It’s that time again when we look at books that need a final push to get them into the catalogue. All these projects need you. Let’s see how many books we can catalogue in November! Please sign up in the project threads.

Readers: please check your outstanding claims (click on your name in the Magic Window of a project you have volunteered for).

BCs: please see this special post just for you – to help get stalled projects going again!

The Book of Hallowe’en by Ruth Edna Kelley, read by Sibella Denton. An account of the origin and history of Hallowe’en, illustrated by selections from ancient and modern poetry and prose.

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde, read by David Barnes. An American family have bought an English stately home, complete with resident ghost – blood-stains, clanking chains and all.

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James, read by Peter Yearsley. James’s stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces.

Famous Modern Ghost Stories, compiled by Dorothy Scarborough, is an entertaining selection of stories, read by various readers. As the compiler wrote in 1921: “Life is so inconveniently complex nowadays, what with income taxes and other visitations of government, that it is hard for us to have the added risk of wraiths, but there’s no escaping.”

The Beetle by Richard Marsh certainly counts as being creepy enough for Hallowe’en: a story about a mysterious oriental figure who pursues a British politician to London, where he wreaks havoc with his powers of hypnosis and shape-shifting. Narrated from the perspectives of four characters, this is recorded by four different readers.

For a goodly helping of ghosts and witches, how can I possibly leave out the Librivox recording of Shakespeare’s Macbeth?

Nachtstücke von E.T.A. Hoffmann, gelesen von Rainer. Die “Nachtstücke” sind eine Sammlung von unheimlichen Geschichten, die der Romantik zuzuordnen sind.

Animal Ghosts by Elliott O’Donnell, read by Allyson Hester. Supposedly true stories of hauntings by many different kinds of creatures…

And now for a little non-fiction, though these are certainly long-leggedy beasties… The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre, read by various readers.

And, if you finally want to get rid of all those ghouls and get to sleep, how about trying The Ghost Extinguisher by Gelett Burgess, a short story read by Gregg Margarite for one of our many collections of ghost and horror short stories?

Podcast 009 – Total time: 18:15

This month, 10 of LV’s 69 new releases are sampled:

• Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott
• The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
• The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
• Written by Herself (Harriet Jacobs)
• John Barleycorn or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack London
• The Siege of Belgrade by Alaric Alexander Watts
• LibriVox Short Story Collection Vol. 030:
• “The Tabby Terror” by P. G. Wodehouse
• Horror Story Collection 004:
• “The Street” by H. P. Lovecraft
• Edison’s Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Willy Shakespeare

LibriVox’s June 2008 New Releases Podcast
is available for immediate download H-E-R-E !

Just in time for your summer listening pleasure, two new LibriVox Podcasts are ready to jump into your iPods. A great way to sample the massive LV Catalog: weekly samples focusing specifically on poetry and short stories, updated every Saturday. But don’t worry, we won’t be running out of poems or short stories for a very long time. The Catalog has hundreds of each —and it’s growing everyday! Each podcast contains a link to the entire audiobook or collection.

Podcast feeds are available either from FeedBurner or iTunes:

Poetry via FeedBurner
Poetry via iTunes
Current episodes: 14

Short Stories via FeedBurner
Short Stories via iTunes
Current episodes: 123

As you might guess from current totals, the Short Story Podcast has been up longer than the one for Poetry. It has become a very popular podcast and Apple has continually featured it in the Literature section of iTunes.

If you’re interested, take a zoom over to the iTunes Store and do a search for “LibriVox.” You might be surprised to find 30 or more LV related podcasts, most of them from LV volunteers!

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The New Releases Podcast is a preview of the LibriVox.org newest free audiobooks. LibriVox is an online volunteer community dedicated to producing free public-domain audiobooks. The LibriVox New Releases Podcast is a relaxed, leisurely way to sample the newest LibriVox audiobooks without having to download a series of large, individual audio files.

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• New Releases Podcast 6 for October 2007

Host: Alan Drake
Length: 39:08
Size: 35:8 MB
Royalty Free Music: GarageBand’s Jaracanda Loop
Software: Created in GarageBand 4 on a 2.4 GHz Intel iMac

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00:00 • Welcome and comments about LibriVox

01:21 • New Fiction and Short Works
• Short Story Collection 19 – Various — Selected by LibriVox volunteers
• The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Molly Make-Believe – Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
——— Preview: 01:45
• Howards End – E.M. Forster
• Little Eve Egarton – Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
• Kim – Rudyard Kipling
• The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Sun – Augusta Groner
——— Preview: 04:17
• Murder at Bridge – Anne Austin
• Won by Crime – Frank Pinkerton
• Wives and Daughters – Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Sea Hawk – Rafael Sabatini
• Star Born – Andre Norton
• Fanny Herself – by Edna Ferber
——— Preview at 08:01
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue – Edgar Allan Poe
——— Preview: 10:36
• Rudder Grange – Frank Stockton
——— Preview: 12:24
• An Antarctic Mystery or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields – Jules Verne
• The Shortstop – Zane Grey

14:46 • Samples of New Non-Fiction
• A Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt, and Italy – Ida Laura Pfeiffer
• The Loss of the S. S. Titanic – Lawrence Beesley
• Historical Newspaper Articles, Volume 2 by Various Authors
• Democracy in America Vol. I by Alexis de Tocqueville
——— Preview: 16:05
• South! Shackleton’s Last Expedition – Ernest Shackleton
• Squirrels and other Fur-Bearers – John Burroughs
• This Country of Ours, Part 1 – H.E. Marshall
• The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters – Logan Marshall
——— Preview: 19:12
• The Fighting Governor : A Chronicle of Frontenac – Charles William Colby
• The Insurrection in Dublin – James Stephens
——— Preview: 21:38
• On the Elementary Electrical Charge – Robert Millikan
• The Art of War – Sun Tzu
• Eleven Theses on Feuerbach – Karl Marx
• Miscellaneous Essays – Thomas de Quincey

24:33 • Audiobooks for Children
• The Goody-Naughty Book – Sarah Cory Rippey
——— Preview: 24:41
• The House that Jack Built – Unknown
• The Burgess Bird Book for Children – Thornton W. Burgess
• Greylorn – Keith Laumer

29:38 • Samples of New Philosophy and Religion
• The Book of Lieh-Tzu by Lieh-Tzü
• The Revelation to Saint John – from the American Standard Version

30:44 • Samples of New Poetry
• Holy Sonnets – John Donne
——— Preview: 30:51
• Tender Buttons – Gertrude Stein
• Short Poetry Collections 050 & 051 – “The Wicked Zebra” & “The Owl”
——— Preview: 33:11
• October – Paul Laurence Dunbar
• The Ghosts’ Moonshine – Thomas Lovell Beddoes
• The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver – Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Sister Rosa: A Ballad – Percy Bysshe Shelley
• In a Garden – Amy Lowell
• The Verse-Book of a Homely Woman – Fay Inchfawn

36:18 • Audiobooks in a Language Other Than English
• Italian: Favole di Jean de La Fontaine, libro 12 – translated by Emilio de Marchi

36:52 • Dramatic Works
• Shakespeare Monologues, Volume 4 – William Shakespeare
——— Preview from Julius Caesar: 36:52

37:50 Closing remarks

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Listen now: Download audio file (lv_new_releases006_oct2007.mp3)

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http://www.archive.org/details/librivox_cd_covers

We have a couple of useful generic covers suitable for any book, as well as covers designed specifically for such works as

• Beowulf
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Huckleberry Finn
• Grimms’ Fairy Tales
• Pride and Prejudice
• The Communist Manifesto

…and many more for you to download. Our audio books make great gifts, especially with a beautiful artistic cover!

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Plague Ship by Andre Norton
The Master Key by L. Frank Baum
Ghost Story Collection 003
The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace
Contes en vers by Charles Perrault
Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers by Elizabeth E. Lea

And many, many more. Browse through our catalog and you’re sure to find something new and interesting.

Here’s a chart showing our Completed Works by month:

A million thanks to our tireless readers, organizers, proof-listeners, editors, catalogers, trouble-shooters, coders, and cheerleaders!

UPDATE: And here is the list of completed books in March:

1.Cosmic Computer by H. Bea, Piper
2.Byways Around San Francisco Bay by Hutchinson, W. E.
3.Clue of the Twisted Candle, The by Wallace, Edgar
4.Twilight of the Idols, The by Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ludovici, Anthony M.
5.Pollyanna by Porter, Eleanor H.
6.Contes en vers by Perrault, Charles
7.Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers by Lea, Elizabeth E.
8.Ideal Bartender, The by Bullock, Tom
9.Sense and Sensibility by Austen, Jane
10.Otto of the Silver Hand by Pyle, Howard
11.Ballads of a Bohemian by Service, Robert W.
12.Legend Land V 1 & 2 by Various, LYONESSE
13.Épîtres de Pierre by Anonyme
14.Plague Ship by Norton, Andre
15.Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush by Moodie, Susanna
16.Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome, Jerome K.
17.Story of the Middle Ages, The by Harding, Samuel B.
18.Hound of the Baskervilles, The by Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir
19.Hollow Needle, The by Leblanc, Maurice
20.Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Einstein, Albert
21.Master Key, The by Baum, L. Frank
22.West African Folk Tales by Barker, William H.
23.On the Popular Judgment: That may be Right in Theory, but does not Hold Good in the Praxis by Immanuel Kant, D.E. Wittkower, ed.
24.Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books by Kant, Immanuel
25.Ring o’ Roses: A Nursery Rhyme Picture Book by Brooke, L. Leslie
26.At the Back of the North Wind by MacDonald, George
27.Ghost Story Collection 003
28.Familiar Letters on Chemistry by Liebig, Justus, Gardner, John (ed)
29.Letter Concerning Toleration, A by Locke, John
30.I’m Nobody – Emily Dickinson
31.Jack and Jill – Alcott , Louisa May
32.Omnilingual – H. Beam Piper
33.The Sign of the Four – Arthur Conan Doyle
34.The Iliad for Boys and Girls – Alfred J. Church
35.Short Poetry Collection 026
36.The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
37.The Antichrist – Friedrich Nietzsche
38.Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges – Gerard Manley Hopkins (Robert Bridges, ed.)
39.Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Edith Oenone Somerville
40.Fables de La Fontaine, livre 02 – La Fontaine, Jean de
41.The Devil’s Pool – George Sand
42.O, it was out by Donnycarney – James Joyce
43.The Scarlet Pimpernel – Baroness Emmuska Orczy
44.Collected Works of Saint Patrick – Saint Patrick
45.The Spinster Book – Myrtle Reed
46.The Glugs of Gosh – C. J. Dennis
47.Thurley Ruxton – Philip Verrill Mighels
48.Miracles – Walt Whitman
49.Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
50.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
51.The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum
52.On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
53.Candide – Voltaire
54.The King in Yellow (part 2) – Robert W. Chambers
55.The Autobiography of Mother Jones – Mary Harris Jones
56.Short Poetry Collection 025
57.The Story of My Life – Helen Keller
58.Barchester Towers – Anthony Trollope
59.Moby Dick, or the Whale – Herman Melville
60.Ophelia – Walter de la Mare
61.Bohemian San Francisco – Clarence Edwords
62.The Sayings of Confucius – Confucius
63.The Monkey’s Paw – W. W. Jacobs
64.Librivox’s Short Story Collection Vol. 011
65.The Island of Dr. Moreau – H. G. Wells
66. Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, by Immanuel Kant
67. Oomphel in the Sky, by H. Beam Piper
68. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano – Olaudah Equiano
69. History of England from the Accession of James II (Volume 2, Chapter 08) – Macaulay
70. The Getting of Wisdom – Henry Handel Richardson
71.The Junior Classics (Technically April 1, but it was ready March 31 and the servers weren’t cooperating)

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. It discusses his time spent in slavery, serving primarily on galleys, documents his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his own freedom and in business thereafter. The book contains an interesting discussion of slavery in West Africa and illustrates how the experience differs from the dehumanising slavery of the Americas. The Intereresting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is also one of the first widely read slave narratives. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Download our recordings here:

The Interesting Narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano

Great choice, Carl, and thanks for organizing this!

St. Patrick’s Breastplate – This prayer is attributed to St. Patrick and his diciples. It is written with some celtic pagan elements, but is definitely a Christian prayer asking God for protection through daily life.

A Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus – Patrick writes this letter to excommunicate the soldiers of Coroticus’ army who pillaged villages in Ireland and forced many Christian converts into slavery.

Confession – A short autobiography by St. Patrick who tells of being abducted into slavery and taken to Ireland, the growth of his faith, his ministry as a bishop in ordaining many priests and baptising thousands of people, and a trial where he had to defend himself against his accusers. (Summary by Sean)

You can download these recordings from our catalog page:
http://librivox.org/the-collected-works-of-saint-patrick-by-saint-patrick/

Remember to wear green today :)