News

Different Tongues

Posted on September 1, 2011 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Blog, Monthly Picks, News | Comments: 1 Comment on Different Tongues

September 26 is the “European Day of Languages” to promote language learning. We at librivox do that all-year-round with recordings in more than 30 different languages. And we’ll present the following 10 gems from our non-english catalog:

The Ancient Greeks are considered the fathers of Western culture, and at that time, Greek was indeed the lingua franca. No wonder St. Paul would write his letters in this language! Read the Epistole pros Collosaes in the version of the Patriarchike Ekdosi. We also have the English KJV of this text.

A major pillar of Eastern culture are the teachings of 孔子 – Confucius. His 論語 -Analects have been collected after his death, and have been ingrained in daily life until today. Besides the Chinese text, we also have a reading in English.

Egri csillagok by Géza Gárdonyi tells about culture clashes: about the occupation of Buda and the siege of Eger by the Turks in the 16th century. Of course, there is also a love story within this historical novel – the most famous one in Hungarian.

A clash of different sorts is described in the novel Max Havelaar. Multatuli writes about the corrupt government system and the exploitation of the coffee workers by the Dutch on Java from his own experience.

Matsuo Basho also relates his own experiences in his travel diary Oku no Hosomichi. It tells of his journey from Edo to Northern Honshu and back in the late 17th century. Let’s hope it will not take you 156 days to get through our recording in Japanese!

Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire about 200 years later, Franz Kafka wrote mainly short stories, and he himself considered Ein Landarzt to be one of his best. It is contained in a collection of his works in German.

The Finnish novel Rautatie by Juhani Aho is considered his main work. Here, an old couple meets progress in the form of the railroad and finally decide to take their first ride in the horseless carriages.

When from four people in a room three wind up dead, the fourth one has to be the murderer, right? Monsieur Lecoq however, does not think so and embarks on a long investigation to solve the mystery. Enjoy the whole novel by Emile Gaboriau in the original French – or the first part of it in English!

For poetry this time, we present the Spanish collection Simplemente Darío by the father of modernism from Nicaragua, Rubén Darío.

Finally, two men with very different ideas about love think that they contend for the love of a pretty widow in the drama Desencantos. It is one of the early works of famous Brazilian author Machado de Assis, written in Portuguese.

Enjoy – and keep your dictionary handy!

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LibriVox server/systems migration

Posted on August 30, 2011 by | Posted in about LibriVox, News, Uncategorized | Comments: 2 Comments on LibriVox server/systems migration

Urgent note that LibriVox servers are about to get migrated.

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.

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LibriVox Community Podcast #116

Posted on August 9, 2011 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Librivox Community Podcast, News | Comments: Comments Off on LibriVox Community Podcast #116

Listen to LibriVox Community Podcast #116 hosted by Ruth Golding (RuthieG).

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/librivox_community_2011/librivox_community_podcast_116.mp3]

Duration: 44m 21s.

  • Tributes to:

    The late Chris Booth (icyjumbo) including an extract from his reading of William Wilberforce’s 1789 speech On Slavery.
    The late Alan Davis Drake (Cloud Mountain) including his reading of Jazz Fantasia by Carl Sandburg.

  • Contributions from:

    Andy Minter (ExEmGe) on ‘Where to listen to LibriVox audiobooks’
    Hugh McGuire (hugh) taking a measured look at the future of LibriVox
    David Lawrence (aradlaw) and the readers of Karawane by Hugo Ball
    Don W. Jenkins (maxfarce) and Dawn Larsen (Bead Krazy Dawn) reading some of their conversations as reader and proof-listener during recording of The Exploits of Juve, introduced by Nadine Eckert-Boulet (neckertb)
    Bob Gonzalez (bobgon55) on the thoughts and feelings of an enthusiastic new volunteer
    Anniversary greetings from JemmaBlythe, Psudonae_Vox and Steve (slmitchell)
    Lars Rolander (Rowland) on the cultural value of LibriVox
    The first LibriVox book … and GabrielleC reading a poem in the 6th Anniversary Collection.

  • Musical silliness (as expected) from:

    RuthieG – disgraceful parodies of
    My old dutch (1893) words by Albert Chevalier (1861–1923), music by Charles Ingle (Auguste Chevalier) (1863-1940)
    Waiting at the church (1906) words by Fred W. Leigh, music by Henry E. Pether (1868-1932)
    Daisy Bell (1892) written and composed by Harry Dacre (1860-1922)
    I do like to be beside the seaside (1907) written by John A. Glover-Kind (1882-1918) with a special guest appearance by Nadine. :)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcastOr hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on:
Archive.orgArchived shows for previous years can be found at:
2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

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Happy Birthday Librivox !

Posted on July 31, 2011 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Monthly Picks, News | Comments: 15 Comments on Happy Birthday Librivox !

Librivox’ 6th Birthday is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the most important part of it: Our readers! And that it’s all about equality on here is proven by the fact that our top 10 praised readers during the last year are 5 men and 5 women.

Ladies first:

Elizabeth Klett, professor of literature, expert knitter and drama editor, switches effortlessly between BE and AE. Her wonderful reading of Jane Eyre is the top downloaded solo at the moment.

Another Bronte sister makes the top 10, this time read by a real Brit. Ruth Golding from beautiful Kent delights listeners from librivox and iambik alike with her aristocratic style. Enjoy as she reads Wuthering Heights to you.

Pride and Prejudice has several librivox versions, in fact, it’s the book that attracted the most soloists! All of them are lovely, but our listeners seem to enjoy the one read by Karen Savage the most.

Kara Shallenberg – librivox member, reader and admin of the first hour – is quite into children’s literature. And, given the constant praise for her recording of The Secret Garden, kids of all ages love listening to them.

Not quite so present in the forums as our four admins above is Mil Nicholson. However, her sensitive readings deservedly place her in our top 10 praised readers. Her most appreciated recording is Dombey and Son.

And now for the gentlemen: 

Mark F. Smith from Simpsonville South Carolina, is certainly our reader with the largest variety in his catalog, and he received thanks for the largest number of different books last year. A fine example of his variety in inventing charcter voices is his reading of Great Expectations.

John Greenman is Mark Twain. Or at least the voice of his books on librivox. Nothing but reading Twain’s full oevre is the goal here, from the most obscure letters to newspapers to the best known masterpieces like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Another man with preferences, this time for a genre, is Mark Nelson. Pulp and Science Fiction of the 50s and 60s is what he enjoys most. Maybe he should consider a slight change in his preferences though, as our listeners most praised his reading of Right Ho, Jeeves.

The catalog of Adrian Praetzellis is also impressive – and only with a slight bend towards Jewish literature of all times and several languages! The spy-mystery The 39 Steps is our listeners favourite reading of his.

The last reader in this list is exceptional. He has the least number of recordings of al the people in the top 10. However, one of his 2 solos consistenly keeps drawing comments like “I would not have been able to appreciate the depths of this book in any other way”. The most praised librivox recording of all our 6 years is Stewart Wills’ recording of Moby Dick.

Only 10 readers are placed before the curtain here. But all our readers deserve praise – whether they made 2000 recordings or a single one. All of you made librivox what it is today – you ARE librivox!

Happy 6th Anniversary!

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