B. Davis

Thousands of Hours of Listening.....or Not

Revisado: 02-18-23

I've now listened to several of these 800+ (and growing) episodes/books, and sampled many more. They are read well, for the most part, and cover a broad range of topics, authors and time periods. There are both fiction and non-fiction, children's, YA and adult titles. I assume all are in the public domain, whether by lapsed or expired copyright. A number of the series' titles are otherwise unavailable for free through Audible, but the edition for sale on Audible will likely be a better reading or translation. I haven't checked, but some of the more obsure titles are likely not available at all. Some have attributions to Librivox, but a variety of sources seem to be drawn from. The biggest drawback, due to the podcast/episode structure of the collection, is that you can't search by title or author, only by upload date. You must load page after page until you find (or don't find) a title or author you're hoping is in the collection. But what do you want for FREE? There are both diamonds and lumps of coal in this mine. You just have to keep digging until you find your diamonds.

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esto le resultó útil a 16 personas

Fantastic! Use 0.9x narration speed & included pdf

Revisado: 06-04-21

I loved this reading of Ulysses by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan. I previewed several other Audible offerings of Joyce's masterwork, and am glad I chose this production. The readers are clearly quite familiar with the text and make its complex form and structure much more accessible to the listener. I highly recommend slowing the default 1.0x narration speed to 0.9x or even 0.8x - at least until you become comfortable with the Irish brogue, 1900's slang and speech patterns within the narrative. I also found the accompanying pdf booklet to be quite a handy reference tool with its numbered section listings, summaries, time markers, and other useful features. As for the recording itself, the addition of Joyce's song references as intros to each episode, plus the narrator's brief renditions of the characters' 1890's-1900's ditties whenever they occur, was a nice touch. Norton's individualized character voices, and Marcella Riordan's voice of Molly, rang true. They added color and helped clarify the characters' roles in the story. The (appropriately) soft-spoken internal monologues strained my hearing at times, but that's what the audio player's volume control is for. I was especially impressed by the nearly three hour-long rendering of Molly's [unpunctuated] soliloquy at the conclusion.

If you already know and appreciate the printed Ulysses, listening to this audiobook edition can be like reconnecting and reminiscing with an old friend. If the audiobook will be your first experience of Joyce's Ulysses, reading the text subsequently will be much less formidable and more enjoyable.

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