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I have a job this summer painting walls all day long and audiobooks have been my salvation. I can listen to about three-fourths of one per day if I get into the story or about half of one if I feel like listening to music for a few hours. Anyway, I'm trying to save money at the moment and I've had to resort to free resources. Thankfully, there are many free recordings of good quality that are widely available. Here (besides my city's main branch public library which has an excellent collection) are a few of my favorites: The New Yorker Fiction podcast Well this is a pretentious first suggestion but I suggest it first because it is a very well-done program that has given me many hours of enjoyment and reflection. Each episode is about 30 minutes long and consists of a brief interview and a reading of a short story by a guest contributor to the New Yorker. The selected stories are usually fantastic and well-read and the interviews are rarely tedious. The interviews have helped me understand the story better without explaining or unpacking everything. Below are a few episodes that I have enjoyed listening to several times. If you are doubtful that you will enjoy them, at lest try the first three: "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff "Symbols and Signs" by Vladimir Nabokov "The Gospel According to Mark" by Jorge Luis Borges "Dance in America" by Lorrie Moore "A Summer's Reading" by Bernard Malamud "Spring Fugue" by Harold Brodkey Lit2Go For traditional audiobooks you can't go wrong with anything from Lit2Go, a fine collection of recordings offered by a collaboration between various colleges in Florida. I've listened to readings of Shakespeare plays, Moby Dick, and some others. This is a fantastic offering with some excellent readers. Highly recommended. Librivox I like Librivox in principle. It is a very democratic project. Unfortunately, many of the Librivox readers have reading voices that I cannot stand to listen to. There are many good readers, but even their efforts are undermined by the several bad ones that share a novel with them. I don't usually feel up to the task of checking each chapter of the book to make sure the readers don't have nasal or affected voices, but I recently discovered that you can sort by "solo projects" under the advanced search menu. I prefer to hear the books by one reader so "solo projects" are my preferred way of finding material from that site. I'm fascinated by this man's accent and this story is very funny: The Parenticide Club by Ambrose Bierce I'm looking forward to this reading of The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope iTunes U Besides being a great way to learn more about any subject you can think to type into the search bar, I have discovered that this is a great way to find long recordings of poets reading their own poetry. Of course, university auditoriums are where most poetry readings are held these days and many universities have made recordings of these public readings available for free online through iTunes U. Today I listened to a reading by Richard Wilbur, a poet who I very much enjoyed reading as an undergrad. It wasn't the best lineup of his work, but I was surprised to see that the recording was from the 1960s and that it had several poems of his that are not even published in his collected works. Wilbur has a deep and sonorous voice and it was great to hear his own poems and the anecdotes associated with them from his own mouth. So if you're a diehard fan of a particular poet or author, it's worth checking this iTunes U service to see if you can find a recording of an interview or a public reading. Happy listening.
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May 27, 2010 01:24
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Based on a recommendation here, I picked up Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and started listening to it today. I think it is the anecdotal style of writing that makes this a far better audiobook than a paper book. The reader has a good voice for storytelling and some passages (like the "Italian" poem, for instance) are much funnier when you can listen to an over-the-top dramatization of it as opposed to reading it for yourself. God, that part left me breathless I was laughing so hard.
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Jul 26, 2010 22:53
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