Our “holiday” period was one of the busiest yet, but we’re back podcasting now. We’ve decided to podcast three times a week (plus once a week for poetry) instead of every day – but if you would really prefer every day, let us know and we’ll consider it. Anyway, we’re kicking off the new year with some Dostoyevsky.
“Notes from the Underground” was actually the first LibriVox book that I listened to all the way through. And it is fantastic. We have a range of readers, all bringing their own voices to the text, but behind all of them you can hear Dostoyevsky in this classic tale of a slightly mad civil servant ranting about the world. The insights into the absurdities, vanity and weakness of humans seem so fresh and incisive that, if published now (141 years later) I think “Notes” would be considered an avant garde post-modernist triumph. The nice thing about these dusty, old, public domain texts, is that they may do a better job of helping us understand ourselves and the world than the most recent works of fiction and non-fiction.
We start with Chapter 1, read by Greg Schwartz, who does a wonderful podcast about libraries, librarians, and other points of interest, called Open Stacks. Greg was one of the original LibriVox readers, on Conrad’s Secret Agent. And here’s Dostoyevsky:
Notes from the Underground
- mp3 audio file: Notes from the Underground – Part 1, Chapter 1
- Written by: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Read by: Greg Schwartz
- Bit rate: 64 kbps
- Time: 00:08:08
- Gutenberg e-text #600
- LibriVox Catalog Page: Notes from the Underground (for Ogg Vorbis, mp3 128kb & a zip of the entire book)
Next up (Wednesday): Part 1, Chapter 2, read by Greg.
Please send us an email (info AT librivox DOT org) to let us know what you think of our recordings, and note, LibriVox is always looking for NEW VOLUNTEERS…