Audiobooks

[chickenfeet]

Anybody else out there in LJ land collect audio books? I have something of an addiction to them, partly because my car is noisy and listening to music in it is unsatisfactory. I particularly like them for poetry or other works that are clearly better read aloud.

Some favourites include Seamus Heaney reading his Beowulf translation, Derek Jacobi reading the Iliad, a wonderful Naxos set of WW1 poetry and a terrific reading of Susskind's Perfume. As I write I am burning a four disk set of Plato's Republic.

Comments

[agmcbride.livejournal.com]

I have some, but I actually prefer the tacky ones, such as 'Jack The Ripper' etc.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Ooh...whose translation of the Iliad is Derek Jacobi reading?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Fagles. I also have the Fagles "Odyssey" read by Ian McKellen.

[nikkyb.livejournal.com]

I've often thought of buying a talking book - but because I enjoy listening more than reading.
What I've been doing the last little while is downloading the archived shows from CBC "Ideas" onto my iPod. There's nothing like listening to shows like "The men who invented the universe" or "The history of the Internet" when you're going across the flatlands in the train.

I also remember a particularly exciting radio version of Neuromancer being done by CBC years back (1994?).

But I like the literary idea, I'm not nearly as well read as I should be.

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

I have quite a (random) selection of tapes for the car... mainly a variety of stand up comics, stephen kings, john grisham (odd, actually, because i have several, yet have never read any of his books...) and some others... Curious to find out where you get yours from? Hadn't though of looking on the 'net for them and burning to a CD, I must say. (Although, I only listen to them while driving, and have done remarkably little of that in the last year. and would need to find my cd player cassette adaptor widget...)

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Most of the stuff comes from the alt.binaries hierarchy:

alt.binaries.sounds.radio.bbc, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.spoken-word, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.books, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.audiobooks

[classytart.livejournal.com]

I like audio-books and Radio 4 comedies to go to sleep to. I tend to keep them pretty shallow, because of the broken up way I listen to them (when you fall asleep half way through a chapter it is best not to be listening to something very worthy). I like the way Bill Bryson books convert to tape, and Kerry Shale (who reads them) has a great voice.