LibriVox – Page 68

LibriVox: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Monday, October 6, 2008Friday, March 9, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Run that by me one more time? Somebody over on LibriVox is reading my thoughts? Really?

Huh.

Well, the good news is that my thoughts are all a benefit to you folks too! See here, there’s a brand new reading of The Willows that Algernon Blackwood story I was telling you about just on Friday! But now you don’t have to wrangle with an the BBC iPlayer, or even torrent anything. What we’ve got here is a easy peasy 1-click download or podcast feed to make your life easier.

The Willows
By Algernon Blackwood; Read by Michael Thomas Robinson
4 Zipped MP3 Files – Approx. 2 Hours 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 6th, 2008
A tale of horror in which a pleasant sojourn down the Danube tumbles terrifyingly awry as the veil between this world and an unfathomably weird dimension is inadvertently pierced by an innocent pair of vacationers, “The Willows”, arguably Algernon Blackwood’s seminal contribution to supernatural literature, has had a lasting influence on the field. No less a personage than H. P. Lovecraft describing it as “…the greatest weird tale ever written.” A reading will reveal a clear influence to one familiar with Lovecraft’s work. The masterful handling of mystery and suspense that build to a quite satisfyingly unnerving crescendo may be particularly noted by the discerning aficionado of the genre.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/the-willows-by-algernon-blackwood.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #005

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #005 is alive! Recorded at 5 am! By 5 (minus 3) people! We don’t claim to make sense.

Topics discussed include:

A Bite Of Stars, A Slug Of Time And Thou, Samuel R. Delany, Aye, and Gomorrah, arty Science Fiction, Resonance FM, Dangerous Visions, Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Read, Fantasy, Muhammad, figurative art, movies about Jesus, movies about Buddha,
Paraworld Zero, Matthew Peterson, Audible.com, Audible Frontiers, John Varley, The Persistence Of Vision, Press Enter, Titan, Wizard, Demon, Wonder Audio, The Status Civilization, Robert Sheckley, Mark Douglas Nelson, The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman, Camouflage, Tobias S. Buckell, Sly Mongoose, Macmillan Audio, Old Man’s War, The Addams Family, Netflix, DVDs, new formats, VHS, Laserdiscs, Apple TV, iPod, Philippa Ballantine (she rented John Carpenter’s The Thing through iTunes), The Office, NBC, Zoe’s Tale, John Scalzi, Paul Williams, LibriVox.org, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Caspak Series, Tantor Audio, John Carter Of Mars, Waiting For A Window, Frederick Greenhalgh, William Dufris, The Grist Mill, The Slasher, F. Paul Wilson, Aural Noir, Joe R. Lansdale, The God Of The Razor, LibriVox’s Ghost Story Collection #006, Robert E. Howard, Gods Of The North, Solomon Kane, Conan, H.G. Wells, The Red Room, Robert Barr, The Man Who Was Not On The Passenger List, Nightfall, CBC, Stephen King, Blood And Smoke, 1408, The Red Room, ghosts, Simon & Schuster Audio, BoingBoing.net, The Ellsberg Paradox, fear, the unknown, Jaws, H.P. Lovecraft, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, Audio Realms, Wayne June.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Out Of Time’s Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Saturday, September 27, 2008Friday, November 19, 2010 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Paul Williams of the Librivox admin team writes in to say:

Just wanted to clue all of you over at SFFAudio in that Ralph Snelson has completed Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Caspak series over at Librivox. He completed Out of Time’s Abyss on September 16.

Duly noted and detailed below Paul, thanks!

The entire series is now complete, all read by one guy! Huzzah!

Book one is |HERE|
Book two is |HERE|
Book three is here…

Out Of Time’s Abyss
By Edgar Rice Burroughs; Read by Ralph Snelson
5 Zipped MP3 Files or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 43 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 2008
Out of Time’s Abyss is a science fiction novel, the third of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Caspak” trilogy. In this conclusion, the mysteries of the lost world’s unique biological systems are revealed.

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/out-of-times-abyss-by-edgar-rice-burroughs.xml

This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox – Ghost Story Collection Volume #006

Sunday, September 21, 2008Sunday, September 21, 2008 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

This collection, number 6 in the LibriVox lineup of Ghost stories, has some non-ghostly tales; there are indeed some very ghostly things that happen in a lot of them but it isn’t a pure collection. I’d judge this as a very fair Fantasy collection made a shade horrific. It’s mostly ghostly. And, the inclusion of three Robert E. Howard yarns will likely make it one of the more popular of LibriVox’s many short story collections thus far released. Most narrators here have good recording conditions, some are raw amateurs, beginners in reading and recording, others are polished amateurs. Overall, very fun listening.

Here’s a bit from the forum the LibriVox thread that captures it all nicely:

“What is a ghost story? M.R. James listed a number of features of the ‘English’ ghost story: the pretence of truth; ‘a pleasing terror’; no gratuitous bloodshed or sex; no ‘explanation of the machinery’; with the setting being ‘those of the writer’s and reader’s own day’. Roughly speaking, this gives the taste of what we’re after, but the setting can be anywhere, of course. To me, the most effective stories have perhaps something of love in them, something of sadness, an other-worldliness, a touch of fear, a shiver of the hair on the back of your neck.”

Ghost Story Collection Volume #006
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 3 Hours 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
“A collection of ten pieces, read by various readers, about the unreal edges of this world in legend and story; tales of love, death and beyond. If just one story prickles the hair on the back of your neck, or prickles your eyelids with the touch of tears, we will have succeeded.”

Stories included:

Children Of The Moon
By Richard Middleton; Read by Virgil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 13 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
I liked the language in this one, and narrator Virgil seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

Ghosts That Have Haunted Me
By John Kendrick Bangs; Read by James Christopher
1 |MP3| – Approx. 25 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
“My scheme of living is based upon being true to myself. You may class me with Baron Munchausen if you choose; I shall not mind so long as I have the consolation of feeling, deep down in my heart, that I am a true realist, and diverge not from the paths of truth as truth manifests itself to me.”

Gods of the North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
A winter war in the mountains of Vanaheim and a bit of gossamer are all that stand between Conan of Cimmeria and a frosty beauty who spurns him. First published in Fantasy Fan, March 1934. Alternate titles include: The Frost Giant’s Daughter, The Frost King’s Daughter.

A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolf; Read by David Federman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 6 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
A quick stream of consciousness tale with an iconic title by an icon of literature.

The Man Who Was Not On The Passenger
By Robert Barr; Read by Anna Simon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
An unaccounted for passenger on a luxury liner is somehow tied into a stranger annual payment given to a widow. A well written, almost modernly styled tale. Anna Simon’s reading is Germanic accented, but not at all displeasing.

No Living Voice
By Thomas Street Millington; Read by Annoying Twit
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
Written by an English clergyman. Set in Italy. A vacationer with an out-of-order visa discovers some mischief and strange sounds.

The Old Nurse’s Story
By Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell; Read by Jane Greensmith
1 |MP3| – Approx. 51 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in 1852, this is an early Victorian ghost story, a novella by the biographer and popularizer of Charlotte Brontë. This is a dramatic tale full of manor intrigue, mysterious rooms and more mysterious screaming. All that and plenty of descriptions of character complexions .

Rattle Of Bones
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in the June 1929 issue of Weird Tales magazine. Solomon Kane, stops at a grim inn of the Black Forest. To survive the night he’ll need fight demonry and witchcraft, and bandits all.

The Red Room
By H.G. Wells; Read by Virgil
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
From the 19th comes one of the most copied stories of the modern 20th and 21st centuries. The Red Room illustrates the internal human conflict between rationality and the irrational fear of the unknown. The protagonist spends the night in a haunted room in isolated castle in an effort to debunk the legends surrounding it. The most recent example is the Stephen King’s story “1408” from the audio collection Blood and Smoke.

The Skull In The Stars
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 24 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21st 2008
First published in the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales magazine. The protagonist, Solomon Kane, is a Puritan who must go against his own moral code to defeat a creature of darkness.

Podcast feed:
http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/ghost-story-collection-volume-006.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

LibriVox: Short Horror Story Collection #005

Tuesday, September 16, 2008Monday, July 23, 2012 Jesse Willis

SFFaudio Online Audio

Horror Story Collection 005
By various; Read by various
10 Zipped MP3s or Podcast – Approx. 4 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 15, 2008
An occasional collection of 10 horror stories by various readers. We aim to unsettle you a little, to cut through the pink cushion of illusion that shields you from the horrible realities of life. Here are the walking dead, the fetid pools of slime, the howls in the night that you thought you had confined to your more unpleasant dreams.

Berenice
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by MorganScorpion
1 |MP3| – Approx. 20 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Black Cat
By Edgar Allan Poe; Read by Ernst Pattynama
1 |MP3| – 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Monkey’s Paw
By W.W. Jacobs; Read by Matthias Whitney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Occupant of the Room
By Algernon Blackwood; Read by Mooseboy Alfonzo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 23 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Painter’s Bargain
By William Makepeace Thackeray; Read by Mooseboy Alfonzo
1 |MP3| – Approx. 32 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Room in the Tower
By E.F. Benson; Read by MorganScorpion
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Stalley Fleming’s Hallucinations
By Ambrose Bierce; Read by Read by heshman08
1 |MP3| – Approx. 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

The Tell-Tale Heart
By Edgar Alan Poe; Read by Reynard T. Fox
1 |MP3| – Approx. 16 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

To Be Read at Dusk
By Charles Dickens; Read by Alex C. Telander
1|MP3| – Approx. 22 [UNABRIDGED]

Transformation
By Mary Shelley; Read by: Alecia
1 |MP3| – Approx. 42 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]

Podcast feed:

http://librivox.org/bookfeeds/horror-story-collection-005.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

FREE LISTENS Review: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Tuesday, September 16, 2008Sunday, January 9, 2011 Seth

Review

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Source: Librivox
25 Zipped MP3s
Length: 5 hr, 43 min UNABRIDGED
Reader: Nichole Doolin

The book: A young lady, charmed by a young gentleman in London, agrees to take up a job as a governess to his orphaned niece and nephew. After arriving at the country estate where the children live, the governess begins to see figures around the estate that do not seem to fit with any of the servants currently living there. She learns from other servants that the former governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, Peter Quint, died mysteriously shortly before she was hired. Are the figures she has been seeing the ghosts of this couple or is it all in her mind?

James keeps up this ambiguity throughout the book, constructing dialogues and events that seem diabolical under one viewpoint and another perfectly innocent by another. The book is told from the 1st person perspective of the governess. This narrator is the only one who seems to notice the ghosts and their effects on the children, but we as readers are not sure we can trust this young lady. The degree to which James draws out the governess’s decent into horror is a bit frustrating at times, but really, this is a short book and a classic in psychology.

Rating: 7/10

The reader: Ms. Doolin sounds like a professional. Her reading is polished, using pauses and inflection to great effect. I found it interesting to compare the voice of the narrator from the first chapters where she is bright and innocent to the later where you can hear the suspicion in her voice. The other characters are not given full-fledged voices, but Ms. Doolin alters her diction and pitch enough to let us know who is talking. The recording is clean and noiseless.

Posted by Seth