George Orwell’s 1984: Download Free Audio Book Version

in Audio Books, Literature | September 28th, 2008

I first post­ed this one dur­ing the dead of sum­mer, so it seemed worth revis­it­ing this now that we’re all a bit more focused .…

Over at the Inter­net Archive, you can find George Orwell’s clas­sic, 1984, avail­able as a free audio book. As you’ll see, the record­ing is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done. You can down­load the full zip file here. Or alter­na­tive­ly you can get the indi­vid­ual mp3 files, or stream them, from this page. On a more per­ma­nent basis, you can find Orwell’s 1949 work housed in our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion along with lots of oth­er free texts. Or see it on our list of Life Chang­ing Books.

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New Fiction in Five Parts

in Literature | September 28th, 2008

This post is a twofer. First, I get to tell you about FiveChapters.com, a web site that posts new fic­tion in kind of a nov­el way. Almost a throw­back to the 19th cen­tu­ry, FiveChap­ters pub­lish­es short fic­tion in ser­i­al for­mat. Each week, they present a sto­ry in five parts, and you can fol­low along as the week unfolds. Now (and here’s the sec­ond part), let me men­tion that FiveChap­ters show­cased last week a sto­ry from Scott Hutchins, a good writer and col­league of mine. It’s called $30,000. Here it goes.

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Animated Poetry by US Poet Laureate

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | September 13th, 2008

Bil­ly Collins, for­mer US Poet Lau­re­ate and one of Amer­i­ca’s best-sell­ing poets, reads his poem “The Dead” with ani­ma­tion by Juan Del­can of Spon­ta­neous. Take it away:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Howard Zinn’s His­to­ry of the Amer­i­can Empire

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Evil

The Sto­ry of Stuff in 20 Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Ani­mat­ed New York­er Car­toons: A Fun­ny Twist on Einstein’s Rel­a­tiv­i­ty

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The 50 Greatest Arts Videos on YouTube

in Art, Literature, Music, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | September 1st, 2008

One of our British read­ers turned us on to this post by the Guardian, not­ing that they took a page from our gen­er­al play­book. The post fea­tures 50 of the best YouTube clips from across the arts, some of which we’ve fea­tured here in the past. Among the videos, you’ll find vin­tage per­for­mances by John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­i­day, read­ings by Jack Ker­ouac, an inter­view with Eugène Ionesco, clips of Nir­vana rehears­ing in a garage, Vladimir Nabokov talk­ing about Loli­ta, Jack­son Pol­lock drip­ping paint out­side his home, and Mar­lon Bran­do doing a screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause. We have post­ed the Bran­do clip below. There are some def­i­nite gems here. Now dive in. And don’t for­get to work through our YouTube playlist and our piece 70 Signs of Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube, where you’ll find enrich­ing video col­lec­tions.

Thanks Stephen for the tip. And read­ers, keep the good rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing!

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Archaeologists Uncover Shakespeare’s First Theater

in Literature | August 6th, 2008

The BBC reports: “An archae­o­log­i­cal dig has recov­ered what is thought to be the remains of the the­atre where Shake­speare’s plays were first per­formed.” Get the rest of the big sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

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John Gielgud’s Hamlet

in Literature | August 4th, 2008

Here we have John Giel­gud’s first record­ing of a scene from Ham­let, “record­ed short­ly after he became the youngest actor to take the lead in the play, in the 1929/30 Old Vic sea­son.” It’s the audio that you will want to focus on here, not the video, even though there’s some­thing a lit­tle amus­ing about the whole idea of watch­ing an old record turn on YouTube. How quaint.

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Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89; David Remnick Reflects

in Harvard, History, Literature | August 3rd, 2008

Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn, who chron­i­cled the abus­es of the Sovi­et regime and gained world­wide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhen­it­syn means to lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of Rus­sia, David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, had this to stay: “It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a writer whose affect on a soci­ety has been greater than Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn’s affect on the fate of Rus­sia  …” In the video post­ed below, Rem­nick elab­o­rates on Solzhen­it­syn’s con­tri­bu­tions, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Rem­nick won a Pulitzer dur­ing the 90s for his best­seller, Lenin’s Tomb.

(Note: you can read the lec­ture Solzhen­it­syn gave upon receiv­ing the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and lis­ten to his 1978 Har­vard grad­u­a­tion speech here.)

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Stephen Colbert Reads Joyce’s Ulysses

in Comedy, Literature, Uncategorized | July 2nd, 2008

Every June 16 is Blooms­day, which com­mem­o­rates Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses (get free audio here). In Dublin and around the world, cel­e­bra­tions usu­al­ly include a read­ing of Joyce’s clas­sic. This year, in New York City, one high-pro­file event fea­tured Stephen Col­bert read­ing the part of Leopold Bloom, the char­ac­ter around which the sprawl­ing nov­el turns. You can lis­ten to Col­bert read here and here. Enjoy, and I will catch you back here after the hol­i­day week­end.

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