Modern books that you wish we could record.

Everything except LibriVox (yes, this is where knitting gets discussed. Now includes non-LV Volunteers Wanted projects)
a.r.dobbs
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Post by a.r.dobbs »

Setting the timer to 5 minutes, top-of-the-head list:
Cryptonomican by Neil Stephenson
and Diamond Age, too
everything by Diana Wynne Jones
um . . .
Lord of the Rings of course and the dear sweet Hobbit
everything by Terry Pratchett of course
lots and lots of current SF and Fantasy, such as . . . books by Terri Windling, Ellen Kushner, Laurie J. Marks . . .
um . . .
lots more Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and . . . hmm . . .
well, times up.
Now I'll read other lists and say "Doh! Yes, yes, ditto."
Hmm -- Winnie the Pooh ... is that ... hmm, it's not on Gutenberg, so . . .
Now I read lists. :)

a.r.dobbs
Last edited by a.r.dobbs on June 9th, 2006, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
a.r.dobbs
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Post by a.r.dobbs »

okay...while I read all the earlier posts, I'll keep this open because other things are certain to spring up.

OH, and lots and lots by Ursula K. LeGuin. Almost everything.
[And I loved Tehanu; felt deep gratitude to LeGuin for it. I'm so impressed with many of the later short stories. Very very very impressed with the characters and societies.]

Doris Lessing's Shikasta and other sf.

by the way, appropo of nuthin, my favorite of all ever recorded books was Pratchet's Hogfather read by Nigel Planer who is
s o a s t o n i s h i n g
that I've listened um, five or six times to the whole book, laughing So Much. Well, I think I have to dig it out again.
[but I suppose that's a separate thread eh? In which I'd also be sure to mention that I so perfectly adore the reading voice of Margaret Hilton as well, whose Silas Marner and The Warden are dear to me]
oh my, I'm off-off topic. ahem

Nodding many times at lots of recommendations
Oh -- John Crowley's Little Big and maybe Engine Summer
Oh yes, Hitchhikers -- ooh oooh, as a LibriVox Radio Show type script rather than from the books [you know, the seamy editing and all]

How the mind jumps around:
The lovely Little House stories ... in the big woods ... prairie ... etc.

Lots and lots of Phillip K. Dick of course.

Oh, every single play by Shaw. And his other writing, too. Yes.
Oh Wow! Everything is available!! Let's do it!

But I do want to say, for me there's been a great silver lining in this restriction to public domain -- I certainly haven't read *all* the classics before (or had them read to me!) . . . and they're so wonderful. [They just don't have a sufficient number of SF and fantasy titles, do they? :) ]

sorry. I've been unruly.
a.r.dobbs
Lucy
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Post by Lucy »

Good thread :D

Mine would be...
Some Virginia Woolf, Ann Rynd, Roald Dahl

And specific books...
Jennifer Government
A Clockwork Orange
1984
Breakfast on Pluto
Life Of Pi (listened to a non-public domain audiobook of this which was brilliant)
http://www.lu-lu.net
Fox in the Stars
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Post by Fox in the Stars »

One I just thought of again---

"The Good Old Days---They Were Terrible!" by Otto L. Bettmann. Given we'd lose the wealth of period illustrations, but this archivist sets out to show that the last half of the 19th century was, well, terrible, and that many of the problems we chafe at today and long for "the good old days" were actually much worse back then! Also of interest, in the article on mental health he even cites Nelly Bly's "Ten Days in a Madhouse", which Alice read solo for us (I listened to it just recently; it was great!).
Laura "Fox in the Stars": fan-author, puppyshipper.
...and [url=http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/LauraFox]LibriVixen. >^-~<[/url]
tina
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Post by tina »

Some of Stephen King's work is like poetry. He's read a lot of his own work, but I think hasn't recorded much since his accident a few years ago. And I can't listen to the reader who replaced him. I have no idea what it is, but I just really hate his voice. So I'd like to have new recordings of those books.

(Anne Heche did a good job on "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", and my only quibble was the voice of the Wasp Priest. When she was doing the sports announcers on the AM radio, the producers did something to the sound to make it sound like it was over a radio, but the Wasp Priest was just her trying to make a buzzing sound. I felt like they should have done the sound tweaks for that one too. But overall, does not need replacing.)

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein would be fun, being written in Loonie dialect. "My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'" It would need to be an all male cast of readers, as it's in first person.

Anything by Niven.

Any of the Culture books by Iain Banks.

Phillipa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl".

I could go on, but I suppose I'd better end somewhere. ;)

-tina
Odd_Bloke
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Post by Odd_Bloke »

  • Most of C.S. Forester's stuff (mainly the Hornblower series).
    Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series (the basis of "Master & Commander" starring Russell Crowe)
    Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series
Can you see what kinda fiction I like yet? :P

Dan
"I am, after all," said Pooh, "a bear of very little brain." -- A.A. Milne

"Fry, look, I'm steering with my ass!"
"That's the best thing I ever saw!"
MermaidMaddie
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Post by MermaidMaddie »

I heartily second "A wrinkle in Time," as well as "Life of Pi."

Others I can think of off the top of my head would be:

The Joy Luck Club

Corrie ten Boom's (nonfiction,) The Hiding Place

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

Ruth Plumly Thompson's "Oz" Books. (Granted, there was only one Baum, but in the interest of feeding my Oz-mania, I would love to be able to do later Oz books as well) The first post-Baum title ("Royal Book of Oz") was published before 1923, but that's probably about it.

Part of me wants to say Gregoy Maguire's "Wicked," though it's a compicated story just to read to oneself, much less aloud.

Going back to my youth, I'd like to do "Socks", and the Ramona and Mouse and the Motorcycle books by Beverly Cleary.

For something that leans a little more towards "popular fiction" I'd say the first V.C. Andrews series (Flowers in the Attic, etc.)

Beyond that my taste is mostly non-fiction, so I'd say any number of biographies/autobiographies for the Hollywood stars of the 30's-50's, and I'd love to be able to do some travelogue and/or historical stuff--most of the public domain history and/or travel related stuff I've found so far just puts me to sleep.
:wink:
Yakumo
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Post by Yakumo »

Erich Fromm's Escape from Fredom

Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motercycle Maintanance.

Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi

Richard Wrights Black Boy

1984

Stephan Pressfield's Gates of Fire

James Hilton's Lost Horizon

Wu Chen en's Journey to The West aka. Monkey King

I read a severly abrided version of the Monkey King over the summer. It was delightful. It is a chinese classic that has been around for hundreds if not thousands of years but there is no english translation currently in the public domain. All english translations are in their infancy as far as their public domain status is concerned.

what a shame. It would be so fun to read!

and more. . .

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by guess who. . . --really, it saves me the trouble of having to look up the rediculous spelling of his name--

The Picture of Dorean Grey by Oscar Wilde

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

On the lighter side, Some Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Three Men in a boat by Jerrone K Jerrone
Last edited by Yakumo on October 8th, 2006, 6:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
anna
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Post by anna »

All the books of Tom Clancy.
Uh..... The books of Frank Herbert.
KATWAL
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Post by KATWAL »

Oh yes to so many of the suggestions!!!

I'd also add
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank

And how about some playwrights???

Neil Simon
Arthur Miller
Eugene Oneill
Tennessee Williams


Kathy
Starlite
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Post by Starlite »

Though I love C S Lewis, I just couldnt get through the screwtape letters. I LOVE Narnia!!! I actualy bought the whole series audiobooks :D Unfortunately all copywrited :(
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress,
therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw
KATWAL
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Post by KATWAL »

I've looked at when some books should hit public domain. At least one on my list should hit in 2019!!!!! :?

How good it is that for just as many books are published, there are at least as many readers with diverse appetites. That lets every book have at least one fan!

Kathy
Breefolk
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Post by Breefolk »

I would have liked to see anything by Rene Barjavel, but "Le voyageur imprudent" would be fun.
jbieber
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Post by jbieber »

Well, I have been discovering so much that is in the public domain that I haven't read that this question is less pressing than I would have thought. But here's a brief wish list.

Cornelia Funke (aka Cecilie Dressler Verlag) - with the caveat that any Librivoxers who have the ability to read characters in and out of books should probably steer clear of Inkheart and Inkspell!

Ursula Le Guin
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein, of course.
J. K. Rowling
Harlan Ellison
Dorothy Dunnett

Eloise Jarvis McGraw - a really terrific award-winning writer of fantasy and historical fiction for children, adolescents and adults. Her works on ancient Egypt are especially well regarded.

Natalie Zemon Davis, Martin Guerre

Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre ? a fun collection of essays of French cultural history.

Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River
Barbara Kingsolver, especially Poisonwood Bible

And in the realm of popular SF/fantasy, some selective works by Anne McCaffrey

For the children within/among us:

The Madeline books by Bemelmans
Dr. Seuss/T. Geisel
Roald Dahl (however, if it?s permitted to mention commercial recordings on this site, Jeremy Irons? rendition is absolutely hysterical and well worth checking out of your public library).
Laura Ingalls Wilder (we're only about 10 years away from Big Woods!)
The ?Harry the Dog? series
Little Bear series
Last edited by jbieber on June 30th, 2006, 11:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
"To please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward." L. Frank Baum
Peter Why
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Post by Peter Why »

Diane Duane's "Bride of the Rat God"!

Peter
"I think, therefore I am, I think." Solomon Cohen, in Terry Pratchett's Dodger
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