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Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 9

Helen’s Babies, Part 9

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

Yesterday we spent the whole day with Bob and Chloe and Celia again! We played Wario “Smooth Moves” on the wii (such a fun and ridiculous game) and lots more multiple solitaire for hours and hours. We fixed salad and pasta for lunch and then Bob and Chloe took us out to the Studio Diner for dinner! What a treat! After dinner we all went over to their house for a couple of hours. Dan, Bob, and Henry played Uno Extreme until it was time to go home. It was such a great day, and so nice to be able to spend hours and hours having fun with my wonderful family!

Right now I have a wretched headache but I got some good recording done today — two more chapters of The Adventures of Sally, one episode of a history podcast that some students in England wrote and asked me to record for them, and 100 word/sentence combinations for a Brazilian fellow who’s creating a computer program to help teach English to adults.

Oh, and Annie and I decided to record Emma as a duet, alternating chapters. I did my first chapter already — fun!

Oh, hey, my birthday is next week! Here’s my wishlist :)

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 8

Helen’s Babies, Part 8

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

I’ve been listening to wonderful LibriVox recording of Patricia Brent, Spinster, read by Anna Simon (lezer, on the forums). She’s Dutch and has such a sweet accent! Here’s her summary:

A romantic comedy, written in 1918, but with a modern feel to it. Patricia Brent one day overhears two fellow-boarders pitying her because she “never has a nice young man to take her out”. In a thoughtless moment of anger she announces that the following night she will be dining out with her fiance. When she arrives at the restaurant the next day, she finds some of the fellow-boarders there to watch her, so, rendered reckless by the thought of the humiliation of being found out, she goes up to a young man sitting alone at a table, and asks him to help her by “playing up”. Countless complications and adventures ensue…

It’s a splendid book, very modern and witty. Highly recommended!

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 7

Helen’s Babies, Part 7

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

So! A few weeks ago I finished the art book, then recorded a short and dear little cookbook, and then started looking around for another long-term project. I wanted something funny, so I finally chose The Adventures of Sally, by P.G. Wodehouse. I’ve recorded two chapters so far and it’s great. The chapters are long, though, boy oh boy. The second chapter weighed in at 52 minutes — and that’s after editing. The unedited file was about an hour long, and took much longer to record because I live in a flight path and that day was a busy one at the airport. The planes flew over my house every couple minutes, so I had to keep pausing. But that’s ok, Wodehouse is fun to read and it’s a good story, so I don’t mind those long chapters. Follow my progress here, if you like: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14995. (But please don’t re-post the temporary “listen” links.)

Also, Shell Crandall and I have started a marvelous children’s history book, The Story of Mankind, as a duet, alternating chapters. I found it by checking wikipedia for books published in 1922 (the cut-off date for public domain in the USA). On that page was a mention that The Story of Mankind won the Newbery that year so I looked into it a bit and we decided to go for it! It’s super well-written and very readable. You may follow our progress here: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15113. Again, please don’t re-post the “listen” links! I’ll let you know when it’s finished and then you can post to your heart’s content.

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 6

Helen’s Babies, Part 6

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

It’s really rare to read a piece like this in which the author understands LibriVox so completely: Of Books & The Audio-Phile: An Alternative Approach.

A short excerpt:

Nothing Like Reading
No doubt, there is no pleasure quite like reading. Quite like seeing those words on the page for the first time. And no effect quite like it when it comes to altering the brain and expanding it in preparation for the next collection of black ink on a white page. But we must also remember that the oral/aural tradition came first—and listening to those very same words has its own special powers. Somehow it seems more social, more like you’re sharing with someone else, even if that someone is only the person narrating the story. Besides, it’s not such a strain on these aging eyes.

Thank you, Michael of http://descant.ca/blog/!

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 5

Helen’s Babies, Part 5

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 4

Helen’s Babies, Part 4

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 3

Helen’s Babies, Part 3

Read by me!

Helen’s Babies by John Habberton, Part 2

Helen’s Babies, Part 2

Read by me!

(Impatient? Get the entire audio book here, for free: http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/)

Helen’s Babies, by John Habberton

A new recording for you to listen too! This one is really funny. It’s probably a little funnier to teens and grownups, but I think kids will enjoy it too. I could hardly keep from laughing aloud while I was recording this one.

In this hilarious novel, Harry Burton, a bachelor white-goods salesman, goes to take care of his sister Helen’s two little boys for ten days while she and her husband are out of town. Helen says, “The children won’t give you the slightest trouble; they’re the best children in the world!” but, as you can imagine, Toddie and Budge are always up to something, and all sorts of comic mischief ensues. It just so happens that there’s a lovely young lady in the neighborhood whom Harry admires very much, but she always seems to be passing by when he’s deep in some terrible mess of the boys’ making… (Summary by Kara)

Helen’s Babies, Part 1

I’ll post another part here every Monday, but if you can’t wait just go to the catalog page and download the whole thing:
http://librivox.org/helens-babies-by-john-habberton/

We at librivox.org (where you can download free, public domain audio books) achieved two amazing milestones today. We keep track of how many books we complete each month, and of course our total. As May progressed, it looked likely that we’d break our previous record of 77 books back in July of 2007. Well, a few days ago we hit 80… then yesterday it was 90… then today we reached 100! One hundred brand-new audio books cataloged in just one month! Here’s a screenshot of that wonderful number:

(the chart was too tall to fit into my screenshot, but it goes back in time to 9-2005, when we cataloged our first book)

Oh, and the 100th book this month was http://librivox.org/book-of-tobit-tobias-douay-rheims-version/.

And another impressive number is our total number of completed audio books, which reached 1500 today!

Our 1500th book was http://librivox.org/four-great-americans-by-james-baldwin/.

Isn’t that amazing? In case you don’t know, librivox is made up entirely of volunteers, from administrators to coders to organizers to readers to proof-listeners to catalogers to cheer-leaders to cover-art makers to podcast makers, and everyone else! GO TEAM LIBRIVOX!

Finally, finally, my recording setup is fixed, or rather, not fixed but worked-around to my satisfaction. The problem started recently, after a re-install of Leopard on my Macbook. There’s really nothing to indicate that Leopard is to blame, but the problem did not occur until after the re-install on a new hard drive. (The first, original installation of Leopard caused no problems.) The problem occurred in both SoundStudio and Audacity, using any of my three USB microphones. Recordings would suddenly become filled with static and echo, OR would randomly skip and/or garble some input, leaving garbage and blank places in the file.

We tried all the usual fixes — un-installing and re-installing drivers and software. No change. Then we did a completely fresh installation of Leopard, wiping the hard drive completely. No change. (You might think I’m annoyed at losing everything for no reason, but it is rather fun getting my computer set up again, with all my favorite software and settings! Ahhhhh Apple.)

Finally Dan suggested I try his firewire audio interface instead of my USB one (It’s a box that goes between mic and computer). And, 6 test recordings later, I have not had any re-occurrence of the problems! Hallelujia! I finished up Helen’s Babies (still waiting on my proof-listener to give the last three chapters a listen before I catalog it, but it’ll be available very soon), recorded three Blackfeet Indian Stories, and started a new solo, the wonderfully charming Book of Art for Young People!

LibriVox’s full-cast reading of The Scarecrow of Oz is complete and ready for download! As usual, our recording is public domain, free and legal to download and share, of course. Every character is read by a different voice, by readers all around the world, and the narration is done by still more readers. Scott Sherris coordinated this massive project and did all the pasting-together of parts, a huge job. I did a few chapters of narration, and Henry took part as Button-Bright. Hint: Chapter 8 is Button-Bright’s first appearance ;-)

http://librivox.org/scarecrow-of-oz-by-l-frank-baum/

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 14: William’s Christmas Eve

End of the book! Hope you enjoyed it, and Merry Christmas!

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 13: William and the Ancient Souls

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 12: The Reform of William

More William, by Richmal Crompton.
Read by me!
Chapter 11: William and the Smuggler