Ning - Audio Book Reviewer

MonicaV · Post by **MonicaV** » January 16th, 2007, 6:26 am

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. There is nothing wrong with being imperfect, but there is something wrong when our society can't admit this. Not everyone is great at everything, and losing or having someone tell a person that their work isn't up to par is good, not bad. I just hate all this "it's okay, we're all winners" garbage. It's okay to feel bad because our work isn't as liked as we hope! We learn from it and try again (or move on to trying another activity). We as society need to learn to take constructive criticisms. I'm not trying to be mean, just professing my personal views.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » January 16th, 2007, 7:19 am

Dear Monica, Librivox is not about changing society but about getting all public domain books into audible form. This is a huge task and we need to find the best way to motivate the most people for it.

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » January 16th, 2007, 7:28 am

MonicaV wrote: I'm not trying to be mean, just professing my personal views.

One of the problems is that 'reviews' often are personal views too.
An example is a Librivox recording of Pride and Prejudice which got a negative review on a web site and yet which I thought was very good. It was a fine, clear reading which made me completely forget the reader (that's the kind of readings I like as I'm interested in the words and not a reading performance) and lose myself in the book. Which of our reviews is the correct one, mine or the negative one?
It doesn't really matter - I enjoyed the book and found listening to it a pleasurable experience, the other reviewer didn't and so probably didn't listen to more than a few seconds of it.

This material is free so you're free to make your own decisions and all you can lose is a few seconds of your time.
The aforementioned review hurt the reader quite considerably.
Fortunately she's carried on recording but if she hadn't then I would have been deprived of hearing future recordings.

Finally

I feel that I am quite capable of self-reviewing.
I can compare myself with other recordings that I enjoy and judge whether it compares favourably or not. If it doesn't then I ask advice to help me improve. Why would someone else be able to judge what I can hear better than I can?

Post by **hugh** » January 16th, 2007, 7:56 am

There is nothing wrong with being imperfect

yes in fact most people are. more, sometimes imperfection is a beautiful thing. and even more, the beautifulness of a thing, like its perfection, is a relative thing: compared to what? based on what criteria.

but there is something wrong when our society can't admit this.

I would agree with this.

Not everyone is great at everything, and losing or having someone tell a person that their work isn't up to par is good, not bad.

but here is the rub: what is par? whose par? yours? mine? tom cruise's?

I just hate all this "it's okay, we're all winners" garbage.

indeed, though I would argue that's less pernicious than the sort of statement that says: here is how art should look/sound, and nothing else is of any value. if it is not like *this* then it has no worth.

It's okay to feel bad because our work isn't as liked as we hope!

Indeed... I have a wonderful book called "Rotten Reviews" that lists critics' dmaning reactions to all sorts of wonderful and lasting works of literature. (My favourite was a review of Uncle Vanya that says: "If you were to ask me what Uncle Vanya is about, I would say about as much as I can take.")

Point being that not being liked is, in my view, a pretty irrelevant sort of measure of most important things. It's not useless, but there are many more interesting metrics.

We learn from it and try again (or move on to trying another activity).

Yes.

We as society need to learn to take constructive criticisms.

Perhaps, or maybe a better way to have interesting things happen is to encourage more people to actually do things. For instance, instead of watching bad hollyood art, make your own.

In the context of making public domain audio books, we've found option 2 to be the most effective way to build a fairly impressive catalog of mostly-wonderful audio books, which is, after all, our objective (for some not-so-good ones, check out my recordings).

Put more plainly: our no-criticism policy has worked so far, so we don't plan to change it.

I'm not trying to be mean, just professing my personal views.

me too, tho I seem mysteriously to be getting hot under the collar more often these days, which is not a good sign!

Jazbees · Post by **Jazbees** » January 16th, 2007, 12:24 pm

Re: the "it's okay, we're all winners" comment, I'm curious where exactly that kind of attitude can be seen on LibriVox. When I see a comment about "winners," it implies competition of some kind. Aside from the occasional situation where a BC wants to hold auditions for parts in a dramatic reading, I have yet to see any signs of competition on LibriVox. Is that a bad thing? I'd say no, because that's not the goal of the site. As has been stated previously, the goal is to get stuff produced. It's not about the readers, it's about the works being read. It's not about recognition or competition, it's about contribution and cooperation.

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » January 16th, 2007, 12:42 pm

AND HAVING FUN doing it!

ChrisHughes · Post by **ChrisHughes** » January 16th, 2007, 1:53 pm

It seems to me, that rather than society being afraid to criticise the works of others, that the world is full of people who fearlessly criticise and belittle. I try my best to be the opposite. However, by my saying this, MonicaV may feel I am being critical of her.

I apologise for that.

Just my personal view.

djaquay · Post by **djaquay** » January 16th, 2007, 2:44 pm

MonicaV wrote:I just hate all this "it's okay, we're all winners" garbage.

In competitive fields (even/especially kids' sports), I agree with this. But as has been mentioned (by jazbees), we're not competing here. And I positively love that LV is more about the literature than about the performance. One chapter of a LV book I was just listening to was done by a lady with a wonderfully smooth voice, who apparently just read it straight through and posted it without edits. It had a few oopses here and there, but a very pleasant listen, imperfections and all. And I loved it.

So kudos to Hugh for saying "all are welcome", and especially for sticking to it. It's why I was willing to join in, knowing that.

OTOH, I do like the idea Yakumo kicked off of being able to ask for advice. On a music composition list I'm on, they post works and ask for C&C (comments and criticisms). I do listen to my own recordings, and try to self critique, but would certainly love to give and receive feedback in a "Feedback Wanted" forum.

Dave

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » January 16th, 2007, 2:57 pm

djaquay wrote: would certainly love to give and receive feedback in a "Feedback Wanted" forum. Dave

We DO have that forum. It's called "Listeners wanted" IF a person posts a particular recording there and marks in the subject "CC" for "constructive critism", you will get many responses for improvement.

Personaly, I am rather self concious and would not want someone to tell me they think my recordings suck. I do it because I WANT to. Simple as that.

Esther

MonicaV · Post by **MonicaV** » January 16th, 2007, 3:50 pm

Jazbees wrote:Re: the "it's okay, we're all winners" comment, I'm curious where exactly that kind of attitude can be seen on LibriVox. When I see a comment about "winners," it implies competition of some kind. Aside from the occasional situation where a BC wants to hold auditions for parts in a dramatic reading, I have yet to see any signs of competition on LibriVox. Is that a bad thing? I'd say no, because that's not the goal of the site. As has been stated previously, the goal is to get stuff produced. It's not about the readers, it's about the works being read. It's not about recognition or competition, it's about contribution and cooperation.

With that quote, I'm talking about the world in general. I'm all for straight reads of the book without dramatic interpretation if the person is unable to do so. I like a good solid speed, and if possible some voice inflections (not to be misconstrued for an acting type of "voice").

MonicaV · Post by **MonicaV** » January 16th, 2007, 3:57 pm

But, without constructive criticism how can one improve? For example I know I talk very fast, so I'm working on that. I am working on recording a very short chapter of Charles Dickens' Hard Times until I do it right. I want people to enjoy the reading and it'll give me practice for when I do the longer Apology by Plato, but I'm still unsure, because it was a work written by a man, and I have a very unmistakeably feminine (almost childlike)voice. Just wouldn't resonate the same if a man did it. By no means am I saying that I can't understand it, but if I were to listen to it personally, I'd like to be able to imagine, with the help of a male voice, that Plato is reading it.

rachelellen · Post by **rachelellen** » January 16th, 2007, 4:24 pm

Starlite wrote:
djaquay wrote: would certainly love to give and receive feedback in a "Feedback Wanted" forum. Dave
We DO have that forum. It's called "Listeners wanted" IF a person posts a particular recording there and marks in the subject "CC" for "constructive critism", you will get many responses for improvement.

Personaly, I am rather self concious and would not want someone to tell me they think my recordings suck. I do it because I WANT to. Simple as that.

Esther :)

Esther, I am the same. And in my secret soul, I'm pretty sure that actually I DO kind of suck, so I'm terribly afraid to ask lest that will be confirmed and I'll never feel able to read for Librivox again. And reading for Librivox is just so darned much fun -- there, I said it -- that I don't want to stop, even if my most hopeful assessment of my readings is: "Well, at least now people have that for free for their iPods. They can always pay and get a good version if they can't stand mine."

In all seriousness, though, the fact is that I think on-site reviews WOULD result in fewer readers. I doubt I'm the only person who's here having a good time and making books audible for people whether they can pay for them or not, who would never record another section if I felt like I needed to come to some objective professional-level standard in order to be acceptable.

And more importantly to me: to a large extent we're all just one big community. Yes, the admins and MCs are better-known than lowly readers like me, but overall, there's no sense of celebrity around any of the participants. If we had Five Star Kayray and One-And-A-Half-Star Rachelellen, though, I think that would probably change. And that would be really kind of sad. I like feeling like I'm participating in this alongside of all kinds of different people from all over the world, all doing our best at it, whether our best is worthy of Random House Audio or is of a more utilitarian "hey [shrug] it's free" nature.

kri · Post by **kri** » January 16th, 2007, 4:27 pm

MonicaV wrote:But, without constructive criticism how can one improve? For example I know I talk very fast, so I'm working on that. I am working on recording a very short chapter of Charles Dickens' Hard Times until I do it right. I want people to enjoy the reading and it'll give me practice for when I do the longer Apology by Plato, but I'm still unsure, because it was a work written by a man, and I have a very unmistakeably feminine (almost childlike)voice. Just wouldn't resonate the same if a man did it. By no means am I saying that I can't understand it, but if I were to listen to it personally, I'd like to be able to imagine, with the help of a male voice, that Plato is reading it.

Who's to say someone has to improve? That's not the purpose of this site, and it's not up to the audience to decide if a reader should improve or not. I think I am right in speaking for the general sense of LibriVox: unwarranted criticism is not OK. Since the purpose of this site is not to produce amazing works of voice audio, there is no reason to worry about a recording that makes you cringe. If you don't like it, listen to something else, or better yet do it the way you think it should be done!

I'm going to repeat others statements again, because I think they're really important. We aren't totally opposed to improvement here at LV, nor will we object to criticism. If criticism is warranted then more power to you! Head over to the Listeners Wanted section and look for threads with CC at the beginning of them. Use that system yourself if you're looking to improve.

To repeat Starlite, one of the most important things about LibriVox is that we should be having fun!

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » January 16th, 2007, 4:27 pm

Well said.

Post by **hugh** » January 16th, 2007, 5:04 pm

In particular: invited criticism is great...Monica, if you would like people to evaluate your recordings, that is wonderful ... let people know and I bet you the whole LV catalog that you'll get very good, kind comments that will help you improve.

but not everyone wants to get evaluated, even by the kind-hearted souls of LV. and that, more or less, is the point. not everyone DOES want to get evaluated (whatever that means), and I have yet to see a good reason whay evaluation should be forced on anyone who puts in the effort and energy to read for LV, at least not within the cozy walls of this place.

We have someone who has started a blog who's whole purpose is to review LV recordings... here is what he has to say on this topic:
http://readear.blogspot.com/2007/01/quality-and-librivox.html

it's very nice to hear his take, because he's not even a reader (as far as I know); he just likes listening.