Monday, January 16, 2012
Happy New Year
I've been meaning to post here, but since the new semester started, things have been busy and don't show signs of letting up. Therefore, I'll probably be posting much less on Free Listens. You'll still see an occasional review, but I'll not be posting every week like in months past.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Merry Christmas
I'll not be posting any new reviews for the next few weeks while I'm on vacation for the Christmas and New Years' holidays. Until then, check out these seasonal free audiobooks and stories from years past:
"The Dead" by James Joyce
"Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore
"A Kidnapped Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum
"The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
"The Dead" by James Joyce
"Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Clement C. Moore
"A Kidnapped Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum
"The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
Friday, December 16, 2011
"Markheim" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Length: 44 minutes
Reader: William Coon
The story: In desperate need of money on Christmas Day, Markheim approaches a local pawnbroker. Markheim's evil intentions go beyond just selling stolen goods. His deeds, however secretive, do not go unnoticed. A touch of the supernatural enters into the story, bringing the tale beyond the usual trappings of a dark crime story and into a discussion of the nature of evil and the powers of free will.
This story strongly reminded me of Crime and Punishment (previously reviewed) with both its general outline and its themes. The major difference is the addition of the supernatural into the story. This addition allows Stevenson to open up the story into the future and past, but also into the soul of Markheim and investigate the essence of his being. With only a fraction of the length of Dostoevsky's novel, Stevenson is able to visit many of the same themes.
Rating: 8 / 10
The Reader: Coon is a superb reader. He builds the tension of this story so that the listener feels the growing psychological horror of the crime. Even though this recording dates to the early days of LibriVox, Coon's recording is clear and well-made.
photo by wallg via flickr. Creative Commons by attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The Wondersmith by Fitz-James O'Brien
Length: 1 hr, 32 min
Reader: Maureen O'Brien
The story: On a back street of 19th century New York stands an odd shop labeled simply "Wondersmith." No one is quite sure what is sold there, though beautiful toy figures are arranged in the shop window. Deep within the Wondersmith store, a secret meeting is held shortly before Christmas to devise a plan to use children's gifts to advance a nefarious plot.
"The Wondersmith" is the type of racist and formulaic tale that sold lurid dime novels in the mid 1800s. The villains are evil gypsies intent on murdering Christian children. The heroine is perfect and noble as she is beautiful. Yet, despite these tropes, the story is exciting and chilling. It's easy to see why such stories sold so well to a public in search of Christmas entertainment.
Rating: 7 / 10
The reader: As the host of the Maria Lectrix podcast, Maureen O'Brien has years of experience in telling stories. Her podcast is focused on Catholic religion, but she also reads stories and books only tangentially related to religion. The archive features large number of stories, novels and religious nonfiction. All this experience shows in her reading of this story. She has a warm, expressive voice that she modulates for the different characters. She slightly alters the text of the story to replace a misused word, but otherwise the story is complete and unabridged.
photo by geekygirlnyc via flickr. Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
"The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde
Length: 25 min
Reader: Alex Wilson
The story: Children's stories are a convenient framework to present a fable about life in the world of adults. This is what Oscar Wilde does in this famous short story. Like Hard Times, "The Happy Prince" presents the despair of poverty and greed of the rich.
The Prince of the title is a statue of a man who was wealthy in life, but now sees the sadness of the poor from the vantage point of his pedestal. His companion is a sparrow who has delayed in flying south with the rest of his flock and decides to help the prince to alleviate the suffering of the people of the city. The story has the melancholy feel of Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree".
Would this be a good story for modern children? Perhaps. Depressing stories seem to have fallen out of favor recently as parents try to shelter their children against a depressing world, but the lessons of empathy for others is one that everyone, both children and adults, need to learn.
Rating: 8 / 10
The reader: Wilson is an outstanding performer of short stories. He voices the creatures and people of this story with such great characterizations that they almost become real. The voice of the birds is an especially expressive one. The recording is superbly engineered and provided in several formats other than the mp3 directly linked above.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Source: Librivox (zipped mp3s)
Length: 12 hr
Readers: narrated by Bob Neufeild, voiced by many
The book: The lower classes do all the work and have little to show for it, while the rich get richer. Charles Dickens saw the same problems 150 years ago that people are protesting today. Like Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (previously reviewed), Dickens blends fiction and social activism in his attack on industrialization and the plight of the working class.
Unlike Sinclair's muckraking style, Dickens lacks authenticity in his novel. At the time of writing this book, Dickens was already a well-known writer, so it's unlikely that his sources were anything better than second-hand accounts of life in the factories. Instead of realism, Dickens makes his industrialists into blatant cartoons, bluntly criticizing what he did not know. Still, the novel is readable for Dickens' sense of humor and his trademark pathos. I just wish he had taken his approach more seriously and shown the real pathos in the working man's life.
Rating: 6 / 10
The readers: This book is presented as a dramatic reading, somewhere between a play and a narration. None of Dickens' words have been changed (the "he said"s are even still there), but different readers play each part. This can be a great help in keeping track of who is who, but it gets a bit disconcerting to hear all the different voices, especially since they have different accents and recording equipment. The parts are done very well, for the most part, and edited together nicely. Bob Neufield, as the narrator, does most of the speaking. The main parts are all well-acted, but I won't spend time naming names. This is an interesting way to present an audiobook and, for the most part, it works.
(Entered in Cym Lowell's Book Review Wednesday. Follow the link to read reviews of other books)
Length: 12 hrReaders: narrated by Bob Neufeild, voiced by many
The book: The lower classes do all the work and have little to show for it, while the rich get richer. Charles Dickens saw the same problems 150 years ago that people are protesting today. Like Upton Sinclair in The Jungle (previously reviewed), Dickens blends fiction and social activism in his attack on industrialization and the plight of the working class.
Unlike Sinclair's muckraking style, Dickens lacks authenticity in his novel. At the time of writing this book, Dickens was already a well-known writer, so it's unlikely that his sources were anything better than second-hand accounts of life in the factories. Instead of realism, Dickens makes his industrialists into blatant cartoons, bluntly criticizing what he did not know. Still, the novel is readable for Dickens' sense of humor and his trademark pathos. I just wish he had taken his approach more seriously and shown the real pathos in the working man's life.
Rating: 6 / 10
The readers: This book is presented as a dramatic reading, somewhere between a play and a narration. None of Dickens' words have been changed (the "he said"s are even still there), but different readers play each part. This can be a great help in keeping track of who is who, but it gets a bit disconcerting to hear all the different voices, especially since they have different accents and recording equipment. The parts are done very well, for the most part, and edited together nicely. Bob Neufield, as the narrator, does most of the speaking. The main parts are all well-acted, but I won't spend time naming names. This is an interesting way to present an audiobook and, for the most part, it works.
(Entered in Cym Lowell's Book Review Wednesday. Follow the link to read reviews of other books)
Thursday, December 1, 2011
"Second Variety" by Phillip K. Dick
Source: Librivox (Part 1 | Part 2)
Length: 1 hour, 24 minutes
Reader: Greg Margarite
The story: In case you haven't noticed, I usually try to pair the stories I review with the book I've reviewed earlier in the week. I like the way that interesting comparisons sometimes result from the juxtaposition of two narratives. This week, the book was a science fiction novel that is no longer plausible because the basis in scientific fact has been overturned. In this science fiction story, the science aspect is still plausible, but the political situation it depicts is history.
In the story, a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the U.N. has turned Earth into a battlefield. American scientists left robots called "claws" to battle the Soviets, then fled Earth to the moonbase. When a U.N. General returns to Earth to negotiate a peace treaty, he discovers what the Russians already know -- that the robots have modified themselves into a human form to better trap unsuspecting soldiers. No one can be trusted - anyone could be a robot in disguise.
If you feel you've heard this before, it's because Dick's story has become hugely influencial in science fiction. The 1995 film Screamer's was directly based off the story. More significantly, both The Terminator and the newer version of Battlestar Galactica have elements of Dick's paranoid thriller.
Rating: 8 /10
The reader: I've reviewed Margarite's readings before on this blog, including his tendency to give a William Shatner-like delivery. The more I listen to him, though, the more I like him. It's a good thing that I 've grown to love his readings, since he has an extensive catalogue of science fiction stories that he's narrated for LibriVox.
Length: 1 hour, 24 minutes
Reader: Greg Margarite
The story: In case you haven't noticed, I usually try to pair the stories I review with the book I've reviewed earlier in the week. I like the way that interesting comparisons sometimes result from the juxtaposition of two narratives. This week, the book was a science fiction novel that is no longer plausible because the basis in scientific fact has been overturned. In this science fiction story, the science aspect is still plausible, but the political situation it depicts is history.
In the story, a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the U.N. has turned Earth into a battlefield. American scientists left robots called "claws" to battle the Soviets, then fled Earth to the moonbase. When a U.N. General returns to Earth to negotiate a peace treaty, he discovers what the Russians already know -- that the robots have modified themselves into a human form to better trap unsuspecting soldiers. No one can be trusted - anyone could be a robot in disguise.
If you feel you've heard this before, it's because Dick's story has become hugely influencial in science fiction. The 1995 film Screamer's was directly based off the story. More significantly, both The Terminator and the newer version of Battlestar Galactica have elements of Dick's paranoid thriller.
Rating: 8 /10
The reader: I've reviewed Margarite's readings before on this blog, including his tendency to give a William Shatner-like delivery. The more I listen to him, though, the more I like him. It's a good thing that I 've grown to love his readings, since he has an extensive catalogue of science fiction stories that he's narrated for LibriVox.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Length: about 10 hours
Reader: Winfred Henson
The book: With modern science at our backs, it's hard to take Journey to the Center of the Earth seriously. We know that there's no secret chambers beneath the Earth's surface hiding dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. From the standpoint of modern geology and biology, calling this book science fiction rather than fantasy is only a matter of its place in the history of the genre.
Yet, in the book, Verne himself, through another character, ridicules his own concept of geology. This technique is also used in Conan Doyle's The Lost World (previously reviewed). In both cases, it gives the author the chance to have an exciting, yet improbable, adventure while also wink at his audience to let them know he's not totally taken in by his own fantasies.
Rating: 7 / 10
The reader: Henson has a deep clear voice. His speech pattern is precise, with distinctly enunciated words. He has a bit of a Southern accent in his narrating voice, but creates accents for the characters. The over-the-top voice he creates for the uncle may strike people as either silly fun or a bit annoying. The recording itself is well-produced with good quality sound.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Internet censorship day
I usually don't post political issues here, but there's currently a pair of bills in the U.S. Congress that directly relate to Free Listens. If you're not in the United States, feel free to skip this post. The SOPA bill in the U.S. House and the Protect IP Piracy bill in the Senate have good intentions, but I'm concerned that they will result in an overreach of censorship upon many to protect the property rights of a few.
The bills, as I understand them, would block websites to users in the U.S. if a property rights holder complains that there is any copyright violation on the website. So, if I link to a legally free audiobook or story on a website and there is another audiobook or story on that website that might violate copyright in the U.S., then access to that website is blocked.
As I read it, there doesn't even need to be any laws broken for this law to censor a website. For example: I link to a free Creative-Commons licensed audio version of the public domain book "Call of the Wild" at an Australian website. The same website has a free version of "Gone With the Wind" that I don't link to. Because of a difference in the length of copyright in the two countries, "Gone with the Wind" is public domain in Australia, so no laws are being broken, but access to the entire website is blocked!
The legislation has even worse consequences for sites that contain user-generated content, since if one user violates copyright, all are blocked. My blog is hosted on Blogger, so when any of the hundreds of thousands of blogs on Blogger posts a copyright violation, it all goes down. This is clearly unworkable.
Google, Yahoo!, Mozilla, Twitter, Wikimedia, Facebook, and eBay all oppose this legislation. Please read more extensively on this subject, educate yourself, then visit http://americancensorship.org/ to write your Congressperson on this subject.
The bills, as I understand them, would block websites to users in the U.S. if a property rights holder complains that there is any copyright violation on the website. So, if I link to a legally free audiobook or story on a website and there is another audiobook or story on that website that might violate copyright in the U.S., then access to that website is blocked.
As I read it, there doesn't even need to be any laws broken for this law to censor a website. For example: I link to a free Creative-Commons licensed audio version of the public domain book "Call of the Wild" at an Australian website. The same website has a free version of "Gone With the Wind" that I don't link to. Because of a difference in the length of copyright in the two countries, "Gone with the Wind" is public domain in Australia, so no laws are being broken, but access to the entire website is blocked!
The legislation has even worse consequences for sites that contain user-generated content, since if one user violates copyright, all are blocked. My blog is hosted on Blogger, so when any of the hundreds of thousands of blogs on Blogger posts a copyright violation, it all goes down. This is clearly unworkable.
Google, Yahoo!, Mozilla, Twitter, Wikimedia, Facebook, and eBay all oppose this legislation. Please read more extensively on this subject, educate yourself, then visit http://americancensorship.org/ to write your Congressperson on this subject.
Friday, November 11, 2011
"The Interior Castle" by Jean Stafford
Length: 1 hour, 1 minute
Reader: Miette
The story: In 1938, Stafford was seriously injured in a car accident, an experience which led her to write "The Interior Castle." In the story, Pansy Vanneman is bedridden in the hospital, with a host of injuries and an upcoming reconstructive surgery on her nose. Stafford's description of the pain Pansy experiences both before and during the surgery are some of the most disturbing passages I've ever read.
What's more striking, though, is not the physical pain but the emotional pain. The surgery becomes a violation of Pansy's body as the surgeon probes deeper and causes more pain. The picture of modern medicine is that of impersonal doctors with a veneer of bedside manner, but who see patients as a problem to be solved. This is a story, along with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illyich (reviewed previously) that all doctors and medical students should read.
Rating: 8 /10
The reader: Miette has a lovely velvet voice. She has an accent that I just love, with beautiful round vowels. Her phrasing is a bit unconventional at times and she repeats a line at least once, but these imperfections serve to make her reading less professional and more personal. Her reading starts with a little personal anecdote about round food which I initially mistook for the story. The recording cuts off with about 10 minutes to go. None of the story is lost, but there's a considerable bit of silence at the end.
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