Saturday, July 5th, 2008
I finished listening to “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells from Librivox. This is the version done in collaboration and read by many different narrators. There is also a version red by a solo narrator. I have never read H. G. Wells original version. Only listened to recreations of the Orson Welles 1938 radio version or the 1953 and 2005 versions of the movie. Which brings me to a bit of a rant.
First, the audio book I listened to was very good. I did not mind the different voice at each chapter and found the quality of the audio very good. The story itself is of course legendary and in my mind far better than the other versions I have seen.
Now the rant. Why does hollywood alter such great stories and weaken them with their own ideas when frankly the original story is far more thrilling exciting? Perhaps it’s the lack of imagination. I’m ashamed to think that it is a need to “American-ize” everything. Another story I think was ruined by the Hollywood crowd is the story of Operation Primrose and the capture of U-110. You will probably recognize the Hollywood movie name of “U-571″. U-110 was captured before the United States entered the war and was captured by quick thinking British and the Royal Navy and is a grand tale on it’s own.
If you have never read of listened to H.G. Wells original story then please get it. It’s a great story!
Tags: audio, book, Entertainment, H.G. Wells, Podcast, rant
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
As I mentioned a few days ago, I downloaded some free audio books from Librivox. I finished listening to
“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” yesterday. I’ve read the book myself and love the tales of Sherlock Holmes so was looking forward to listening to these great tales again. As it turns out, my choice perfectly illustrated something I commented about previously. And that is that when choosing audio books recorded by volunteers the quality may vary. Each chapter of this selection is read by a different person and some are a pleasure to listen to. While one or two others were a bit painful. But all in all it was fun to move around the empty quiet school building I am working in with the well known Sherlock Holmes.
In any case, I get what I pay for.
I’m now listening to “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells.
Tags: audio, book, Entertainment, Podcast
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Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Finally, it’s summer time! Since I work in a public school system, that means eight or nine weeks working with few people around. Lots of time working alone. So I’ve been loading up my iPod with lots of free audio books.
The sources of free audio books on the World Wide Web is pretty wide. I’ve written about a few authors who podcast in the past. There are many others out there. Here are some sources I found for books I wanted to read:
For classic stories and older tales that are now in the public domain then check out LibriVox. I downloaded ten days of audio for my summer listening pleasure. Between my regular podcast listening and these stories then my summer alone time should be full.
A few things I might suggest about exploring free audio books is that you should be prepared for wide degrees of quality recordings. Some are very good and professional. Most are very fine amature recordings. But some are downright bad and the quality distracts from the story itself.
Then there is the telling of the tale itself. Like a good joke, some people can repeat a good joke and get everyone laughing. While others, like me, can ruin a great joke with poor delivery. This is true of narrators as well. So I advise picking a chapter and having a test listen before spending lots of time and bandwidth downloading hundreds of megabytes of audio files. I just can’t hear the story through some narrators tone and inflection. But some narrators are true actors and can really add to a story with their voices.
I’ll report back in a week or so with a report some of the first stories I’ve listened to.
Tags: audio, book, Entertainment, free, Podcast
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