I recently came upon an article decrying the awfulness of most literary readings, pointed at by Frank Wilson of Books, Inq. Frank thinks it’s not all literary readings that make ears bleed, but that North American (versus British, Irish and other) writers have little command of the oral medium, and thinks that’s the problem.

I have no idea if he’s right, but I do know that reading a few books for LibriVox will help any writer read better aloud. Maybe publishers should require that all novelists record at least two chapters for librivox, as part of their contract?

Writes the Narrative and Sound Project:

I recently started a new web project [The Narrative and Sound Project], and your organization plays a very important part of it. The web project is about existing audiobooks and the idea of synthesizing them with music and sound. I have downloaded some of the audiobooks collection in your website and retouched them with music and sound. With the new collection, I have created a website solely for this purpose.

Here’s the web address of the project: http://www.thenarrativeandsoundproject.org/