the title of the post says it all. yesterday i discovered project gutenberg's list of audio books. if you dont know anything about PG, it's an electronic collection of books that have entered the public domain. you can use the books for basically whatever purpose you intend because the copyrights have expired in the USA. admittedly, i'm not the least bit interested in most of the books. i mean, come on, who wants to hear The Essays of Francis Bacon read aloud? nonetheless, there are some great finds on the list: austen, balzac, dickens, willa cather, just to name a few. you can see that the authors are all dinosaurs considering their copyrights have expired.
many of the books are actually read by users over at librivox.org. several books have multiple formats like ogg vorbis, mp3, and itunes audio book. i downloaded the itunes version of moby dick and it totaled 43 files @ 180mb. these'll probably take about a bazillion+1 days to finish, buuut summer vacation is around the corner and i know my fellow teacher-friends aint got nothin to do besides laze about on a lawnchair somewhere.
the audio books i checked out were:
joseph conrad - the secret agent
aldous huxley - crome yellow
okakura kakuzo - the book of tea
immanuel kant - on the popular judgment: that may be right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis
herman melville - moby dick
excellent find i'll be checking it out. let me know what you think about moby dick.....one of my favorites
ReplyDeletecool man. i havent started listening yet. yesterday i was listening to some oppen and ambrose bierce's 'the devil's dictionary' on the train.
ReplyDeletethe devil's dictionary is some satire written 100 yrs ago. the guy goes through the alphabet defining words in a satirical/humorous way. i.e.
ABORIGINIES, n.
Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
ALLIANCE, n.
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
HAPPINESS, n.
An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.