I recently listened to the audiobook of Phil Wang’s sort-of-memoir Sidesplitter, where the comedian talks about many areas of his life particularly where cultures intersect - food, family, comedy, and more global topics like the British Empire past, present and future, and how race and racism affects people every single day. They’re heavy topics in places but the book is really well done, with wit and humour but also a great deal of insight and thought-provoking ideas.

The Guardian published an interesting post last week about audiobook narration and the impact artificial intelligence could have on it. The post talks to an author who was working with Apple on a secret project that allows AI voices to provide the narration on an audiobook - and evaluates whether it’s any good or not. From sentence to sentence, the cadence of the narrator’s voice glides forward, then snags on an artificial syllable.

I haven’t really used iTunes for its intended purpose in a long time. It’s very handy for adding id3 tags to things and it’s a nice way of perusing the store for all its many digital wonders, but in terms of syncing devices and storing my stuff, the iCloud has been far more useful. One of the problems with this strategy, however, is that it meant I couldn’t get my hands on any audiobooks that I’d bought from the iTunes store.

One of my earliest forays into recording my voice involved working with LibriVox to create audiobooks. The site is a great place full of volunteers who help to record and gather together public domain works, creating a vast archive of audiobooks. I haven’t had time to participate in a long while, but did manage to list all the projects I was involved with. It was previously a constantly updated page on this site, but I’m moving it to this static archive for now.

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I’ve been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. The third book in the Grace Harlowe series follows the girls as they face off against another enemy, only this time they create a sorority to make sure they are all on the same side.

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I’ve been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. To take a break from the Grace Harlowe world, I picked a travel book called - British Highways and Byways from a Motor Car.

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I’ve been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. I have finally finished the second book in the Grace Harlowe series - Grace Harlowe’s Sophomore Year at High School. As with the first book, Grace is the plucky young hero, facing tricky situations during her second year at school, surrounded by a fiercely loyal group of friends.

LibriVox is an organisation with a simple goal - to make all public domain works accessible in audiobook form. I’ve been involved for a long while now, part of an enormous group of volunteers who record chapters, poems and entire books to attempt to reach this goal. My latest solo book has been catalogued: Grace Harlowe’s Plebe Year at High School. It’s one of those books that is probably aimed at young adults, but is secretly interesting to all.

Today, the first LibriVox book that I co-ordinated has been completed and catalogued for the wider world to enjoy. If you’re at all interested in a book that follows the life of a prehistoric caveman, then I recommend The Story of Ab by Stanley Waterloo. It was quite exciting when I saw this book turn up in the new releases RSS feed, as it is with any book I’m involved in.

Recently, I have been making time to record more stuff for Librivox. The collaborative book that I was co-ordinating is nearing completion, so I have started a new solo effort, and am participating in some of the other group projects as well. More on that another time, what I am here to say is that a rather cool iPhone App has been rocketing up the application charts. It is simply called Audiobooks and it lets you listen to Librivox books on the go.