William Carlos Williams Reads His Poetry (1954)

William Car­los Williams – doc­tor by day, poet by night, and cer­tain­ly one of Amer­i­ca’s finest. In this 1954 audio clip, we hear Williams read­ing his own poet­ry at the sto­ried 92nd Street Y in New York City. Poems include: “A Sort of a Song,” “The Maneu­ver,” “Sea­far­er,” “The Three Graces,” “Pater­son, Episode 17,” “The Descent” and “Fish.” The reads are now added to the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books Col­lec­tion.

Poet­ry lovers take note: Peo­ple Read­ing Poems is a very new web site where users can come to hear record­ings of peo­ple read­ing poems they love, and also to share their own favorite poems. It’s all com­plete­ly free and easy to use. If you have a free moment, pay it a vis­it and help the site grow.

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Open Meets New Meets Old Publishing

YOUNG JUNIUSOC con­trib­u­tor Seth Har­wood has some­thing excit­ing going on over at his site today: he’s launch­ing the pre-order sales of his new nov­el YOUNG JUNIUS, which is due out this fall. This is part­ly worth not­ing because Seth’s path to pub­li­ca­tion involves giv­ing away his work for free as MP3 audio­books. You can even lis­ten to all of YOUNG JUNIUS before you make a buy. If you’re a fan of crime or mys­tery fic­tion, or you dig The Wire, you’ll love this book!

Now, Seth is part­ner­ing with inde­pen­dent pub­lish­er Tyrus Books to break new ground in pub­lish­ing strate­gies. To read the full descrip­tion of what he’s up to, go here. The brief ver­sion involves the pre-order of spe­cial, lim­it­ed edi­tion copies of the book that fea­ture cloth bind­ing, fan-cre­at­ed cov­er art, pho­tos of the sto­ry’s loca­tions, signed per­son­al­iza­tion and more. By offer­ing these for a lim­it­ed time via his site, he and Tyrus are able to print just the quan­ti­ty sold and bal­ance some of the cost (reduce the risk) of the book’s full print run–hardcover, paper­back AND spe­cial edi­tion.

If you’d like to read more about this or order a copy, head over to sethharwood.com. When you do, use the code OC to save $3 off the cov­er price of the book! Enjoy!!

Seth Har­wood is a vora­cious read­er, sub­ver­sive pub­lish­ing maven and crime nov­el­ist.

Alice In Openland

This year, Tim Bur­ton’s pro­duc­tion of Alice In Won­der­land was wel­comed by a flur­ry of media buzz and a rather polar­ized pub­lic response debat­ing whether the icon­ic direc­tor had butchered or rein­vent­ed the even more icon­ic chil­dren’s clas­sic. But dis­cus­sion of the film’s cre­ative mer­its aside, one thing it did do bril­liant­ly was rekin­dle the pub­lic’s inter­est in what’s eas­i­ly the most beloved work of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture of the past two cen­turies.

So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Car­rol­l’s 1865 nov­el has gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of reprints, film adap­ta­tions and var­i­ous deriv­a­tive works over the years. Many of these works are now avail­able in the pub­lic domain — even a sim­ple search in the Inter­net Archive sends you down a rab­bit hole of adap­ta­tions and remakes, span­ning from land­mark ear­ly cin­e­ma trea­sures to off­beat prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal cul­ture.

Today, we’ve curat­ed a selec­tion of the most inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant — the “curi­ouser and curi­ouser,” if you will — free ver­sions of, trib­utes to, and deriv­a­tives of Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land.

  • The fun­da­men­tals: A Project Guten­berg free dig­i­tal copy of Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land text
  • A 1916 abridged ver­sion intend­ed for younger chil­dren, dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress, is avail­able from the Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library and fea­tures some won­der­ful illus­tra­tion — though, regret­tably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
  • For a clas­sic with a spin, try this audio ver­sion read by blog­ger extra­or­di­naire, Boing­Bo­ing co-edi­tor, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist and vocal free con­tent advo­cate Cory Doc­torow
  • The ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book, direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clock­ing in at just 8 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Watch above.
  • In 1915, W. W. Young direct­ed the sec­ond Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of Alice — a mas­sive six-reel pro­duc­tion that show­cased the rapid evo­lu­tion of film­mak­ing in just a decade since the first pro­duc­tion. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 min­utes of it can be seen at the Inter­net Archive for free
  • A 1966 British adap­ta­tion by direc­tor Jonathan Miller for the BBC fea­tures an ambi­tious cast — includ­ing Peter Sell­ers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Giel­guld as Mock Tur­tle, Michael Red­grave as The Cater­pil­lar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hat­ter — and its sound­track, scored by the leg­endary Ravi Shankar, exudes the bor­der­line folk-psy­che­delia sound of the Wood­stock era. The film, divid­ed into sev­en parts, is avail­able for free on YouTube.
  • This 2‑minute ver­sion of Alice In Won­der­land shot in the vir­tu­al world Sec­ond Life is an eerie tes­ta­ment to just how wide­ly Car­rol­l’s clas­sic res­onates.
  • Per­haps the biggest trea­sure of all, Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, avail­able from the British Library — 91 pages of pre­cious lit­er­ary his­to­ry, with orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from artist John Ten­niel. The online gallery also fea­tures a pref­ace telling the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of the Oxford math­e­mati­cian’s real-life inspi­ra­tion for the book and the fate of the real Alice

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Truman Capote Reads from Breakfast at Tiffany’s in NYC (1963)

We’re bring­ing you some great authors this week. First it was Hem­ing­way, then Orwell, and now Capote.

In 1958, Tru­man Capote put his stamp on the Amer­i­can lit­er­ary scene when he pub­lished his short nov­el, Break­fast at Tiffany’s, in the pages of Esquire mag­a­zine. Authors and crit­ics were quick to rec­og­nize what Capote had accom­plished here. The always opin­ion­at­ed Nor­man Mail­er would say that Capote “is the most per­fect writer of my gen­er­a­tion, he writes the best sen­tences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Break­fast at Tiffany’s which will become a small clas­sic.” About that, Mail­er was exact­ly right. Break­fast at Tiffany’s is now a clas­sic book – not to men­tion a clas­sic film too (watch the trail­er with the icon­ic Audrey Hep­burn here). And now let’s rewind the audio­tape and take you back to 1963, to the great 92nd Street Y in New York city, where Tru­man Capote reads from his lit­tle clas­sic in his own dis­tinc­tive voice. This audio clip runs about 17 min­utes. Have a lis­ten.

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

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William Faulkner Reads from As I Lay Dying

William Faulkn­er’s As I Lay Dying is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the great Amer­i­can nov­els. Quite an accom­plish­ment, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Faulkn­er wrote the nov­el in six weeks while work­ing at a pow­er plant in 1929–30. Read more about his day jobs here.

Thanks to Harper­Collins, you can now lis­ten to Faulkn­er, him­self, read­ing from his mas­ter­piece: .au file (4.4 Mb), .gsm file (0.9 Mb), .ra file (0.5 Mb). The audio can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to make out at times. But you can read right along with the text in Google Books. Enjoy. Thanks MS.

For more audio clas­sics, check out our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Von­negut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five was pub­lished back in 1969, and the anti-war sci fi nov­el quick­ly became a clas­sic. (The book now appears, for exam­ple, on Time Mag­a­zine’s list of All Time 100 Nov­els.) Whether you’ve read the nov­el or not, you’ll want to check this out. Harper­Collins has post­ed online a record­ing of Von­negut him­self read­ing a lengthy pas­sage from the work. And he does it with the “casu­al irony that com­ple­ments the nov­el­’s won­der­ful­ly eccen­tric tone.” You can stream Von­negut’s read­ing in the fol­low­ing for­mats:  .au for­mat (4.5 Mb), .gsm for­mat (900 Kb), .ra for­mat ( Mb). (Sor­ry a straight­for­ward mp3 is not avail­able.) Also, if you want some more Von­negut, feel free to down­load his 1962 sci fi short sto­ry, 2BR02B, which is oth­er­wise list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Note: Audible.com offers a ver­sion of Slaugh­ter­house-Five nar­rat­ed by actor/writer Ethan Hawke. You can down­load it (or any anoth­er oth­er book) for free if you start a free 14 day tri­al. It has no strings attached. Get some more basic details here.

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Give Librivox a Hand

Per­haps you’re already famil­iar with Lib­rivox. If not, you should be. Lib­rivox pro­vides over 3000 free audio books. The books (all in the pub­lic domain) are record­ed by a pas­sion­ate com­mu­ni­ty of vol­un­teers, and they’re all made freely avail­able to you. (See their cat­a­logue here.) Mil­lions of peo­ple have down­loaded their books. And, as you can imag­ine, the web host­ing costs can run quite high. For the first time in 4+ years, Lib­rivox is look­ing to raise some mon­ey. Please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion, how­ev­er small or large, and sup­port this very worth­while project.  You can find more infor­ma­tion and donate here.

Disney Kindle Commando Sunday is Here!

kindledisneyToday’s free sto­ry: When They Were Call­ing You in for Din­ner (lis­ten here) or read it in the Charles Riv­er Review [To down­load the sto­ry and lis­ten on your MP3 play­er, just right-click and “save file as…”]

Dear OC read­ers,

About a week ago, I post­ed here about my Pub­lish­ing Exper­i­ment Take 1. I spoke of the need for authors (Yes, Authors!) to make exper­i­ments in new media and pub­lish­ing. Well, now’s the time to put my fic­tion where my mouth is. Today I’m launch­ing my col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, A Long Way from Dis­ney, on Ama­zon’s Kin­dle plat­form at the price of $.99.

Direct link to buy A Long Way from Dis­ney on Ama­zon.

Please vis­it SethHarwood.com/kindle for more info. You can buy the book if you have 1) A Kin­dle 2) an iPhone/iPod Touch or 3) Any PC com­put­er!

Easy! See you soon with more free sto­ries and results from this exper­i­ment.

PS: If you’d like to hear more free sto­ries like this, you can check out new posts today at CrimeWAV.com and SethHarwood.com. You can also get the sto­ries direct­ly from iTunes.

Seth Har­wood pod­casts his ideas on the pub­lish­ing indus­try and his fic­tion for free at sethharwood.com. He will be teach­ing an online course (The Essen­tial Art: Mak­ing Movies in Your Reader’s Mind) with Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies start­ing in Jan­u­ary. His first nov­el, JACK WAKES UP, is in stores now.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.