No, not a bit of wishful thinking, or a discussion of the hymnody of Charles Wesley....
This last week has seen me joining the ranks of those who freely offer their voices for the sort of project that the Internet can be brilliant for. It's called Librivox, and I'll explain a little about it.
Imagine all the literature that has been produced over the centuries since we started writing stuff down. Now imagine a group of people who are trying to turn as much as possible of it into Audio Books. Now imagine that they are doing this for no money, not charging anything to download them, and not placing any restrictions whatsoever on what they can be used for. That, in a nutshell, is what Librivox is trying to do.
The nuts and bolts of it is that volunteers find works that aren't under copyright any more (Public Domain is the term) and record them, either in groups or individually, then upload them to a site which provides a place to store and catalogue them. The Public Domain part means that you're not going to find the works of JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett or Adrian Plass in there, but it's astonishing how much can be used. Currently they have a bit over a year's worth of audio available to anyone with an internet connection.
I discovered Librivox a while ago now, and have listened to most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moby Dick, The Invisible Man by HG Wells, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, Edgar Rice Burrough's "Barsoom" novels, some PG Wodehouse, The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson, and several others; meanwhile, The South Pole by Roald Amundsen, A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle and one or two others are waiting for me to have time to listen.
Having listened to so much, I thought it was about time I started contributing myself. So I have so far recorded three poems for their weekly and fortnightly poetry efforts where as many people as possible read the same poem and they will in due course appear in the catalogue.
I love listening to audiobooks, and while sometimes the readers can be not quite to your taste I have found much to enjoy. The fact that it is free makes it even better!
What's the best thing I've listened to? I'd have to go for Love among the Chickens by PG Wodehouse - well-recorded by someone who has done some professional stuff, and wonderfully funny!
If you like listening to spoken word audio, Librivox is a fantastic resource. It's also a fantastic example of people giving some time to something with no prospect of reward - who says altruism is dead?
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