Librivox’s 11th anniversary is today, August 10th 2016! We had a 6-week drive to finish nearly 200 books in order to reach 10,000 books by our anniversary, and we not only reached that goal easily but we surpassed it by 22 books. We now have 10,022 free audiobooks in our catalog!
Everyone pitched in — book coordinators chased down languishing chapter claims, narrators helped out with books that were lingering unfinished, proof-listeners took on extra work, admins cataloged the finished books, our cover team made cover art for all these extra books, and many soloists put in an extra effort to finish up those solos that were close to completion.
That’s what I did. I wasn’t planning to finish Dracula till December, but I really pushed myself in those few hours when I felt ok (and the house was relatively quiet) and got it done in time to be part of the 10,000! My proof-listener, Mark, managed to get all those long chapters proofed when he wasn’t playing with his grandkids, and Ann cataloged it swiftly.
Betsy-Tacy and Tib: the second book in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The series is based on the author’s life; her family and friends have been renamed, but they really were just like the the people in the books! In this book, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, who are now eight years old, play just as well together as Betsy and Tacy did, and they never quarrel. They get into a little more trouble in this book, though!
I’m going to post the whole book here all at once; the chapters will be in my podcast feed three times a week, as usual, but I don’t feel like scheduling individual posts here to match.
My next LibriVox solo will be Treasure Island, yay! Pirates and parrots and adventure! I’ve got the first four chapters done already. It won’t take eight years this time ;-) Although my beloved but elderly laptop (mid-2011 Macbook Air) is having Serious Issues and it’s going into the shop on Wednesday so I won’t be able to get any recording done for a while. Boo.
Mood: up, down, up, down. Saturday was horrific. Sunday was ok; today was pretty good. Reading lots of Marian Keyes’s Walsh Family novels. Playing Capitals on iPhone. Listening to podcasts. Discovered a band called The Decemberists and I think I might be developing an unhealthy obsession for their song “The Infanta”.
The lyrics tell a story which is incredibly vivid in my mind. A vast slow-moving procession of nobles on elephants and camels. It’s hot, there are bright flags and sidelong glances, trumpet fanfares, cannon salutes, intrigue.
Meanwhile the little princess, the unwitting cause of all the commotion, is dreaming of a peaceful quiet lake.
Here she comes in her palanquin
On the back of an elephant
On a bed made of linen and sequins and silk
All astride on her father’s line
With the king and his concubines
And her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
Among five score pachyderm
Each canopied and passengered
Sit the duke and the duchess’ luscious young girls
Within sight of the baronness
Seething spite for this live largesse
By her side sits the baron
Her barrenness barbs her
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
A phalanx on camelback
Thirty ranks on a forward tack
Followed close, their shiny bright standards a-waving
While behind in their coach, in fours
Ride the wives of the king of Moors
And the veiled young virgin, the prince’s betrothed
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And as she sits upon her place
Her innocence laid on her face
From all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets
Melodies rhapsodical and fair
And all our hearts afire
The sky ablaze with cannon fire
We all raise our voices to the air
To the air…
And above all this falderal
On a bed made of chaparral
She is laid, a coronal placed on her brow
And the babe, all in slumber dreams
Of a place filled with quiet streams
And the lake where her cradle was pulled from the water
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
And we’ll all come praise the infanta
I even forgive them their mispronunciation of “infanta”.
If you’re obsessed with Mad Men, you’ll recognize the song from the opening montage in “Maidenform”, s02e06. Which is of course how I discovered it in the first place.
Thank you all so much for the kindhearted comments and emails. It means a lot.
I’m feeling a better now. I mean, my situation is still exactly the same but I’m managing to think about other things and the terrible terrible depression has lifted again and I am ok for now.
I’ve been working on a LibriVox recording of a US History book for kids — This Country of Ours. It has 99 chapters and is divided into 7 parts. I started recording it in 2007 and got the first 6 parts done within three years, but I started the 7th part in 2013 and it’s just been sitting there unfinished for ages.
LibriVox is doing a finish-up-lingering-projects drive in June, so I decided to get it done. Right now I have only 8 chapters remaining, so the end is in sight!
In non-audiobook news, my cousin Chloe and I saw the new Pixar movie, “Inside Out” yesterday and it was so good! Chloe is one of my favorite people in the whole world and I love to spend time with her, plus the movie was excellent — beautiful and funny and sad and lovely. So that was really fun.
Betsy-Tacy: the first book in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The series is based on the author’s life; her family and friends have been renamed, but they really were just like the the people in the books! The first book starts in 1897, when Betsy and Tacy meet, just before Betsy’s fifth birthday. (The series grows with the characters, so please don’t be put off by the relative simplicity of this first book.) You can find out more at the Betsy-Tacy Society: http://www.betsy-tacysociety.org/betsy-tacybooks
I’m going to post the whole book here all at once; the chapters will be in my podcast feed three times a week, as usual, but I don’t feel like scheduling individual posts here to match.
Feeling sort of ok today so I just recorded the last four chapters of The Trumpet of the Swan. I’ll still be posting individual chapters here on MWF (and in my podcast feed) or you can get the whole thing all at once here: http://kayray.org/kayray-reads/ or from its home on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/kayrayreadstoyou5
Such a wonderful book. I loved it when I was seven and I love it now. Nature, music, family, friendship, love, springtime. It was really fun singing Louis’s trumpet music for you! His own composition, “Oh Ever in the Greening Spring”, was written out in music notation in the text, so that was easy, but I had to go to youtube to learn the tunes for a couple of songs I wasn’t familiar with — “They Say It’s Wonderful” and “It’s Delightful to be Married”, for example.
Now, what’s next? I’ve been considering the Betsy-Tacy series, or the Little House series, or the Mary Poppins series, or, because E.B. White is an absolute joy to read aloud, I might do Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little before starting a more ambitious series.
Also I have an enormous history book (This Country of Ours) on librivox which I should finish up before I do anything else… I haven’t finished a librivox solo in ages. Argh! My particular combination of physical and mental ill health is really difficult to deal with.
The purpose is to suggest a few of the many aspects which music may have even to the mind of a child. If these chapters, or whatever may be logically suggested by them, be actually used as the basis of simple Talks with children, music may become to them more than drill and study. They should know it as an art, full of beauty and of dignity; full of pure thought and abounding in joy.
One of the chapters, entitled “Music and Reading”, begins: “A beautiful thing in life is the friendship for books.”
Ahh yes, yes it is. The author mentions the pleasure of reading the letters and biographies of the great composers, but I think mainly he wanted to talk about how much he loves books in general! Good books “present beautiful pictures to us truthfully, or they present truth to us beautifully.”
If you read good books you will have in every volume you get something well worth owning. You should bestow upon it as much care as you would want any other good friend to receive. And if it has contributed help or pleasure to you it is surely worth an abiding place. A fine pleasure will come from a good book even after we are quite done with it. As we see it in years after it has been read there comes back to one a remembrance of all the old pleasures, and with it a sense of thankfulness for so pleasant a friendship. Hence any book that has given us joy or peace or comfort is well worth not only good care, but a place for always; as a worthy bit of property.
And that is why I have too many books. They are my friends and have earned “an abiding place” on my shelves.
