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Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 3 Part 1 – 33:12

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 2 Part 2 – 29:23

Hooray for the Swiss Family!

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 2 Part 1 – 37:31

Time for our next book. This is one of my all-time favorites! Let me introduce you to my dear friends Fritz, Ernest, Jack, and Franz, and their resourceful and loving parents:

The Swiss Family Robinson, Chapter 1 – 37:31

First published in 1812, The Swiss Family Robinson may sometimes seem old-fashioned to modern readers, especially the family’s attitude toward wildlife (if it moves, shoot it). However, it’s a truly exciting adventure and a timeless story of warm and loving family life.

As the narrator says: “It was written… for the instruction and amusement of my children… Children are, on the whole, very much alike everywhere, and you four lads fairly represent multitudes… It will make me happy to think that my simple narrative may lead some of these to observe how blessed are the results of patient continuance in well-doing, what benefits arise from the thoughtful application of knowledge and science, and how good and pleasant a thing it is when brethren dwell together in unity, under the eye of parental love.”

Written by Swiss pastor Johann David Wyss and edited by his son Johann Rudolf Wyss (this edition lists J.R. as the author), the novel was intended to teach his four sons about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world, and self-reliance. It’s fun to think of the long-ago author reading his own books of natural history and writing this novel to share his interests with his boys.

(If you can’t wait, download the whole book: http://librivox.org/the-swiss-family-robinson-by-johann-r-wyss/)

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

64 As It Shall Ever Be – 1:32

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

63 A New World – 20:00

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

62 Colonial Expansion and War – 18:09

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

61 Art – 28:54

This afternoon I felt like recording something easy, so I chose a sweet little children’s story by Alice Hale Burnett, “Christmas Holidays at Merryvale”. It’s got 9 tiny chapters and is about 35 minutes long altogether. Henry graciously agreed to do the proof-listening so I could catalog it right away. Enjoy!

http://librivox.org/christmas-holidays-at-merryvale-by-alice-hale-burnett/

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

60 The Age of Science – 10:17

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

58 The Social Revolution – 10:00

59 Emancipation – 15:51

I have three audio books to tell you about today.

First of all, today, Nov 24 2009, is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”. Hooray for Charles Darwin! So maybe you would enjoy listening LibriVox’s free, volunteer-read, unabridged recording:
http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/ (it’s a little over 24 hours long) Enjoy!

Next, our LibriVox production of Hamlet, which we began in July of 2006 and just finished today! Dozens of volunteers worked on this one. I played Rosencrantz.
http://librivox.org/hamlet-by-william-shakespeare/

And finally, something I’m really proud of — Alice’s Abenteuer im Wunderland (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in German)! Elli and I took turns reading every other chapter. Yes, I recorded half a book in German! Yay me! I guess I won’t podcast this one, but you can download it here, for free, of course. :)
http://librivox.org/alices-abenteuer-im-wunderland-von-lewis-carroll/

Now Elli and I are trying to find something else to read together in German. Alice was relatively easy for me because I know the story in English very well, so another famous children’s book would be ideal. The tricky thing is that anything we read must have been published before 1923, including translations, so we’re pretty limited.

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

57 The Age of the Engine – 19:35

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

56 National Independence – 41:24

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

55 The Great Reaction – 16:30

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

54 The Holy Alliance – 21:45

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

53 Napoleon – 24:04

After thinking about it for days, I ordered a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder on the weekend. It shipped Monday and I got it yesterday and spent all day playing with it. I love it. Besides cheap-ass earbuds, assorted cables, and a little screw-on tripod-foot, it came with a 1-gig SD card, a foam windscreen that slides over the mic, and a mic-stand adapter (not shown in the pics nor mentioned in the description, so I ordered a mic stand adapter as well, oops).

After fiddling with it a lot, I figured out that the best setup for me is to have the gain on medium and set to max. I attached it to a boom mic stand behind the couch, and the boom goes over the back of the couch and across my left shoulder. I have the mic near my mouth and tipped sideways so I speak just past it.

With my old (but very nice-sounding) condenser mic, I could only record in the bedroom because the mic was so sensitive it picked up the server hum, the refrigerator hum, and every tiny noise. Also, no matter what I did, my condenser mic picked up background hum from something and I had to do rather aggressive noise-cleaning for my Ignatius recordings (Ignatius likes LOUD recordings so any background hum was amplified as well). Last night Henry and Dan were playing videogames in the room next to the bedroom for hours. Ordinarily I would not have been able to record at all, since their voices would have come through the bedroom wall and the livingroom was out of the question. But last night I was able to record the five last chapters of “This Country of Ours, Part 4” sitting in comfort on the livingroom couch! I do still run my recordings though my 10-band EQ filter to remove any low-end rumble, a gentle compression filter to even them out a bit, and a *tiny* bit of light noise-cleaning because I’m just obsessive that way.

The Zoom’s sound quality is very nice — not tinny like my cheap USB mics. Not, perhaps, *quite* as warm as my condenser mic, but nearly so, and the lack of background hum more than makes up for that.

The Zoom H2 has a great interface. Once you get used to it, it’ve very easy to navigate around to change settings, record, play or delete files, etc. The thick manual is very thorough. Transferring audio via its USB cable is slow, so for my longer recordings I pop the SD card out and use my card reader instead, but for the shorter recordings it’s handy to just use the cable.

By a pleasant coincidence, Jacek, a Polish English teacher, emailed me yesterday for help registering at librivox, and it turned out he was also looking for someone to record short humorous anecdotes in English for his students. I volunteered, of course, so those were my very first recordings on my Zoom! Here they are:

Exact Change
Fishing

Lol! And Jacek has just sent me some more, which I can do right here right now!

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

52 The French Revolution – 28:12

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

51 The American Revolution – 13:30