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Monday, June 04, 2007

Hear, hear

While I have doubted the necessity of eBooks, I do like earBooks. To tempt me further, Naxos Audiobooks has launched a Download Shop with some promising titles: Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Kafka's Metamorphosis. The audio sample of the former, however, is very disappointing as it offers not one word from the text itself. And the blog doesn't have an RSS feed!

While audiobooks seem to be aimed at people who can't be bothered to read, some works demand to be uttered. Poetry is an obvious case. But novels like Ulysses are transformed with the right voice. And though Irish too, Beckett's Molloy and Malone Dies have an irresistible verbal momentum irrespective of accent. I've yet to hear The Unnamable, the most utterable of all (another one for the wishlist). It's unlikely, I know, but I'd like to see Naxos follow Germany's fine taste in offering audiobooks of Josipovici's novels. Everything Passes would be terrifyingly good with the music that inspired it.

To mark the opening of the shop, you can download a free copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales (and though it's in the Children's section, some believe they shouldn't be so isolated).

UPDATE: the blog now has an RSS feed!
at 8:20 pm
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3 comments:

  1. genevieve5:24 am

    An audio of the Beckett books could be the way I should be going. It's taken this long to attempt them seriously ( I keep stumbling at Watt, and falling.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:35 pm

    Not sure - did you get my earlier comment that a considerable amount of original material was included in Thus Spake Zarathustra was included but we introduced each section to try and make it more accessible for the listener...
    and thanks also for the RSS suggestion....I will speak to my webmaster!
    Nicolas Soames

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephen Mitchelmore7:42 pm

    Thanks Nicolas. Somehow the earlier comment did not appear. There's a delay in posting as I moderate comments to prevent spamming, but I didn't receive notification of a comment before the one above arrived.

    I see what you mean about the original material in TSZ. It's just that I was waiting for the opening lines as the file ran out. It was a bit frustrating, though now my complaint seems churlish.

    I hope the blog gets a feed as that's the only way to keep up with them nowadays, and it looks worthwhile in this case.

    ReplyDelete

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