COMPLETE: Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 102 - jo

[bobpliley]

Would you please check this submission as to acceptability

occurs both in the Sketch-book of Geoffray Crayon by Washington Irving and in the Oxford Book of American Essays by W. C. Brownell et.al.

https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_mutabilityofliterature_irving_bp_128kb.mp3

29:00

Thank you

[Sue Anderson]

Would you please check this submission as to acceptability

occurs both in the Sketch-book of Geoffray Crayon by Washington Irving and in the Oxford Book of American Essays by W. C. Brownell et.al.

https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_mutabilityofliterature_irving_bp_128kb.mp3

29:00

Thank you

Hi Bob, Welcome to LibriVox and to the Short Nonfiction Collection! Thanks for this lively essay by Washington Irving. It was refreshing the way Irving used the conceit of a conversation with a cantankerous quarto volume in a library to propound his ideas about literature. This was a fun listen! I am marking your recording PL OK.

Since you're just starting out recording for LibriVox, I'll mention a couple of things that might help you with future recordings. One is how to handle footnotes. I think you must have recorded from the Gutenberg transcription of The Sketchbook of Geoffray Crayon, which intersperses the footnotes with the text and only marks them by an asterisk (*). ( The Oxford Book of American Essays groups the footnotes at the end of the essay.)

LibriVox allows readers to choose whether or not to read footnotes, and, if they do decide to read them, LibriVox allows a certain discretion on the part of the reader as to when to read them. The intent is to make the connections between text and footnote as clear as possible for the listener. LibriVox also asks that readers say the words "Footnote" and "End Footnote" at the beginning and end of each footnote.

One other thing -- you transposed a fair number of words in this reading. Some examples: You said "charter house" for "chapter house," [which made my mind jump first to Stendhal's novel The Charterhouse of Parma, and from there to the Chart House chain of seafood restaurants...]. You also said "What bogs of theoretical speculations!" when the text reads "theological speculations."

There was also a misread in the first sentence of the essay. Irving writes "There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed." You said "ice castles." Hearing "ice castles," and looking past my computer at the gloomy sky and the snow covering the ground, I thought, Bob must live in a cold climate. But I see you hail from Tucson!

All said, this was a great start for your LibriVox recording career! The SNF looks forward to your future submissions.

[bobpliley]

Given these points you have raised, would it be appropriate for me to rethink some of these ideas and makes some changes. Given I am such a novice, it would not offend me to re-record some of these portions…on another point, I never was comfortable with the footnotes/poetry as regarding their place in the narrative. Given that you may say yes to this proposal, I would be glad to hear more of your advice on how to factors these embellishments in with the text. Thanks, bp

[Sue Anderson]

Given these points you have raised, would it be appropriate for me to rethink some of these ideas and makes some changes. Given I am such a novice, it would not offend me to re-record some of these portions…on another point, I never was comfortable with the footnotes/poetry as regarding their place in the narrative. Given that you may say yes to this proposal, I would be glad to hear more of your advice on how to factors these embellishments in with the text. Thanks, bp

Hi Bob, Thanks for your thoughtful response Let's leave this early effort as is, and work toward improvements in future recordings. It's very hard to produce a word perfect reading when you first start recording--speaking from experience. The guidelines I follow in proof listening, as outlined in #5 of the instructions say this: "Does the recording have errors that change the meaning of the text? This includes words accidentally added, omitted, mispronounced, or misread!"

Transposing words (look-alike words) is probably the most common error I find in recordings. None of your misreads this time struck me as egregious --- Irving's overall intent was not lost -- but I think "closer to the text" is always better. For me, anyway, reading the text out loud to myself before I begin recording helps with accuracy.

With regard to the footnotes in Washington Irving's essay: Since the footnotes were all poems written in Old or Middle English, and knowing that reading footnotes is not obligatory in LibriVox, I probably (as a non-expert) would have left them out.

However, please understand, poems that are integral to a text --i.e. poems that are not footnotes -- cannot be left out. So I think it boils down to the idea that LibriVox is a voyage of discovery, and reading Old and Middle English poetry out loud can be part of that discovery.

Best wishes,

[bobpliley]

Thanks Sue, this has been very useful to think about, and I will use your ideas as guidelines. bp

[TriciaG]

Title: Shall We Scrap Our Calendar?
Author: Ernest Hamlin Abbott
Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019606810&seq=117
Length: 20:39
Link: https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_scrapourcalendar_abbott_tg_128kb.mp3

Comments:

• You can read more about this calendar system here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
• Funny that the article says the guy who developed it took something like 16 years to do it. I've casually considered such a change in the calendar, and it didn't take me 16 years to do it.
• One of my main objections to it when pondering the idea (which is also mentioned in the Wikipedia article) is that weddings & birthdays would always fall on the same day of the week. Could you imagine your birthday always being on a Tuesday or something? And think of the wedding anniversaries: in the US, most couples get married on a Saturday. Their anniversary would always be on a Saturday - along with all the rest of the people married then, so celebrating your anniversary would mean everyone going out on the same night to the restaurant.
• Kodak used this calendar system up to 1989! That might be who the article was referring to, talking about a company that used it and kept 2 different accounting systems.
• "Sol" as the new month name pretty much ignores the southern hemisphere.

[Sue Anderson]

Title: Shall We Scrap Our Calendar?
Author: Ernest Hamlin Abbott
Source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.32106019606810&seq=117
Length: 20:39
Link: https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_scrapourcalendar_abbott_tg_128kb.mp3

Comments:

• You can read more about this calendar system here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
• Funny that the article says the guy who developed it took something like 16 years to do it. I've casually considered such a change in the calendar, and it didn't take me 16 years to do it.
• One of my main objections to it when pondering the idea (which is also mentioned in the Wikipedia article) is that weddings & birthdays would always fall on the same day of the week. Could you imagine your birthday always being on a Tuesday or something? And think of the wedding anniversaries: in the US, most couples get married on a Saturday. Their anniversary would always be on a Saturday - along with all the rest of the people married then, so celebrating your anniversary would mean everyone going out on the same night to the restaurant.
• Kodak used this calendar system up to 1989! That might be who the article was referring to, talking about a company that used it and kept 2 different accounting systems.
• "Sol" as the new month name pretty much ignores the southern hemisphere.

Hi Tricia, Thanks for this argument for a 13 month year. It sounds sensible! I'd probably go for it.

When Ernest Hamlin Abbott mentions the English calendar reform of 1752, which dropped 11 days from the calendar, I was immediately tele-transported back to August 2016, and the LibriVox 11th Anniversary Collection [which I BC'd and you MC'd.] One of the readings that I proposed for that collection has relevancy to your current read, dealing as it does with English reaction to the changed calendar. https://librivox.org/librivox-11th-anniversary-collection/

Do daylight savings time changes leave you confused, or cranky, or both? I know they do me. Which fact started me wondering how the citizens of England reacted to loosing a whopping 11 days off their calendar in 1752, when it was decreed that "the natural Day next immediately following the said second Day of September, shall be called, reckoned, and accounted, to be the fourteenth Day of September."

The full text of this "Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now is Use" can be found here . It makes for interesting reading.

The loss of those 11 days did not go over easy with some (or many). "Good neighbor, You seem to be uneasy in your mind that you are ordered by an act of Parliament to keep Christmas eleven days sooner than usual ..." begins "A Short Explanation of the Difference Between the Old and the New Stile (1756) https://books.google.com/books?id=gNpbAAAAQAAJ. Another grumpy hold out laments on March 8 1753: "Were our astronomers so ignorant as to think that the old proverbs would serve for their new-fangled calendar?" read here.

I've marked "Shall We Scrap our Calendar" PL OK! If, however, you are in the mood for total perfection, there's one pronunciation I would suggest changing--the word "sidereal" (of or with respect to the distant stars) at 8:18. https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=sidereal&op=translate

[TriciaG]

I've marked "Shall We Scrap our Calendar" PL OK! If, however, you are in the mood for total perfection, there's one pronunciation I would suggest changing--the word "sidereal" (of or with respect to the distant stars) at 8:18. https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=sidereal&op=translate

HUH! That's one of those "you don't know what you don't know" words! I'd have never have thought there was a different pronunciation!

I'll fix that up tomorrow.

[TriciaG]

"Sidereal" fixed at 8:18 changed:
https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_scrapourcalendar_abbott_tg_128kb.mp3

[Sue Anderson]

"Sidereal" fixed at 8:18 changed:
https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_scrapourcalendar_abbott_tg_128kb.mp3

Sounds great! Thanks, Tricia.

[lightcrystal]

Here's my second contribution.
Length 11:17

https://librivox.org/uploads/knotyouraveragejo/snf102_witchtrials_unknown_lc_128kb.mp3

Title: Impossibility of Witchcraft

link to source: https://archive.org/details/TheImpossibilityOfWitchcraft/mode/2up

author: unknown

published 1712 at the trial of Jane Wenham, the last person to be tried for witchcraft in England. This is the preface of whoever was defending her in this trial. Note the irony of using the masculine pro noun! To me this is also a fascinating example of the defence that witchcraft is impossible.

Note that I have omitted the numbers of the arguments. This is because 1. was so faint that I missed it so I decided to skip them rather than change this. I also omitted saying by lightcrystal. That was not by intent but I will leave it that way.

[Sue Anderson]

Here's my second contribution.
Length 11:17

author: unknown

published 1712 at the trial of Jane Wenham, the last person to be tried for witchcraft in England. This is the preface of whoever was defending her in this trial. Note the irony of using the masculine pro noun! To me this is also a fascinating example of the defence that witchcraft is impossible.

Hi lightcrystal, Thanks for this refutation of witchcraft! "...a Crazie Body very often Indisposes the Soul, and Influences the Mind to entertain Strange and Preternatural Ideas of Things that have no Manner of Existence."

Note that I have omitted the numbers of the arguments. This is because 1. was so faint that I missed it so I decided to skip them rather than change this.

On my first quick perusal of your post this morning with foggy eye glasses, I thought you yourself had perhaps been overcome by witches... [reading "Note that I have omitted the numbers of the arguments. This is because 1 was so faint that I missed it so I decided to skip them rather than change this."]

But, no, it was just that I missed the "."

PL OK!

[Availle]

Sorry, Sue, things are a bit messy again... would you please reserve me a spot in this collection?

[Sue Anderson]

Sorry, Sue, things are a bit messy again... would you please reserve me a spot in this collection?

No problem!

[Holls]

Hello!

Could I reserve a spot?

This will be my fist solo recording (I've been a part of a group collection, just not solo).
I'd love to read the short story "The Sword of Wood, a story by G.K.Chesterton", if I could?

It doesn't appear to be in Project Gutenburg yet but here's a link to it in HathiTrust - https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001418095

I've read a number of the "first time" posts, so I think I should be good to give it a go. Do I just upload the recording?

I'm not sure I have a page url, but my name in the system is just Holls.