If you’re anything like me you’re more than twice as happy to find a small gem to share with a friend than to revel in the worship and praise of something that is already well advertised. Agora is a recently completed movie in the marketplace of filmed ideas.
The posters to promote the film read: “FREEDOM” “PASSION” “POWER” “AMBITION”
After seeing the movie I can see why the marketers have labeled the characters with the abstract nouns that they did. Freedom, Passion, Power, Ambition. All are probably better at getting more bums in theater seats that the words that I’d like to see on those posters: “HISTORY” “PHILOSOPHY” “SKEPTICISM” “SCIENCE” – I think these words would be more in keeping with the true intellectual spirit of the film – it is a movie about all four of those things.
The audiobook, on the other hand, has yet to have any art made for it because it isn’t completed yet. Underway at LibriVox.org, is an unabridged, multiple narrator reading of Hypatia by Charles Kingsley. This is a historical novel based on the very same life of scientist and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria. And here’s where you come in. The project is still in need of narrators and proof listeners. To get involved head on over to the LibriVox Forum reader thread or the LibriVox Forum proof listener thread and help bring the story of Hypatia back to life.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Last year I listened to a great history audiobook called The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid, read by Simon Vance. I downloaded from Audible when they had a $4.95 sale. Here’s the Audible link:
http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/products/ProductDetail.jsp?productID=BK_TANT_000299&BV_UseBVCookie=Yes
Oh, I shoud also say the movie looks excellent. I never heard of it, but it’s on my list to see now!
Argh! Kingsley’s Hypatia! Do you have any idea how much the ancient history folks hate Kingsley’s Hypatia?!? This is like somebody digging up The Da Vinci Code novel, a hundred years from now, and insisting that it was true to facts.
(And of course, there’s the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish axes he has to grind…. He didn’t really care beans about Hypatia; he just wanted to rip on Newman’s arguments from patristics, by making early Christianity look unattractive and claiming that no real Christians existed until Protestantism came along.)
The only worse thing is that Elbert Hubbard book of made-up conversations, which managed to create urban legends for all sorts of historical figures across time, while itself being largely forgotten.
I will go away now, sobbing gently….
The audiobook is complete and available now!
http://librivox.org/hypatia-by-charles-kingsley/
Podcast feed: http://librivox.org/rss/3044