We are pleased to announce that June 2009 was our third most productive month ever, with 93 recordings added to the catalogue.

You may see all the new additions here.

June provided us with a veritable feast of recordings, including:

• The second volume of Hapgood’s English translation of Hugo’s Les Misérables.
• Another convoluted plot from Wilkie Collins, brimful of colourful characters: Armadale.
• This Simian World by Clarence Day, Jr., a satirical speculation on how the world might be different if we apes had not risen to prominence.
• The concluding volume of Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë.
• The gruesome first volume of the 16th century Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, an English Protestant account of the persecutions of Protestants.
• The long awaited Dubliners by James Joyce and Volume I of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
• Dramatic recordings, including Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Shaw’s Pygmalion.
• Complete Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism by A. Alpheus.
• No less than three G.K. Chesterton works: Irish Impressions, Lord Kitchener and What I Saw in America.
• A Spanish recording, a multilingual short story collection, three Dutch recordings, and six German works.

And lots, lots more. Have fun!

One of the reasons I started LibriVox, I think, was so that I could make an audio recording of “The Dead,” by James Joyce, from his collection Dubliners.

It is a story of such grace and skill; the build up slow and good-humoured and banal, but when that last section finally comes, it contains so much nostalgia, so much melancholy, so much revelation. All of us have had those moments, when what we thought we knew got thrown on its head, our own tiny place in the world gently exposed, and the wide, huge and lonely universe – of which we still remain a part – becomes clear and cold and expansive for just that brief moment.

Almost four years after LibriVox was born, I finally got the courage to record the Dead. I don’t think it’s catalogued quite yet, but here are the mp3s for those who want to listen to an audio version of one of the most beautiful-sad short stories ever written.

• The Dead – Part 1 [mp3]
• The Dead – Part 2 [mp3]
• The Dead – Part 3 [mp3]

Happy Bloomsday.

[Thanks to Kayray for the editing, and to Gesine for making sure I finished on time].