael Scott).

So, here’s my suggestion, download the public domain LibriVox version. That version of Call Of The Wild is UNABRIDGED, and is available in naked MP3s, a Zipped MP3 bundle, by torrent and as a podcast :

Call OF The Wild
By Jack London; Read by various readers
Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 3.25 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 2005

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/call-of-the-wild-by-jack-london.xml

The downside is that it is read by multiple readers, which is annoying, but at least it’s not going to suck up your valuable time.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells

SFFaudio Online Audio

H.G. Wells, new, Science Fiction, free, podcast, novel, get…

The Sleeper Awakes
By H.G. Wells; Read by various
25 Zipped MP3 Files or podcast – Approx. 8 Hours 14 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 2008
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian novel about a man who sleeps for two hundred years, waking up in a completely transformed London, where, because of compound interest, he has become the richest man in the world. He has been the famous Sleeper for centuries. A fanatic socialist, the main character awakes to see his nightmares realized, and the future revealed to him in all its horrors and malformities. The people adore him, and their masters – the supervisors of his legacy who rule in his name – do not want him breathing.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-sleeper-awakes-by-hg-wells.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #002

Podcast

The first one they made was so good they recorded a sequel! Indeed, The SFFaudio Podcast #002 is even more blockbustery (with 20% more bluster).

In show double-oh-two Scott D. Danielson and Jesse Willis talk about audiobooks, audio drama, and the correct pronunciation of the word “orgy.” We also talked about Recent Arrivals, New Releases, LibriVox, what we’ve been listening to, and where. It’s a big, big, show!

Topics under discussion include:

The Last Theorem, Carnival, Elizabeth Bear, L. Ron Hubbard, Galaxy Press, Zeppelins, airships, Michael Chabon, our new Publishers page, Grover Gardner, The Number 23, Scott Brick, Paul Of Dune, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, The Little Book, Selden Edwards, Brad Meltzer, The Book Of Lies, Superman, Orhan Pamuk, the Entitled Opinions podcast, Turkey, Ottoman Empire, Michael Flynn, Blackstone Audio, The January Dancer, Eifelheim, Podiobooks.com, The Kiribati Test, Jim Thompson, The Grifters, Philip K. Dick, Macmillan Audio, Anathem, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Waldentapes, Star Trek, LibriVox, Space Viking, Mark Douglas Nelson, H. Beam Piper (and our new AUTHOR PAGE for him), The Green Odyssey, The Second SFFaudio Challenge, Brandon Sanderson, Orthopedic Horseshoes, Edo van Belkom (he’s the ex-school bus driver), The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman, The Forever War, “Our Last Words”, Damon Kaswell, time travel, Peter Watts, Blindsight, Recorded Books, the Chinese room argument, artificial intelligence, Spin, Axis, Robert Charles Wilson, Robert J. Sawyer, David Brin, Startide Rising, The Immortal, Roger Zelazny, Audiofile Magazine, George R.R. Martin, A Clash Of Kings, Temüjin, audio drama, Gate, The Sonic Society, Jack J. Ward, Wormwood, acting, Michael Caine, Irwin Allen, The Swarm, Star Wars, Liam Neeson, Thulsa Doom vs. Luke Skywalker, pronunciation, mis-pronunciation, The Savage Sword Of Conan, John Varley, Audible Frontiers.

Posted by Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Challenge title: Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

SFFaudio Online Audio

SFFaudio’s Make An Audiobook Win An Audiobook Challenge #2 With almost no warning comes the latest title to be completed in the Second Annual SFFaudio Challenge…

The federation has collapsed, and now a savage barbarian commands the mighty starship Enterprise. He and his crew have looted a thousand worlds! Can anyone stop the SPACE VIKING?

No, it isn’t the latest mirror universe Star Trek adventure, this is a terrifically titled H. Beam Piper novel called SPACE VIKING, a brand new FREE AUDIOBOOK of unsurpassed quality. It is available for direct download or podcast listening.

We owe this edition to a man who more than anyone else in the audiobook field is becoming the voice of vintage Science Fiction. There are many others expanding the free library of Science Fiction audiobooks, but none so much, and dare I say it, none so well, as MARK DOUGLAS NELSON.

Nelson records in an absolutely silent and echoless environment. His pronunciation is nearly always dead-on. He comes from the ‘straight reading’ school of audiobook narration. Character voices aren’t radically different from the narrative voice – which preserves the neutral interpretive value of the original text. On the other hand, Nelson’s characters voices are tinged with whatever distinguishment the text attributes them (gender, age, accent), which makes it easy to tell who’s talking. Check it out, FREE listening, for everone from old berserkers to young maidens…

Space Viking
By H. Beam Piper; Read by Mark Douglas Nelson
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 7.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 6th 2008
A galactic war has left the Terran Federation in ruins. Formerly civilized planets have decivilized into barbarism. Space Vikings roam the wreckage, plundering and killing for gain. Lord Lucas Trask of Traskon was no admirer of the Space Vikings, but when murder takes his wife on his wedding day, Trask trades everything he has for his own Space Viking ship and sets out on a galaxy-wide quest for revenge.

Here’s the podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/space-viking-by-h-beam-piper.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs

SFFaudio Online Audio

Hot on the heels of the first book in the series, and read by the same narrator, comes The People That Time Forgot. This is another of the short Edgar Rice Burroughs novels that are more and more frequently being added to the LibriVox catalogue of public domain audiobooks.

I’m thinking that it’s about time that LibriVox’s founder, Hugh McGuire, was appointed to the senate. If there is no immediate opening in the senate, we should at least get the nomination papers in for his well deserved appointment to the Order of Canada. Who’s with me on this?

The People That Time Forgot
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Ralph Snelson
7 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – 3 Hours 49 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 2008
The People that Time Forgot is a science fiction novel, the second of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Caspak” trilogy. The first novel ended with the hero writing a manuscript of his adventures and casting it out to sea in his thermos bottle. The second novel begins with the finding of the manuscript and the organization of a rescue expedition. (summary adapted from Wikipedia)

Get this free audiobook with this feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-people-that-time-forgot-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis