Clearvoice Audio Books

The Appeal by John Grisham

2008-01-29T10:46:00.000-06:00

John Grisham, after stints in non-fiction in The Innocent Man and popular non-legal fiction in Playing for Pizza, returns to the courtroom drama with The Appeal.

A Mississippi a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste and causing the worst “cancer cluster” in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it. Evil Owner Carl Trudeau decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. He recruits a young, unsuspecting candidate to finance, market him, and mold into a potential Supreme Court justice.

The unabridged recording is narrated by Micheal Beck, a regular Grisham reader (and the unabridged version of Bill Clinton's My Life). A sample of the first chapter can be found free on Audible and here.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

2008-01-23T14:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I wrote about USA Today's Number One book for 2007. Today I will write about Number Two: The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

Just for a moment, let's get past the fact that The Secret's supposed "new idea," the Law of Attraction - the belief that if one simply believes something, then the universe will make it happen - has been around for centuries. Let's get past the fact that the content of The Secret is totally self-serving (i.e. if you only believe, it will come true - so dream of riches).

It's funny that one of the criticisms of the The Secret is its slick marketing. There is nothing slick about the audio "book" version. It sounds like a simple audio-only version of the movie. Talking head after talking head pass through with little if any introduction or context. The sound quality is bad; the music and special effects are distracting. If only I could wish The Secret away for another millennium or two, but I'm afraid it won't be long before Byrne will be back on Oprah shilling another inferior product.

Retro Review: Jim Dale and the Harry Potter Series

2008-01-22T08:15:00.000-06:00

Now that the dust has settled on 2007, I'd like to look back on the Harry Potter series. This is one series I read in its entirity via audio book, and I must say, it was a most satisfactory experience from beginning to end. I give much credit to Jim Dale, MBE, for making the J.K. Rowling's books come alive.

I was familiar with Jim Dale from his stint at Disney in the seventies (Pete's Dragon, Hot Lead and Cold Feet, The Unidentified Flying Oddball). With the Harry Potter series he was able to keep track of scores of characters. Publisher's Weekly awarded Deathly Hallows "Audio Book of the Year 2007" and it has been nominated for a Grammy in the category "Best Spoken Audiobook for Children." For an estimate of how beloved his audiobook performances are, consider that he read to an estimated 6,000 fans at a New York Barnes & Noble the night Deathly Hallows was released. Also, check out his recordings of Peter Pan, Around the World in 80 Days, and A Christmas Carol.

The Harry Potter books aren't found on Audible yet, but 1 - 6 may be purchased on iTunes. (There is no word about when Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will show up there.) The best buy for now is probably Ebay where I just found 36 hits from less than $20 to $105 (!). Meanwhile, there's always the public library; I had to wait several months for book 5, but it was worth it (by book 7, I couldn't wait - I bought it at the Harry Potter release party).

Recorded Books

2008-01-18T08:35:00.000-06:00

Recorded Books has been around for more than 25 years. They were pioneers in the field of unabridged audio books. In the early part of this decade 2001, I rented several unabridged recordings from them (Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and The Lord of the Rings), and I've had nothing but good experiences with them.

At Recorded Books, a direct consumer can rent or buy audio books, or join a service such as Recorded Books Unlimited which ships as many audiobook rentals as you can listen to each month for one low monthly fee. I'm a little concerned about their business model. Right now, they don't seem to be interested in putting books up for download. They also seem to be more interested in libraries than the direct consumer, as you can see from their splash page.

However, Recorded Books does have a fantastic selection going for them. Since they record many of their own titles, they have many books that Audible (and iTunes) don't have. For example, I recently rented Gone with the Wind (on cassette!). It came by mail in less than a week, and now I'm cassette 3 of 36. I hope to finish it this year.

Speaking of pioneers, Books on Tape is still around, although it's a shadow of its former self. They still have a few exclusive titles of of their formerly vast library on (For example, Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities are available on cassette, but The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is no longer available).

Thursday Ideas: Shelby Steele

2008-01-17T07:18:00.000-06:00

I saw Shelby Steele on Bill Moyers Journal last night (a transcript can be found here), and was intrigued by the argument he posits in his new book A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win.

Basically, Steel says Obama is trapped between the two ways that African American react to white America; they are either bargainer or challengers. Bargainers strike a "bargain" with white America saying, "I will not rub your ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me." Challengers say to white America, "You are racist until you prove otherwise. Steele argues that Senator Obama is too constrained by these labels to find his own true political voice.

I was pleased to find the book unabridged on Audible and iTunes (narrated by Richard Allen). It's a little more than 3 hours long, and it's well worth the time.

Literal Systems

2008-01-16T05:44:00.000-06:00

I'm really getting into this movement to put free public domain audio books on the Internet. Since a lot of the audio books I checked out yesterday on Project Gutenberg came from Literal Systems, I thought I'd check them out. I found a very professional site with several great, free audio books.

Their list of many recordings by authors such as Mark Twain, the Brothers Grimm, O Henry, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and Charles Dickens can be found here. I particularly enjoyed 2B R 02B by Kurt Vonnegut.

Continue to support sites like these. When the printed word disappears, you'll be glad you did.

Project Gutenberg

2008-01-15T07:43:00.000-06:00

I've long been a fan of Project Gutenberg which has a selection of more than 100,000 free ebooks, and I was aware they had a small collection of downloadable audiobooks. A couple of years ago I began to a computer-generated version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars. It worked to a point, but I finally purchased a human-read version to finish it.

Recently, Project Gutenberg has stopped adding computer-generated eBooks, donated by various sources. AudioBooksForFree.com has donated a Arthur Conan Doyle while LiteralSystems.org and Librivox continue many new titles.

Access Project Gutenberg's human-read audio-book collection here.

Comanche Moon and the Lonesome Dove Series (2 of 2)

2008-01-11T07:26:00.000-06:00

Sunday night on CBS the Lonesome Dove series begins its conclusion with Comanche Moon, a three part mini-series. (I for one can't wait to see what Keith Urban can do with a Texas accent before he plays Leonard McCoy in the new Star Trek movie) Also, Val Kilmer should be a hoot - his character Inish Scull sure is. But this is an audio book blog, so let's talk about the first (last?) two books in the series.

Dead Man's Walk (1995 - narrated by Will Patton) Like the Star Wars saga, the Lonesome Dove books were written out of order. And like the Star Wars saga, the first in the series is the weakest. But Dead Man's Walk is pretty darn good. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are young Texas Rangers. The narration by Will Patton (Into the West and Armegeddon) is soft-spoken yet very effective giving the novel Western feel and portraying the often hysterical banter between the two leads.

Comanche Moon (1997 - narrated by Frank Muller) Call and McCrae are a bit older and we see how they become captains in the rangers. They must fight three fierce Indian chief as they try to rescue Inish Scull, their former officer. Frank Muller does a fine job as usual (although having heard his reading of the Gunslinger books it was hard to get the Dark Tower out of my head for a while). Again, it's a shame these two are out of print, but they aren't hard to find on auction sites and libraries.

Comanche Moon the Lonesome Dove Series (1 of 2)

2008-01-10T09:48:00.000-06:00

I'm excited about the Comanche Moon mini-series that begins airing Sunday, 1/13 on CBS. All four books in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove series have been available as unabridged audio productions. Although the only one currently "in print" is the first, Lonesome Dove, they are so popular, I had little trouble last year tracking them all down at public libraries and Ebay.

Lonesome Dove (1985 - narrated by Lee Horsley). It stands to reason that the original is the best. Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae are two retired Texas Rangers lured into a cattle drive to Montana. Lee Horsley does a great job of recreating the feel of the mini-series. It is currently availble on iTunes and at Audible, and although the production sounds as if it was transferred from the original Dove cassettes (it probably was), the story and narration transcends this problem.

Streets of Laredo (1993 - narrated by Daniel Von Bargen) The perfect end to the perfect series. Bargen, (who played Kruger, George's boss at Kruger Industrial Smoothing, on Seinfeld) is soft-spoken but makes the book his own. It's a shame Simon & Schuster allowed this to go out of print, but I imagine it has to do with legal reasons (15 years ago there weren't many audio books available on CD . . . or download).

New Fiction Titles for January

2008-01-02T07:45:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! Here is a list of several titles coming out this month for those of you who have gift cards to burn.

January 8

Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich (narrated by C. J. Critt )

Blasphemy by Douglas Preston (narrated by Scott Sowers)

The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller (narrated by Blair Brown)

January 22

Duma Key by Stephen King (narrated by John Slattery)

January 29

The Appeal by John Grisham (narrated by Michael Beck)

Movie Tie-In # 4: Atonement

2007-12-20T09:12:00.000-06:00

Ian McEwan's Atonement was nominated for 7 Golden Globe Awards. Short-listed for the Booker Prize when it was released in 2001 (McEwan won for his previous novel, Amsterdam, in 1998), the British adaptation stars Kiera Knightly and James McAvoy.

Atonement is the story of three English children who lose their innocence on the hottest day in 1935: Cecilia Tallis of the English upper crust; Robbie Turner, a housekeeper's son, Cecilia's overimaginative 13-year-old sister, Briony, who commits a crime that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

The audio adaptation from Recorded Books is narrated by Jill Tanner. While the recording is a bit thin, Tanner's performance makes up for it; she is a fine narrator, speaking as if she's recalling the events from her childhood.

Movie Tie-in # 3: Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls

2007-12-17T09:21:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting "audio book" I discovered on Audible over the weekend. (It's also available on iTunes, Amazon & emusic.) Blackstone Audio recently released a dramatized version of Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls: An Audio Melodrama in Three Despicable Acts. The release is well-timed, coinciding the Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's film of the Stephen Sondheim musical late this month.

Award-winning writer and producer Yuri Rasovsky (The National Radio Theater of Chicago and The Hollywood Theater of the Ear) has adapted the tale from its original sources. Among Rasovsy's many radio plays available are The Odyssey of Homer, Craven Street: Ben Franklin in London, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. His experience makes this "audio play" come alive like the best of radio dramas do.

The play is great fun. The script to Sweeney was adapted from original 19th century sources, so those only exposed to the Sondheim/Wheeler version (as I had been) should find it fascinating. The production sounds great, and the full cast and unnerving sound effects were creepy enough to make me cover my neck from time to time.

Movie Tie-In # 2: I Am Legend

2007-12-12T09:20:00.000-06:00

'Tis the movie season, and here is another classic that's coming out this month: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Matheson, of course, is famous for his putting Everyman in extraordinary situations (his work has been adapted to the screen - Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come, and especially Twilight Zone Shatner episodes such as "A Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Nick of Time").

I Am Legend, a 1954 novella about a lone man fighting against world of vampires, works very well as an audio book. It is published by Blackstone Audiobooks and narrated by Robertson Dean, whose deep baritone adds weight to the tale.

Movie Tie-In # 1: The Golden Compass

2007-12-11T08:17:00.000-06:00

Having arrived in the theaters last weekend, The Golden Compass, is getting quite a bit of press - especially from various religious groups (mostly about events that don't even happen in the film, but in future novels). In this week's Entertainment Weekly, Pullman is unapologetic about allowing the studio to soften the religious overtones of the book: "If I had insisted that the movie be an exact replica of what was on the page, it would have arrived stone dead."

The Audio book now has a special $9.95 price tag (for a limited) on both Audible and iTunes. It was produced by Listening Library, narrated by Philip Pullman and a full cast. I have to admit now that I'm not a fan of using a full cast to narrate a book. I find it distracting when a new speaker comes on board. (I have the same problem with music and sound effects.) Still, it is unabridged and sounds good. So if you're not "fantasied" out by a decade of Tolkein, Rowling, Lewis, and Bush, check it out.

Grammy Nominees

2007-12-10T05:37:00.000-06:00

Best Spoken Word Album (includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling)

I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This! - Bob Newhart
New Rules — Polite Musings From A Timid Observer - Bill Maher
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis - Jimmy Carter (tie)
The Truth (with jokes) - Al Franken
With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together - Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee (tie)

Best Spoken Word Album for Children

Blah Blah Blah: Stories About Clams, Swamp Monsters, Pirates & Dogs - Bill Harley
Christmas In The Trenches - John McCutcheon
Disney's Little Einsteins Musical Missions (Various Artists)
Peter Pan - Jim Dale
The Witches - Lynn Redgrave

Blade Runner

2007-12-04T05:14:00.000-06:00

Pardon me, but I'm going to geek out for this post, but Random House Audio is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film Blade Runner by releasing a new unabridged audio version of the 1968 novel it was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick.

What's exciting about this new recording is that it's narrated by Scott Brick. I've become quite a fan of his in the last year since hearing his readings of The Godfather Returns and It's Superman! He can achieve that a gritty no-nonsense voice (perfect for Deckard) that would make Sgt. Joe Friday smile (. . . or not).

Random House has also released an unabridged recording of Dick's Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said also read by Brick.

Learn how to make an origami unicorn here.

Retro Review: Life of Pi

2007-11-30T15:15:00.000-06:00

It's easy to get cynical about reading these days, to forget that it's possible to be surprised by something new. When I finished Life of Pi, I felt refreshed (instead of relieved as happens all to often); I was happy to know that it was still possible for classic novels to be written.

Read Life of Pi. That's all there is to say about it, really. I don't want to give away a plot summary because I began this book with a clean slate, knowing nothing about it. I feel like I'm at an amusement park recommending a ride. "Ride it. You won't be sorry."

The audio book is narrated by Jeff Woodman, who hurdles the narrative changes with grace. I'm keeping this audio book in my collection because I know I'm going to revisit it from time to time in the future.

LibriVox

2007-11-29T10:15:00.000-06:00

A great way to listen to classic audio books is at LibriVox. It has a massive database of public domain audio books that are recorded by volunteers and offered for free. Its goal is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet." That would take decades, but right now you can many read classics by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and others.

The books are assigned by chapters, which means you may start a book and have many narrators (of varying ability and sound quality) before you finish a book. Another problem is that some books have been assigned, and started, but abandoned.

Still hundreds of books are complete, and some of the readers are quite good - even professional. Joy Chan (Tristan and Iseult and others) and Michael Sherer (Typee) sound better than some audio books I've paid for. For now, I plan to finally finish The Turn of the Screw (assigned in Modern British Literature by Dr. Eddins in 1992). I just listened the prologue and Nikolle Doolin's sensuous narration beckons me for more.

For those who need some Christmas spirit, there are some great Christmas stories on LibriVox as well. Here's Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas by Stephen Leacock read by Doug Stalnaker.

Playaways

2007-11-28T01:46:00.000-06:00

I've seen Playaways around for about a year or so, and I finally got to play with one recently. Playaways are basically preloaded audio players.

I must admit the first time I saw Playaways, I thought it was the height of uselessness. It's like an MP3 player that only plays one song! Then my library got dozens of them, and I finally got to read an unabridged version of State of Denial by Bob Woodward. Actually the little device is quite handy. The player is very light and fit in my pocket as promised. My favorite feature was the speed adjuster, which came in handy since the book I was reading was nonfiction and quite long (I probably wouldn't use it for fiction, since I like to savor each word).

Also, the Playaway website offers a RePlay program for recycling used Playaways with new titles. I probably wouldn't trade in my iPod for a Playaway (unless it offered an exclusive title), but I'll definitely be checking the Playaway titles at my local library!

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

2007-11-26T10:50:00.000-06:00

I was captivated by Steve Martin's memoir of his stand-up years. I don't know if it was the material or the fact that I've been a Steve Martin fan for about 30 years - since I saw him on SNL when my parents' got a baby-sitter who would let me stay up. (I was even a member of the Steve Martin fan club, and somewhere I have a bumper sticker that reads, "Steve Martin Is a Personal Friend of Mine").

This audio book answers the question I've had since he walked away from stand up in the early eighties: Why? The book is a bit wistful and sad for the past, but the reasons why Martin can't return to stand-up are inevitable and understandable.

This audio book is read by the author (plus he plays the banjo bumper music). He even reads several of his old routines. At a little over four hours, I was able to finish it in a 24 hour period.

The Abstinence Teacher

2007-11-21T10:32:00.000-06:00

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta (Election, Little Children) is a great listen. He does a great job at navigating the perils of religion, schools, soccer, and divorce in suburbia.

His main characters are a feminist woman who is forced to teach an abstinence program at a local high school and a recovering addict who attends a charismatic church and coaches soccer to the teacher's daughter. See what happens when the coach prays with the team.

Perrotta handled the political subject matter with grace. Since he focuses on character, no matter what the political background of the reader is, he or she will be drawn into these people's lives.

The reading by Campbell Scott is pleasant and clear. His voice is soft and subtle (This book fits him a lot more than Stephen King's Cell).

Audible

2007-11-20T06:55:00.000-06:00

Audible.com is celebrating its tenth anniversary. I've been a "Premium Listener" for about 2 and a half years. That means I pay $21.95 a month for 2 audiobooks. It's a very good deal, if you use it, and I do. (It would be easy to plunk down more $100 for 2 unabridged CD sets retail). I told myself I'd stop my subscription when I went a month without listening to at least one book, but this has never happened.

Audible is pretty easy to use. I listened on my Palm TX until it shorted out on me last week (from overuse, no doubt). Now I'm using a iPod Nano, which is even easier. For the most part, the sound quality is great. There have been about three times I've been disappointed, but I'm sure it was the source material that was the culprit. I have burned CD's from time to time using their Audible platform, and this worked pretty well. There is also an option for streaming on the computer, but I'm too mobile for this.

Still no Harry Potter, but the selection of unabridged books is excellent: Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Lonesome Dove, Patricia Cornwell, Earnest Hemingway.

All in all, I've had a great experience, and I recommend Audible to anyone who reads a lot of audiobooks.