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Monday, January 22, 2007

LibriVox.org

I thought I would post a quick note about one of my favorite resources. I drive close to an hour a day back and forth to work and what better way to make use of that time (other than praying of course) than to listen to a good audio book. LibriVox.org is a site where people volunteer to record themselves reading books. All of these books are in the public domain so, you guessed it, no copyright issues. You may be saying what good books are in the public domain? Well here is just a sample of their offerings:

    Aesop. "Aesop's Fables"
    Austen, Jane. "Emma"
    Baum, L. Frank. "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz"
    Bédier, Joseph. "Tristan and Iseult"
    Bunyan, John. "Pilgrim's Progress, The"
    Carroll, Lewis. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
    Chesterton, G. K. "Innocence of Father Brown, The" (Good book, you're right Matt, it's not Doyle, but good none the less)
    Conrad, Joseph. "Heart of Darkness" (the book Apocalypse Now was patterned after)
    Dickens, Charles. "Christmas Carol, A"
    Stevenson, Robert Louis. "Treasure Island" (a good ol' Pirate story)
    Wyss, Johann David. "Swiss Family Robinson, The" (My favorite so far. Such a great tale and great content)
    Wells, H. G. "War of the Worlds"
    Chaucer, Geoffrey. "Canterbury Tales, The"


Of the longer works they currently have 198 completed books with 181 in progress. There are a couple of things to note. Not all recordings are created equal or equally. They can vary quite a bit so if you download one you don't like try something else. Also there are some that are read by several people. At first I thought this might be acted out be people playing out the characters, but alas it is not. The chapters are read by different people which can be rather distracting. Especially if the main character's name is something hard to pronounce and now you have 5 people with differing opinions.

All and all a good resource for those of us who like audio books, and did I mention the downloads are free! That's right free! Gotta love that.

God Bless and take care, Jeromy

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