Below you’ll find a collection of some of the iphone apps running off the LibriVox catalog (if you know of other good ones, please let us know). UPDATE: you can of course just download our audiobooks as you usually do, make sure they are in iTunes, and sync your iPhone – you don’t need an app to listen on your phone.

We’ll do a roundup of Android apps next week.

IPHONE/IPAD APPS RUNNING OFF OF LIBRIVOX CATALOG

LibriVox Selections ($0.99)

Description: “The best LibriVox recordings, all in one place. The app is 1.99, after that everything is free! LibriVox Selections brings together a curated collection of hundreds of favourite audiobooks (mostly solo recordings) from LibriVox. ”

Producer: Iambik Audio Inc.

NOTES: Iambik will donate 10% of app revenues to LibriVox. LibriVox founder Hugh McGuire, aka me, owns Iambik Audio.

iTunes Download Link

Audiobooks (Free)

Description: Join the more than 2,200,000 people who have used Audiobooks to listen to over 3,535 classic audiobooks for FREE. In addition to all our free content, we also include a growing collection of premium audiobookd for your enjoyment.

Producer: Cross Forward Consulting, LLC

NOTES: Cross Forward Consulting contributed to the LibriVox funding drive in February 2010.

iTunes Download Link

Audiobooks Premium ($0.99)

Description: Join the more than 2,200,000 people who have used Audiobooks to listen to over 3,535 classic audiobooks for FREE. In addition to all our free content, we also include a growing collection of premium audiobooks for your enjoyment.

Producer: Cross Forward Consulting, LLC

NOTES: Not sure the difference between the paid and free versions. Cross Forward Consulting contributed to the LibriVox funding drive in February 2010.

iTunes Download Link

Free Audiobooks – 4,728 classic audiobooks for less than a cup of coffee ($1.99)

Description: Ah to describe an app in two words… Free Audiobooks is just that- Free Audiobooks! We’ve crafted handpicked collections to make browsing a snap, and commissioned hundreds of custom covers to bring you Cover Mode. This is the world of public domain audiobooks like never before.

NOTES: none.

Producer: Spreadsong, Inc.

iTunes Download Link

Audiobooks – 2,947 classics for free (Free)

Description: Audiobooks by Classicly gives you 2,947 classic audiobooks, for free. No ifs and buts about it- we package up 2,947 audiobooks and make them available to download and listen to anytime, anywhere. No nickel and diming, no extra fees- you get the entire collection for less than a cup of coffee.

Producer: Spreadsong, Inc.

NOTES: None.

iTunes Download Link

It’s Roderick Hudson by Henry James.
Read by Nicholas Clifford
Dedicated Proof-Listener: Martin Geeson
Meta-Coordinator/Cataloging: Annise

It was the second of December last year, we announced the 4000th LibriVox project.

Hopefully things will be smooth, seamless, and no one will notice a thing. Probably that won’t be the case.

So there may be more weirdness to fix afterwards, with particular areas of worry the Magic Window (for LibriVox volunteers) and the Catalog system (for listeners and volunteers).

So, sorry in advance for that! We’ll try to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible.

Best,

Hugh.

On the nature of audio books and “reading”

I am fairly new to the world of audio books and very new to reading within Librivox. The bother of keeping track of stacks of CDs, which might scratch if not handled with care, and the equipment one might have to tote to listen to them always kept me at a distance from that activity (shudder the thought of cassette tapes!). About a year ago our library started to offer MP3 audio books, downloadable on the Internet, and so began my journey into listening rather than reading. I now have come to appreciate how lucky I am to be a reader/listener and now so many years later, the enjoyment seems to increase while other things…well, they do not.

From my perspective, the experience of listening to an audio book starts with the intimacy. It is as though the author were speaking to me of secret, often personal things, back from countless years ago, on a one to one level; the author is here now with me, just me, to tell the wonderful story of long, long ago. The teller has no thing to be gained except my enjoyment of the eloquence, of what he or she has to tell me, at my beck and call, day or night. There is a solitude in this intimacy, one soul in touch with another. It is a fine thing to read, but the walls of the chamber are echoic and sometimes not so reliable. When I am listening all is made quiet, but the author speaking to me. I mostly walk in the mornings to listen and eventually start to feel my legs grow heavy, only then to notice that I have been out over two hours and begrudge the need to rest and go back. It is so wonderful to escape the cacophony.

Of course, the reader of an audio book is there and, in my view, their sole occupation should be to interpret the work and become the author for the listener. A digital device, saying each word as the electronic signal is received, can easily accomplish the saying of individual words without interpretation. But the interpretation of the words, including what has passed and what is yet to come in the script, is so far beyond any digital talent as to be unworthy of discussion. Most audio devices are used to listen to music, most times a product that comes forth from a sophisticated studio employing multiple people and the breathless world of electronic enhancement. A reader, on the other hand, stands fairly alone, having to interpret difficult text sometimes and then deliver a fairly accurate rendition without additional explanation. The saying of the words needs to be accomplished, but their meaning has to be presented too. I think this is best done through pace, tone and pause, but only after the reader is acquainted with the message of the passage and of the work. The unstated presence of fear, humor, melancholy, joy, love, hate etc all need to accompany the saying of the words. Unlike the musician, there are few (if any) knobs to adjust in doing this and volume can be used so sparingly as to be pretty useless (unlike some musicians apparently).

I should enjoy hearing from others on these points and if this is all old hat, why, I do hope that I will be excused. One last point: all the above is subject to my 80/20 rule; i.e. this is true only about 80% of the time, and otherwise not!

This has stimulated a heartfelt discussion on the topic, which you can read here. We welcome your thoughts too!

In the meantime, one area that is not working is the New Releases update on the LibriVox Home Page. The new Releases RSS feed is working, so if you are subscribed to that you will see new releases as they come through, but they are not appearing on the Home Page.

In the meantime, this may help if you have missed any of the new releases since the reinstatement of the catalogue: the Internet Archive LibriVox index page has a list of all new releases in date order. Scroll down until you see “This just in”.

We are all greatly looking forward to getting back to what we are all here for – making public domain texts available as audio recordings. We thank you for your patience.

Ruth

As Fanny Kemble wrote:

Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin,
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.

Thank you for your patience.

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, and is commemorated by both countries on 25 April every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.

We have a very active contingent of readers from Australasia, but would be delighted to welcome more.

Here are some other recordings with an Australian theme:

Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946). The story of Richard Mahony, a doctor trained in Edinburgh who comes to Ballarat in the gold rush of the 1850s. Read by tabithat.

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Sybil Turner (1872-1958). This is the story of seven incorrigible children living near Sydney in the 1880’s with their military-man father, and a stepmother who is scarcely older than the oldest child of the family. Read by Ophelia Darcy.

A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53 by Ellen Clacy. A clergyman’s daughter, who at age 20 left Britain to visit Bendigo with her brother, recounts her trip, and aspects of colonial life, transportation, emigration and other gold-fields. Read by Annise and Lucy Burgoyne.

Robert O’Hara Burke by Andrew Jackson. A non-fictional account of Burke and Wills’s 1860 expedition to cross the Australian continent from south to north and back. Read by Chris Chapman and Magdalena.

A Selection of Australian Poetry and Prose recorded by various readers.

Australian Legendary Tales Folk-Lore of the Noongahburrahs As Told To The Piccaninnies by K. Langloh Parker. A Collection of Australian Aboriginal Legendary Folk-Lore Tales, legends of the Narran tribe, known among themselves as Noongahburrahs. Recorded by various readers.