Librivox’ 6th Birthday is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the most important part of it: Our readers! And that it’s all about equality on here is proven by the fact that our top 10 praised readers during the last year are 5 men and 5 women.
Ladies first:
Elizabeth Klett, professor of literature, expert knitter and drama editor, switches effortlessly between BE and AE. Her wonderful reading of Jane Eyre is the top downloaded solo at the moment.
Another Bronte sister makes the top 10, this time read by a real Brit. Ruth Golding from beautiful Kent delights listeners from librivox and iambik alike with her aristocratic style. Enjoy as she reads Wuthering Heights to you.
Pride and Prejudice has several librivox versions, in fact, it’s the book that attracted the most soloists! All of them are lovely, but our listeners seem to enjoy the one read by Karen Savage the most.
Kara Shallenberg – librivox member, reader and admin of the first hour – is quite into children’s literature. And, given the constant praise for her recording of The Secret Garden, kids of all ages love listening to them.
Not quite so present in the forums as our four admins above is Mil Nicholson. However, her sensitive readings deservedly place her in our top 10 praised readers. Her most appreciated recording is Dombey and Son.
And now for the gentlemen:
Mark F. Smith from Simpsonville South Carolina, is certainly our reader with the largest variety in his catalog, and he received thanks for the largest number of different books last year. A fine example of his variety in inventing charcter voices is his reading of Great Expectations.
John Greenman is Mark Twain. Or at least the voice of his books on librivox. Nothing but reading Twain’s full oevre is the goal here, from the most obscure letters to newspapers to the best known masterpieces like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Another man with preferences, this time for a genre, is Mark Nelson. Pulp and Science Fiction of the 50s and 60s is what he enjoys most. Maybe he should consider a slight change in his preferences though, as our listeners most praised his reading of Right Ho, Jeeves.
The catalog of Adrian Praetzellis is also impressive – and only with a slight bend towards Jewish literature of all times and several languages! The spy-mystery The 39 Steps is our listeners favourite reading of his.
The last reader in this list is exceptional. He has the least number of recordings of al the people in the top 10. However, one of his 2 solos consistenly keeps drawing comments like “I would not have been able to appreciate the depths of this book in any other way”. The most praised librivox recording of all our 6 years is Stewart Wills’ recording of Moby Dick.
Only 10 readers are placed before the curtain here. But all our readers deserve praise – whether they made 2000 recordings or a single one. All of you made librivox what it is today – you ARE librivox!
Happy 6th Anniversary!
Happy birthday Librivox!
Happy Birthday LibriVox! My account earlier this year, “Learning from LibriVox,” is in _Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies,_ ed. Matthew Rubery (Routledge: http://bit.ly/Audiobks).
Happy 6th Birthday, Librivox!!! Boy, kids grow up way too fast, don’t they? (sniff, sniff…..weep) ;)
Happy Anniversary and thank you all! Yes, there are very, very good readers. Being German I want to thank Karlson for his outstanding reading of
“Jolanthe’s Hochzeit” and for choosing an author who unfortunately seems to be neglected today.
@Michael Hancher
Thank you for letting us know, Michael. I have posted this on the forum at https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=34920
Pity your article isn’t available in the preview. ;)
Librivox you are a joy to me. As a mother of a small child sitting down to read an actual paper book can difficult at best especially with housekeeping and sculpting (I’m an artist). Audiobooks solve that for me,”Look ma no hands!”, and I love catching up on classics and old gems. The recordings of Moby Dick and Mark Twain are wonderful some of my favorites. Thank you so much Librivox runners and readers and happy birthday too!
As time goes by, I depend more and more on Librivox to entertain and instruct me, and I’m am so grateful to the volunteers who keep the site up and running AND read the books. What did I do before Librivox?
I’ve been griping (mostly privately) about the iTunes link not being available. I’ve read it should be automatically added to the page, which I take to mean that when it isn’t there, it’s hard to fix.
I found a way around, so I can listen once again on my MP3 player. It takes longer, but I achieve my goal – a portable book to listen to.
On the page of your chosen work, click the link to the Librivox Internet Archive page.
Look to the left hand side for the 64Kbps MP3 ZIP, click to download to your computer. Put it where you can find it easily.
Right click the folder and choose UNzip, or however it may work on your computer. Definitely put the unzipped file where you can find it easily.
Open the unzipped file, highlight all the episodes, and drag them to your open iTunes. Presumably this works for other MP3 players, too.
Delete the zip file, it’s of no further use. You can delete the unzipped file when you are done with it.
may this beacon of equality & openness be ever burning.
Happy Birthday Librivox and a heartfelt Thank You to all the readers who have brought me many hours of listening pleasure. I have not listened to readings by all the top 10 but I agree completely with your including Mark Smith, Ruth Golding, Kara Shallenberg, and Mil Nicholson. Their readings are absolutely brilliant.
Thanks to all the Librivox readers. You have given us access to wonderful books. You have opened up whole worlds of ideas and given life to authors that many of us would never have an opportunity to enjoy.
Happy Birthday, LibriVox! :)))
Happy birthday, Librvox and congratulations to our able readers. I’m just happy that I’m now part of the Librivox community – my good fortune. How I would have grown if I had discovered this site when it started! Bravo.
Happy Birthday, LibriVox!
I have listened to and enjoyed many books by the wonderful readers listed here, most recently “Barnaby Rudge”, read by Mil Nicholson and want to give my congratulations too. Keep up the good work!
I think that LibriVox is a wonderful notion and I am very grateful to everyone who gives their services free of charge for the enjoyment of others.