Copyright © 2003 by Michael Segers, All rights reserved
Brought to you by Peanut.org
One of the great pleasures I get from literature is simply hearing it, so much so that I often read aloud to myself, for the sheer physical pleasure of forming the words as well as for the emotional response to hearing them, even in my own voice. One of the great problems I have with the teaching of literature is that simply hearing literature is rarely an aspect of literary study, which is based almost totally on written texts, although so much great literature, from Homer to Shakespeare, at least, was meant to be heard, experienced, shared, within a community. So, a new pleasure that the Internet offers me is the opportunity to listen to the reading of works of literature as well as other spoken word performances.
Now, these performances bring up the ongoing question about copyrights and online piracy that I have raved about before. As far as I know, however, all of these sites meet two criteria: first, the copies are not in violation of copyright law (at least, that's what the sites say), and second, you can download material for free, although some of these sites offer a mixture of free and for-pay downloads. Especially if you do not have high speed Internet access, you might want to consider some of the options for purchasing these audio books on CD.
The format for all of these files is MP3, and you probably have one or more programs on your computer with which to play them: Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, WinAmp, and others. (Click on the links for free downloads of the programs.) You can also play them, of course, with portable MP3 players.
Although you can play MP3 downloads or CD's with your computer, you cannot play MP3 CD's in most CD players. Using dBpowerAMP (click for free download) or other programs, you can convert MP3 files to wav files and burn those onto CD's to play in a CD player. A growing number of CD players, especially in cars, are MP3 compatible. Internet columnists cannot afford new cars, but I do have a Sony® boom box that plays MP3 CD's as well as standard audio CD's. A real advantage to being able to play an MP3 CD in your car is that a single CD can hold some forty hours of MP3's--that's quite a road trip on a single CD. Now, about the gas mileage...
The name of the best and most impressive single site for free audio books says
it all, AudioBooksForFree.com.
The proprietors of this British site ask that you register a user name and
password; then, happy downloading of an almost nutty assortment of works--short,
long, classical, children's, and... Edgar Allan Poet to George Burns? The free downloads are not of a very high quality
audio. If you want higher quality recording or ZIP files (combining all
the files of a longer work into one ZIP package), you pay. I bought a zipped
download of a high quality unabridged recording of Thus Spake Zarathustra, a
good, clear recording of an elegant British reader. With its
quasi-biblical tone, Zarathustra is a great listen-aloud title. One
warning: the twelve-hour or so reading took thirteen hours to download on
my dialup service. You do have the option of purchasing a CD.
The problem with buying titles from AudioBooksForFree.com
is that whether you get a full-length book (Zarathustra--the only title
I've purchased from them) or a fifteen minute story, the price is (apparently)
the same. They do have a membership option, which allows you to download all you
want of the higher quality audio for a year, and I am seriously thinking about
joining. [Update: I have joined.] You know if your tight-fisted old raver is willing to let go of a few
coins, it must be a bargain. You can also purchase various compilations of
their offerings in a variety of formats. Payment, by the way, is by secure credit card
transaction--the first time I ever made a credit card payment
internationally--but so far, I have not had any problems.
The site is British, so a fifteen minute or quarter hour file (a Poe story, for example) is listed as "0,25" (in US style, .25 hour). Also, on their site, they say they include "adverts" (ads, on this side of the pond) in their free downloads, but so far, I've never found any. My overall response to this quirky but useful site is that it is veddy, veddy good indeed, old chap! The quality of the free downloads leaves a bit to be desired, but, hey, they are free.
The literary work we are most likely to hear read aloud in our society is the Bible, with Bible reading being a part of most Christian worship services. One of the first audio recordings of literature with modern technology was Alexander Scourby's reading of the King James Version of the Bible. So, it is not surprising that there are many sites devoted to audio Bibles online. You can find links for many of them (including sites where you can hear Scourby's classic performance, as well as readings in various translations and languages) at AudioTreasure.com, a site that has a special treasure of its own, a complete recording of the Bible, which you can download for free. By the way, you don't have to download the whole recording at once; it is broken down into more manageable smaller files.
The World English Bible translation is newer than the King James Version of 1611, but old enough to be out of copyright, old enough not to be as jarring as some contemporary translations are. The voice of David Williams, the reader, is soft, almost conversational. While I feel that I should sit upright and maybe wear a tie when I listen to Scourby's KJV, I actually have drifted off to sleep while listening to this reader, and I mean that as a compliment. It is very comfortable, almost comforting, to listen to his voice, which becomes like the voice of a friend.
From his site, you can buy, very cheaply, his complete reading of the Bible in MP3--on two CD's! Best of all, he gives you permission to duplicate his disks and distribute the files, provided that you do not charge for them. I imagine a Sunday school class of tech-savvy teenagers buying these two disks, converting the files to wav format, and then burning CD's to distribute to blind or elderly people, or, for that matter, to anyone who would enjoy having an audio Bible. Considering that AudioTreasure.com now has over a million free MP3 file downloads a month to countries all around the world, there must be a lot of other folks out in cyberspace who enjoy audio books. This site could be a victim of its own popularity, since it costs to provide that many downloads. So, after you give their recordings a listen-to, if you like what you hear, I would encourage you to purchase the CD's (as I have).
Also on the Christian front, Christian Classics Ethereal Library offers a wide range of audio and texts. The audio includes some rather unlikely selections, such as Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, as well as The Practice of the Presence of God, The Imitation of Christ, and John Wesley's Journals. Again, the readings are colloquial, easy to listen to, with a woman reader, Ruth Lomas, here. Also, there is an option to buy a CD (with over sixty hours of playing time), not only to save download time for you but also to save bandwidth usage for the site.
One literary form that you will have difficulty finding away from the Internet is old time radio, the mix of dramatic series, variety shows, and historical sounds that kept Americans in the distant pre-television, pre-Internet days spellbound around the radio. Many of these series are preserved, even reborn, in online MP3 files at many sites. To get started, check OTRcat. You can buy CD's of a wide range of old time radio programs, but you can also download one program free from each of its many series, probably as much old time radio as most of us care to experience, at least enough to capture the flavor and sounds of a bygone age. You can also purchase a sampler of programs from the different series.
There is one more very special old time radio link to call to your attention. You can download for free the complete and notorious 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Even more than broadcasts of real events, this famous hoax catches the power that radio once had in our culture.
Google [below] can help you find many more audio book and old time radio sites, and on eBay you can find a small but growing number of MP3 CD's. So, surely you have enough now to keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your ears full of noble sounds.
Rovin' on the Internet: Online Adventures