Good “Reads” On Audible (with Freebie Possibilities)

in Audio Books, Books, Deals, Literature | August 21st, 2009

paul_austerA quick note: Audi­ble has recent­ly launched a series called the Audi­ble Mod­ern Van­guard (more details here) that brings ground­break­ing works and authors into unabridged audio for the first time. Here, you’ll find works by Paul Auster (one of my faves), Saul Bel­low, John Cheev­er, John Irv­ing, Kurt Von­negut, and William Kennedy.

There are some good “reads” here, and, unless I’m mis­tak­en, there’s a way that you can down­load one for free. I’ve cre­at­ed a page where you can get infor­ma­tion on Audi­ble’s (no strings attached) 14 day tri­al here, which gives you a com­plete­ly free down­load of any audio book you choose.

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Reading Free Books on the Kindle

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, Literature | August 17th, 2009

Even though we some­times give Ama­zon’s Kin­dle a hard time, the device is undoubt­ed­ly handy for read­ing e‑books. The Kin­dle lets you seam­less­ly down­load books straight from Ama­zon in a mat­ter of sec­onds. And, even bet­ter, you can load the Kin­dle with thou­sands of free e‑books from sources such as Project Guten­berg. (Few peo­ple know this.) This guide will show you how to down­load a free book from Project Guten­berg, and then read it on your Kin­dle. You can also find many free ebooks for the Kin­dle in our Free eBook col­lec­tion.

Step 1:

Go to http://www.gutenberg.org and search for a book you would like to read.

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Step 2:

Once you’ve found a book that you want to down­load, down­load it in MOBI for­mat if pos­si­ble. If no MOBI for­mat exists, then using plain text works as well.
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Step 3:
After your down­load is com­plete, plug in your Kin­dle to your com­put­er’s USB port. The Kin­dle will show up as a USB Dri­ve.
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Step 4:
Go to the Doc­u­ments direc­to­ry on your Kin­dle.
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Step 5:

Copy the e‑book file to the Doc­u­ments fold­er. You can option­al­ly rename the file to some­thing more mean­ing­ful if you’d like.
Step 6:

The sil­ver cur­sor on your Kin­dle will begin to spin. When it stops, the Kin­dle is fin­ished sync­ing. Now you can eject and unplug your Kin­dle and enjoy your free ebook!
Fred Hsu designed the handy Open Cul­ture app. Give it a spin. It’s free and it’s good for you.

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Junot Díaz Reads From “Drown”

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | August 5th, 2009

Junot_Díaz

Image by Christo­pher Peter­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

I first heard about Junot Díaz in the ear­ly 90s. He was only in his 20s, already pub­lish­ing in The New York­er, and get­ting a lot of wun­derkind talk. By 1996, he pub­lished, Drown, a best­selling col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that earned high praise. And then, things slowed down. It took a good eleven years for him to pub­lish The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao. But the patience paid off. The nov­el won him a Pulitzer in fact. And it’s an excel­lent read. Real­ly.

Hav­ing said this, I want to high­light Díaz read­ing one of his ear­ly New York­er sto­ries that also found its way into Drown. It’s called How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Hal­fie). The free audio clip, which is list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books (and pro­duced by The New York­er), has some col­or­ful lan­guage, but it’s not gra­tu­itous.

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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Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty) Reads Jane Austen

in Literature, Television | July 5th, 2009

If you’ve watched The Wire, you know him as Jim­my McNul­ty, the smart, booz­ing Bal­ti­more cop that likes an occa­sion­al romp and goes rogue here and there. Now, here’s your chance to see anoth­er side of Dominic, the side that’s more at home, at least geo­graph­i­cal­ly speak­ing. Here we have, as Ed tells us, the British actor, an Eton prod­uct, “read­ing Pride and Prej­u­dice (he’s a first-rate read­er) and then smirk­ing before he game­ly sips some Carte Noire cof­fee.” Watch it here, and thanks Ed for the tip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Moy­ers with The Wire’s David Simon

The Cre­ator of the Wire on Amer­i­can Urban Decline

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Philip Roth on Aging

in Life, Literature | June 26th, 2009

File under Lit­er­a­ture & Life…

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James Joyce Reading from Finnegans Wake

in Audio Books, Literature | June 19th, 2009

On Blooms­day (June 16), Boing­Bo­ing fea­tured a rare audio record­ing of James Joyce read­ing from Finnegans Wake (mp3). It’s a bit intrigu­ing to hear his voice and accent. Also, we came across anoth­er Joyce record­ing, where, this time, he’s read­ing Anna Livia Plura­belle, anoth­er sec­tion of the same nov­el. For kicks, you can catch an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the same record­ing on YouTube here.

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Ian McKellen Stars in King Lear

in Film, Literature, Theatre | June 7th, 2009

Thanks to PBS, you can watch online Ian McK­ellen star­ring in King Lear, one of Shake­se­peare’s finest tragedies. McK­ellen per­formed the play first in Eng­land (2007), then on a world­wide tour, before film­ing the pro­duc­tion for pub­lic tele­vi­sion. You can watch it all right here, and if you want to fol­low the orig­i­nal text, you can get it from MIT’s Shake­speare web site, which hous­es Shake­speare’s com­plete works online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like?

Goethe and Shake­speare on Google

Shake­speare and the Uses of Polit­i­cal Pow­er

via Metafil­ter

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The Infinite Jest Summer Challenge

in Books, Literature | May 27th, 2009

When I devel­op the cur­ricu­lum for Stan­ford’s Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies pro­gram, I often like to cre­ate cours­es around big, hard books that stu­dents have long intend­ed to read, but have nev­er quite pulled off: James Joyce’s Uly­sess, Pla­to’s Repub­lic, Tol­stoy’s Anna Karen­i­na, you get the pic­ture. For many stu­dents, it takes a course, or some­thing equiv­a­lent, to pro­vide the struc­ture and encour­age­ment to get through a tru­ly major work.  A more mod­ern exam­ple is Infi­nite Jest, David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s 1100 page sprawl­ing nov­el, which TIME Mag­a­zine includ­ed on its list of all-time 100 nov­els. To help you work through the nov­el, a web site called Infi­nite Sum­mer has invit­ed read­ers to tack­le the nov­el with oth­er read­ers start­ing on June 21. Here’s the basic invi­ta­tion:

You’ve been mean­ing to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bib­lio­philes from around the web as we tack­le and com­ment upon David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s mas­ter­work, June 21st to Sep­tem­ber 22nd. A thou­sand pages1 ÷ 93 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat. 

Return to this site on June 1st for full details. In the mean­while, buy or bor­row a copy of the nov­el, fol­low us on Twit­ter (#inf­sum), join the Face­book group, and clear your lit­er­ary sched­ule for the fore­see­able future.

If I can wrap up Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov (my cur­rent read) by then, I’ll give it a go. In the mean­time, you should def­i­nite­ly give this some thought. Also, as a quick aside, you may know that David Fos­ter Wal­lace trag­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide last year. To learn more about DFW, his writ­ing career, and spi­ral into depres­sion, give this piece in The New York­er a read.

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