Agatha Christie Radio Mysteries

in Audio Books, Media | December 5th, 2007

Pod­cast­ing is a new form of media dis­tri­b­u­tion that’s done a good job of reviv­ing old forms of media, par­tic­u­lar­ly old radio shows. In the past, we’ve point­ed you to sev­er­al old radio broad­casts, includ­ing Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio dra­ma that led many Amer­i­cans to hun­ker down in base­ments, des­per­ate­ly hop­ing to avoid an unfold­ing mar­t­ian inva­sion. Today, we’re high­light­ing a vin­tage radio col­lec­tion (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that fea­tures drama­ti­za­tions of mys­ter­ies writ­ten by Agatha Christie, the ‘Queen of Crime.’ Here, at your leisure, you can lis­ten to the adven­tures of Her­cule Poirot, the fic­tion­al Bel­gian detec­tive who appeared through­out much of her writ­ing. To be pre­cise, he fig­ured into 33 of her nov­els, and 54 of her short sto­ries. Right now, you can access 27 indi­vid­ual record­ings of Christie’s work, and there’s seem­ing­ly more to come.

In the mean­time, if you’re look­ing for more old time media, I’d encour­age you to vis­it this pro­duc­er’s larg­er col­lec­tion of pod­casts on iTunes. Among oth­er things, you’ll find revived pro­duc­tions of Abbott & Costel­lo, Jack Ben­ny, Flash Gor­don and more.

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James Joyce’s Dubliners: Four Stories

in Audio Books, Literature | December 2nd, 2007

jamesjoyce2.jpgBack in June, we high­light­ed the release of James Joyce’s Ulysses in free audio­book for­mat. Ulysses stands as Joyce’s most impor­tant work, and for some, it’s most the impor­tant work pub­lished in the Eng­lish lan­guage dur­ing the entire 20th cen­tu­ry. Despite Ulysses’ enor­mous stature, many read­ers still turn to Dublin­ers, a col­lec­tion of 15 short sto­ries that Joyce pub­lished in 1914, part­ly because it’s con­sid­ered his most acces­si­ble writ­ing. Over at Lib­rivox, you can find sev­er­al key sto­ries from this col­lec­tion — name­ly, The Sis­ters (mp3), Ara­by (mp3), Eve­line (mp3), and The Dead (mp3 in zip file). The Dead is the longest and last sto­ry in the col­lec­tion, and it’s a Christ­mas sto­ry, some say the “great­est of all Christ­mas sto­ries,” which makes it par­tic­u­lar­ly time­ly to men­tion here.

It’s worth not­ing that you can down­load the com­plete etext of Dublin­ers at Project Guten­berg or on Google Book Search. (The lat­ter ver­sion is clean­er.) And, if you can suf­fer through it, Guten­berg also offers a free audio ver­sion of Joyce’s text, which is read by a com­put­er, not a real per­son.

Last­ly, be sure to spend some time perus­ing Lib­rivox’s entire col­lec­tion of free audio­books. It’s the best on the web.

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Free eBook on iTunes: The Millionaires

in Audio Books | November 18th, 2007

iTunes is serv­ing up a free­bie for audio­book fans. Writ­ten by Brad Meltzer, The Mil­lion­aires runs close to 15 hours. Pub­lish­ers Week­ly calls it “a fast-paced, fresh-scrubbed tale of finan­cial adven­ture.” Down­load it here, and check out our larg­er col­lec­tion of free audio­book pod­casts. (Source: Boing Boing)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Newsweek’s piece on Jeff Bezos’ plans to rein­vent the future of read­ing.

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Re-Organizing the Free Audiobook Podcast Collection

in Audio Books | October 17th, 2007

This is just a quick note to let you know that we “re-orged” the Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. The list, which had become a bit unwieldy, is now bro­ken down by genre: Literature/Fiction, Non­fic­tion, and Poet­ry. And, with­in these cat­e­gories, the texts are orga­nized by the author’s name. Hope­ful­ly this all makes the col­lec­tion eas­i­er to use. Check it out.

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Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

in Audio Books | October 10th, 2007

Here’s a quick old time radio treat: Way back when, some­where in the gold­en days, the NBC Uni­ver­si­ty The­ater aired a dra­mat­ic radio broad­cast of three Edgar Allan Poe sto­ries, includ­ing the “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” and “Nosol­o­gy.” Have a lis­ten. (Source)
If vin­tage radio is your thing, then also see these relat­ed Open Cul­ture posts:

Watch the lat­est videos on YouTube.com

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Stephen Colbert’s New Book Released Early as Audiobook

in Audio Books, Books | October 5th, 2007

colbert4.jpgHere’s a quick heads up: Stephen Col­bert’s new book — I Am Amer­i­ca (And So Can You!) — will hit the streets on Octo­ber 9. How­ev­er, if you’re real­ly champ­ing at the bit, you can down­load the book ear­ly, start­ing today, in audio­book for­mat. The book is nar­rat­ed by Col­bert him­self, which is a perk, and you can down­load it from Audi­ble here.

To round things out, let us refer you to this video where Col­bert, speak­ing at Book Expo Amer­i­ca, pumps his new book, spars with Khaled Hos­sei­ni (author of The Kite Run­ner and A Thou­sand Splen­did Suns), and trash­es Cor­mac McCarthy. Have fun.



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100 Great American Speeches

in Audio Books, English Language, History | August 30th, 2007

mlk.jpgAmer­i­can Rhetoric has com­piled its list of the top 100 Amer­i­can speech­es, all of which can be con­ve­nient­ly accessed as mp3 files. Most of the speech­es list­ed here are known for their elo­quence, and many for the piv­otal role they played in effect­ing major polit­i­cal and social change. The com­pi­la­tion lets you lis­ten to F.D.R. lead­ing the US through the Depres­sion ( “There is noth­ing to fear but fear itself” ) as well as through World War II with his Fire­side Chats. Then, there is Tru­man and Kennedy ( “Ich bin ein Berlin­er” ) fight­ing the Cold War, Nixon bol­ster­ing sup­port for the Viet­nam War with his “Great Silent Major­i­ty” speech, and Mar­tin Luther King ( “I Have a Dream” ) and Mal­colm X ( “The Bal­lot or the Bul­let” ) press­ing for civ­il rights in their dif­fer­ent ways.

The speech­es can be heard large­ly in full, and, while most are polit­i­cal in con­tent, some gems are not. Take for exam­ple William Faulkn­er’s Nobel Prize accep­tance speech, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Address, Ursu­la Le Guin’s “A Left-Hand­ed Com­mence­ment Address,” and Elie Wiesel’s “The Per­ils of Indif­fer­ence.” Give these speech­es some time, and it might be a while before you come back up for air.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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The War of the Worlds on Podcast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riveted A Nation

in Audio Books, Media, Sci Fi | July 31st, 2007

Today, by pop­u­lar demand, we’re run­ning an updat­ed ver­sion of one of our more pop­u­lar posts to date. Enjoy…

At has­tened speeds dur­ing the past year, we have seen book lovers record­ing home­grown audio­books and post­ing them on sites like Lib­rivox (see our col­lec­tion of free audio­books here). For obvi­ous copy­right rea­sons, these audio texts large­ly come from the pub­lic domain, and, yes, they’re some­times of uneven qual­i­ty. Some good, some okay. Among the recent releas­es, you’d expect to find great clas­si­cal works — the major plays by Shake­speare, the essen­tial trea­tis­es by Pla­to and oth­er philoso­phers, etc. — and you do get some of those. How­ev­er, far more often you get texts by more mod­ern writ­ers who wrote with­in the thriller, sci fi and adven­ture gen­res. Here, I’m talk­ing about Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing, Robert Louis Steven­son, Edgar Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and H.G. Wells. (Find these pod­casts here.)

It seems rather fit­ting that Wells, the father of sci­ence fic­tion, would be among the first to have his writ­ings dig­i­tal­ly record­ed and dis­trib­uted. Nowa­days, you can down­load, sync and lis­ten to his major works – The New Accel­er­a­tor (mp3), The Invis­i­ble Man (iTunes — feed), The Time Machine (iTunes — feed), and The War of the Worlds (iTunes). But what’s bet­ter than all of this, at least in our minds, is this vin­tage gem …

Here you can down­load the ver­sion of The War of the Worlds that Orson Welles famous­ly adapt­ed and aired on nation­al radio in Octo­ber 1938. Pre­sent­ed so that it sound­ed like an actu­al news broad­cast, the Orson Welles ver­sion was mis­tak­en for truth by many lis­ten­ers who caught the pro­gram mid­stream (more info here), and, soon enough, they found them­selves flee­ing an unfold­ing Mar­t­ian inva­sion, run­ning down into their base­ments with guns cocked and ready to fire. You can catch the mp3 ver­sion of the famous Welles record­ing here (and also alter­na­tive­ly here). Have fun with this broad­cast. It’s a clas­sic.

Relat­ed con­tent: For more old time, sci-fi radio broad­casts, check out this nice col­lec­tion on iTunes.

Also see: Vin­tage Radio Archive: The Lone Ranger, Abbott & Costel­lo, and Bob Hope

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.