Leonard Middlebrook, a young attorney with, among other things, a bibliographical interest, accepts an invitation to lonely Ravensdene Court on the Northumbrian coast. There, Francis Raven, the owner, recently retired to the family property after an Indian career, finds himself in possession of an enormous number of old books and other items, and needs help in evaluating them. The attorney, though a man of quiet life -- even dull, as he puts it -- finds himself suddenly at the center of a darkening mystery that stretches from the British Isles to the Far East, and eventually threatens not only him but also the young and spirited Miss Raven, Francis’s niece. ( Nicholas Clifford)
Type of proof-listening required (Note: please read the PL FAQ): standard
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Magic Window:
BC Admin
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Genres for the project: Crime & Mystery Fiction
Keywords that describe the book: Yorkshire murder romance
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The reader will record the following at the beginning and end of each file:
No more than 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning of the recording! START of recording (Intro):
"Chapter [number] of Ravensdene Court. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit: librivox DOT org"
If you wish, say:
"Recording by [your name], [city, your blog, podcast, web address]"
Say: "Ravensdene Court, by J. S. Fletcher. [Chapter]"
For the second and all subsequent sections, you may optionally use the shortened form of this intro disclaimer:
"Chapter [number] of Ravensdene Court by J. S. Fletcher. This LibriVox recording is in the Public Domain."
If you wish, say:
"Recording by [your name], [city, your blog, podcast, web address]"
Only if applicable, say: "[Chapter title]"
END of recording:
At the end of the section, say: "End of [Chapter]"
If you wish, say: "Recording by [your name], [city, your blog, podcast, web address]"
At the end of the book, say (in addition): "End of Ravensdene Court, by J. S. Fletcher. "
There should be 5 seconds silence at the end of the recording,
Example filename ravensdenecourt_##_fletcher.mp3 (all lower-case) where ## is the section number (e.g. ravensdenecourt_01_fletcher.mp3)
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The first two chaps. of Ravensdene Court are up; chap. ii is also called Ravensdene Court. I've now read three chaps; Fletcher is clearly one of those writers who at the end of each chap. leaves the reader hanging in the air to make sure the next page is turned.
Chapters vi and vii are now up. I must say I'm a bit worried by the appearance of a Chinese, esp. when he's called Yellowface. Nine years before this book appeared, in 1913 Sax Rohmer published his Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, which is a terrible example of ethnic stereotyping and general racism. It's also a shameless knock-off of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is rebaptized as Nayland Smith, and Dr. Watson as Dr. Petrie. And the insidious Fu-manchu is guilty of all the Worst Oriental Evils that you can imagine lurking in the hearts Wicked but Brilliant Chinamen, as the were called in those days. Manchus incidentally were ethinically different from Chinese, but Rohmer presumably didn't know that.
I corrected my Tobacco Box, and I've also changed Miss Raven from a granddaughter to a niece, which is what she is.
Some readers choose to include a statement similar to the following in their book description.
"This book contains racial and other prejudices that were once commonplace. They are retained, as originally written in this recording, because to do otherwise would be to deny they existed."
I came across that one yesterday and thought it was the best wording I'd seen so far.
Most crooks are foreign , lower class , sinister looking or Jewish , middle European or Chinese who speak terrible English , unless they are even sneakier and speak perfect English . And only the women are beautiful - but they usually are being controlled by someone matching the description
I'm afraid I hit a glitch: chapter 8 seems to be missing some data files. "Probably because of a system crash," says Audacity, adding that they're unrecoverable. I did indeed have a bad crash the evening before last. I think the only thing to do is to re-read 8. At least the chapters are only 20 min. long. Chapter 9 is ready for upload, but I'll hold back on it until I have my new chap. 8.
As soon as I sent that last message, the glitch seems to have fixed itself, and the file for chap. 8 which had been unrecoverable suddenly came up. Fortunately I was just giving it one more try before erasing it. I have no idea why or how it fixed itself. Some strange Oriental magic, no doubt. If you hear anything strange in chapter 8 let me know. Chap. 9 should be OK, and that's up too.