Librivox Mentioned on podcast

KATWAL · Post by **KATWAL** » June 12th, 2006, 8:12 am

Librivox has been mentioned on a "Lost" podcast thanks to a coworker of mine. The podcast is: lostcasts.com

While "Lost" is on summer break, the podcasters are reading books that have been "revealed" on the TV show "Lost", looking for relevence, hints...

One book is Heart of Darkness, which is in Librivox' completed books, and Turn of the Screw which is in progress. My coworker clued the podcasters in on Librivox as a source to listen to these books.

Any way, we may find a line of new listeners and volunteers thanks to this little blurb.

FYI
KATWAL

Post by **hugh** » June 12th, 2006, 8:36 am

sweet!

ceastman · Post by **ceastman** » June 14th, 2006, 5:41 am

How.. curious!

Thanks for the notification.

-Catharine, who wonders if the Bible readings thread is about to get resurrected (oh dear, did I just make a pun??)

sadclown · Post by **sadclown** » June 14th, 2006, 5:41 am

Yes! This was exactly how I found out about Librivox. Thanks for suggesting it to the Lostcasts members. I'm so excited to have found this!

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 27th, 2006, 8:30 am

I was grazing over the Internet and found this web site.
One of the regulars in their forums has listened to a huge number of Librivox recordings and jotted down a few comments on each.
He prefers solo recordings so has concentrated mostly upon those.

http://www.learnoutloud.com/content/blog/archives/2006/07/guide_to_libriv.html

It looks quite a good site

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » July 27th, 2006, 9:12 am

BEWARE not all comments are nice

kayray · Post by **kayray** » July 27th, 2006, 9:15 am

Yeah... don't go there if you're sensitive at all! And remember this is just one very opinionated guy's opinion :)

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 27th, 2006, 9:20 am

Starlite wrote:BEWARE not all comments are nice

Well, no but I haven't seen any that are gratuitously horrible, just some that are maybe not too well considered. The person who has put together these reviews has some definite blind spots such as the almost complete rejection of the notion of listening to a non dramatic reading which has multiple voices.

I was amused by the criticism of the sonnets i.e. that they were a bit short.

Hmmm - 14 lines perhaps ?

jimmowatt · Post by **jimmowatt** » July 27th, 2006, 10:20 am

kayray wrote:Yeah... don't go there if you're sensitive at all! And remember this is just one very opinionated guy's opinion

It's a real case of your mileage may vary isn't it with audio books.
The third one down in his list is one I've listened to and was impressed by as well as enjoyed.
But he's far from impressed.
Most odd.

ceastman · Post by **ceastman** » July 27th, 2006, 10:51 am

Definitely YMMV. Everyone has their own favorite style of reading - he seems to have a very specific, somewhat narrow tolerance range on 'dramatics' in readings. Not too much, but not none at all.

Whutevuh.

-Catharine

LibraryLady · Post by **LibraryLady** » July 27th, 2006, 8:26 pm

The really irritating thing about this guy is that he states things as fact, not opinion. I noticed that he said something about "we" have put together a guide so I wonder if others contributed or if this is one person's opinion?

Plus he says some things that are downright.... ignorant, I suppose, for someone supposedly promoting literature. For instance:

These are really short sonnets. Laura Fox does well to read them, but they might be too short to bother with.

What other kind of sonnets are there? Should we not bother with any poems from now on? Perhaps we should all focus on War and Peace and drop everything else.

LibriVox's most prolific narrator

Although the person he mentions is quite good and has done a lot, I would disagree. Kara is easily the most prolific person here based on pure time spent recording. And again, he just says this like it's a fact.

he sounds like a college student.

Which sounds like what? I honestly have no idea what he is trying to imply.

And of course my ego is bruised since I got the nastiest review of pretty much everyone:

Pride and Prejudice (Solo Project) by Jane Austen
-If you're going to listen to this 13 hour audio book I'd suggest paying for it. Annie Coleman is not a great narrator. Sort of reminded me of when classmates used to read the text in high school. And the audio quality is ok but not great.

I really wanted to let this roll right off me and laugh because of all the positive feedback I've gotten but it's been a long day. In fact it's been a long month. And this guy just plain pisses me off. Even if he weren't so critical of my P&P, I'd still be pissed off because of the way he presents his reviews as some sort of official guide on this site but he obviously hasn't done the basic research or listened to all of the recordings which he is reviewing.

Of course I respect his right to his opinions and I know this is part of the deal with doing this. It was bound to happen eventually. But I guess I have my right to vent my temper and opinions too. Sorry to rant but I had to get this off my chest.

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » July 28th, 2006, 3:57 am

I agree with you Annie. Though I havn't heard your P&P, This guy is far too critical. He MUST realize we are volunteers doing what we love. And of course it is ONLY the opinion of ONE man.

raynr · Post by **raynr** » July 28th, 2006, 5:31 am

I listened to it and I loved it. This guy can only have listened to the recordings for a few seconds and compared it with professional recordings. But the curious thing is that you get fascinated by each voice and identify the book with this voice after a short while, regardless how "professional" the recording is. But there exist people like this one. I read (I think in an Amazon-comment) that an Austen-recording was bad because the reader was not British but American!
There are some people who only would listen to a really "professional" recording. They want it exact, clear and sterile. Metaphorically speaking: they prefer a dentist surgery to a homelike living-room with a fireplace.

Post by **hugh** » July 28th, 2006, 5:58 am

learn out loud is a commercial site that offers audiobooks/learning tools etc. They include in their catalogue a ton of free stuff from other sites, LibriVox included. The purpose here, I believe, was to review the solo stuff LV and include in their catalogue stuff that sounds most "professional." Professional does not mean good or better (regardless of what this guy thinks); rather it means "sounds like something I am used to hearing from professional audiobooks."

as many of us have discovered, the fact that many of us sound "amateur" is actually a benefit, for all the reasons librivox is wonderful. There was that one guy (I can't remember his name) who posted here a while back saying he only wanted to hear british readers reading british books. which of course is bunk.

annie, from what my wife tells me, you did a fabulous job with Pride and Prejudice (i have only listend to little bits of it), and you are second as her favourite reader (after Kara, who had the advantage of reading her all time favourite book, the Secret Garden).

anyway, this is one opinion of one guy who wants professional reading, and he is evaluating our books based on that criteria - which is fine, but not what we do, nor do we wish to, nor should we wish to.

also, as mentioned, anyone who criticizes sonnets for being too short has some credibility problems from the start.

DSayers · Post by **DSayers** » July 28th, 2006, 6:15 am

I was one who was skewered for my voicing of Robinson Crusoe ... but I take consolation in being panned along with many of my favorite readers at LibriVox.

Some of this reviewer's comments are laughable (sonnets being overly short got a bellylaugh from me). Anyone familiar with Crusoe must have raised an eyebrow to read that Defoe's study of resourcefulness under conditions of extreme solitude is "an adventure story."

But for me the most striking qualities of "LOLDavid" are his humorlessness and absence of a sense of irony. Imagine faulting Rainer's masterful reading of Twain's Awful German Language as lacking in humor ... and read with a German accent! Whenever I'm in need of a good laugh, his recording is the first place I turn ... and it's also the first example I give my friends of the high quality of LibriVox readings.

-denny