kayray.org

09 – The Growth of Feudalism
10 – The Deeds of the Northmen
11 – The First Crusade

After a year and a half we’ve finally finished our Ulysses audio book — and just in time for Bloomsday!

http://librivox.org/ulysses-by-james-joyce/

As the catalog page notes, we bent the rules on this one — editing was not required; recording in pubs was encouraged. You’ll hear lots and lots of bloopers and background noise. A few of the sections were read as dramatic works with sound effects and everything. Hooray Team Librivox!

Three more chapters for you:
06 – The Rise of the Franks
07 – Franks and Mohammedans
08 – Charlemagne

I’ve finished recording the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. As with all LibriVox audio books, you may download them for free, copy them, share them, whatever. Enjoy! I love these stories. I remember my sister reading them to me when I was very small. I confess that I’ve never liked The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo, but the rest are wonderful.

Podcast subscribers, I’ll be sending this one out after The Story of the Middle Ages is finished.

Three more chapters of The Story of the Middle Ages:
03 – The Wanderings of the West-Goths
04 – End of the Western Empire
05 – The Growth of the Christian Church

Give me humans. Give me LibriVox!

Thanks, Edward :)

Well, I’m a bit behind here :) I’ve already podcast up through section 40 of the poetry book. It’s silly for me to paste all those links here when you can just go download them directly from the librivox catalog page:
Poems Every Child Should Know.

I just sent this message out in my podcast feed: Message from Kara

So — on to another book! It’s time for some more children’s history — a really great book called The Story of the Middle Ages, by Samuel B. Harding. The wonderful Lisa of http://mainlesson.com send me a reprint of this book to read from, which was a real treat, as I usually read off my laptop screen which is never as nice as holding a real book in my hands. I suggest you buy your own copy from mainlesson so your kids can read along while they listen. :)

Here are the first three chapters (now you’re actually AHEAD of the podcast subscribers!):
00 – Introduction
01 – The Ancient Germans
02 – Breaking the Frontier

Enjoy!

Busy morning — karate, then many many errands (groceries, shipping packages, etc). Henry and I got home around noon, did the morning chores, and then played WoW together for a couple of hours. He helped me with the Heart of Mok quest and we did Mai’Zoth together, then took a break so he could do some math and I could do some librivox work. Cataloged three new audio books today:

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, selected and read by Becky

The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, by T.H. Huxley, a solo by Jo

The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing, by Joseph Trienens, a delightfully dated collaborative work read by many fine readers

That makes 21 new works so far in May! Haven’t done any recording myself in the last few days but I’ill probably manage to get some recording done tomorrow or Thursday. More than halfway through with A Room with a View, and only, I think, 12 more of the ghastly Letters :)

LibriVox in a NYC art gallery:
http://cailun.info/index.php?/archives/242-Touch,-Listen-2007.html

Books are meant to be touched.

Poetry is meant to be listened to.

29 – The Tournament; The Wind and the Moon
30 – Jesus the Carpenter; Letty’s Globe; A Dream; Heaven is not Reached at a Single Bound
31 – The Battle of Blenheim
32 – Fidelity; The Chambered Nautilus

This morning, while Henry was at his Bayshore classes, I recorded the last three chapters of The Story of the Middle Ages! I got them all edited and proofed, and then Anna gave them a final listen, and I got the whole thing completed and cataloged:

The Story of the Middle Ages, by Samuel B. Harding

So if you’re looking for a good free children’s history audio book, there you go :) You can read along with the text at The Baldwin Project, or purchase from them a lovely and inexpensive reprint (with the original illustrations) if you prefer real paper books. I certainly do.

Here’s a sample:
Chapter 8: Charlemagne

I really enjoyed this book. Hope you like it too!

25 – To a Mouse; To a Mountain Daisy
26 – Barbara Frietchie
27 – Lochinvar
28 – Lord Ullin’s Daughter; The Charge of the Light Brigade

12 – The Butterfly and the Bee; An Incident of the French Camp; Robert of Lincoln
13 – Old Grimes; Song of Life; Fairy Song
14 – A Boy’s Song; Buttercups and Daisies; The Rainbow; Old Ironsides
15 – Little Orphant Annie; O Captain My Captain
16 – Ingratitude; The Ivy Green; The Noble Nature; The Flying Squirrel
17 – Warren’s Address; The Song in Camp; The Bugle Song
18 – The Three Bells of Glasgow; Sheridan’s Ride
19 – The Sandpiper; Lady Clare
20 – The Lord of Burleigh
21 – Hiawatha’s Childhood
22 – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; John Barelycorn; A Life on the Ocean Wave
23 – The Death of the Old Year; Abou Ben Adhem
24 – A Farm-Yard Song

10 – Father William; The Nightingale and the Glow-worm
11 – Jack Frost; The Owl; Little Billie

06 – The Boy Who Never Told a Lie; Whatever Brawls Disturb the Street; Bluebell of Scotland; Two Little Wings; Farewell

07 – Casabianca; The Captain’s Daughter

08 – The Village Blacksmith; Sweet and Low; The Violet; The Rainbow

09 – A Visit from St. Nicholas; The Star-Spangled Banner

02 – The Arrow and the Song; The Babie; Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite; Little Drops of Water; He Prayeth Best; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Spring’s at the Morn; The Days of the Month

03 – True Royalty; Playing Robinson Crusoe; My Shadow; Little White Lily

04 – How the Leaves Came Down; Wee Willie Winkie; The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

05 – Wynken, Blynken, and Nod; The Duel

I picked up my glasses today! I love them.
Here’s a crappy Photo Booth photo:

I’m sure I can get Dan to take a more flattering photo soon :) These are my first glasses. I’ve already noticed that my eyes feel more relaxed, if that’s the right term for it, while I’m knitting and using my computer.

In other news, our audiobook of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle, is finally finished! A volunteer named Glovis started the project on Jan 13, 2006. I signed up to be his “MC” (Meta-Coordinator, a LibriVox term for a sort of project overseer and eventual cataloger). Glovis disappeared last spring (hope you’re ok, Glovis!) and took the already-submitted recordings with him, so when I took over, the project was a real mess. Missing files, missing readers… Well, I finally tracked down a number of the already-finished recordings, found some readers who were willing to re-record their chapters, and parceled the orphans out to fresh readers. Yesterday Lucy completed our last outstanding chapter! Anna proof-listened it, and I did minor edits on some of the other files (volume boosting, adding a bit of silence to the end, fixing the sample rate, etc.), and cleaned up the ID3 tags on all the files. This morning I did the Big Upload to archive.org and created the catalog page — and LOOK! It’s finally ready to download and listen to!

http://librivox.org/the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood-by-howard-pyle/

I am embarrassed by the relatively poor quality of my own recording (Chapter 9, I think). I recorded it back in Jan 2006, when I was still using a crummy microphone. Bah. Oh well, it’s good enough :) Hope you enjoy!

Oh, the first and last chapters are read by Alex, who actually lives near Sherwood Forest :)

Poetry Every Child Should Know, edited by Mary E. Burt. Published in 1904. Read by me!
01 – Preface

Now that I’m almost ready to begin podcasting my next book, let’s catch up with the files I podcasted but forgot to post here on my blog:

The Golden Goose Book:

• Chapter 1: The Golden Goose
• Chapter 2: The Three Bears
• Chapter 3: The Three Little Pigs
• Chapter 4: Tom Thumb

Johnny Crow’s Garden
Johnny Crow’s Party
A Visit From St. Nicholas

Yesterday I cataloged the poetry book! It’s all done! Hooray!

For those of you who don’t know it already, I’ve been recording a book for LibriVox called Poems Every Child Should Know, an anthology of poetry for children, edited by Mary E. Burt and published in 1904. It was divided by http://dailylit.com into 81 short sections, some with several short poems, some with just one long poem. The finished book is 8 hours long and contains nearly 200 poems.

I’ll start podcasting this one soon, but if you just can’t wait and you want to hear the whole thing now, go for it:

http://librivox.org/poems-every-child-should-know-edited-by-mary-e-burt/