My paternal Grandmother, Virginia McConnell, gradually lost her vision to macular degeneration. She was legally blind after age 70 until her death at age 94. Around 1990 I had an idea for a novel Christmas gift for her: I read a selection of short stories out loud and recorded them on a small tape recorder. The experience was quite humbling! It is harder than you think to read accurately, intelligibly, and entertainingly. (I stand in awe of the professional readers - many of them stage actors - who appear regularly on the NPR program Selected Shorts. )
After the birth of my daughter, Erin, in 1994, what had been a one time experiment morphed into a regular parental duty. I read all the children's classics: the Dr. Seusses, the Beverly Clearys, the Shel Silversteins, etc. Later on, Through the Looking Glass, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows. My Mom found an old copy of a book called The Happy Hollisters in her attic and I read that. Erin liked it so much we read all 31 books in the rather obscure Hollister series. (A few of the rarer ones had to be purchased on eBay.) Later on we graduated to The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series. (I'll bet I'm one of the few people on the planet to have read every word of Rowling's wonderful creations out loud.)
Erin mostly reads to herself these days, but I still feel the urge to read aloud. Thus, this web site. I've collected here some mp3 recordings of a few of my favorite stories, and will add more as I have time. Despite all my years of practise I remain a reader of very modest ability, and I offer my sincere apologies to the authors - many mercifully deceased - whose works I've selected for performance. To listeners I offer no apology; these recordings are, after all, free. (In some cases I include discussion about issues related to narration.)
This novel totally blew me away when I was a kid, and I still love it. It is a relatively easy assignment for the reader since, appart from the first 2 and final chapters, it is all narration - no dialogue at all. Because I'm pretty bad at accents I've chosen to make the Time Traveler american. There is nothing in the novel that says he couldn't be.
Each chapter is a separate mp3.
Although I'm not at all a religious person, for some reason I've always loved fire and brimstone sermons. Jonathan Edwards' famous diatribe even contains the phrase "fire and brimstone", and may be the origin for the name of the genre. The sermon from Portrait occurs during a religious retreat for the boys from Clongowes and precipitates a religious crisis in Stephan Daedalus - it's not hard to see why! (Another example occurs in Chapter 3 of Wuthering Heights - see below.)
The story gives no hints about where it takes place. I imagine a location in rural New England.
I try to make the speaking characters sound like mid-western hicks. We don't, after all, really know where Peaksville is, because it's really nowhere at all!
Apart from its extreme emotional range, one of the problems with this story is distinguishing amongst narration, internal monologue, and external monologue. As the story progresses, it is increasingly difficult to tell what is taking place inside Granny's head and what is going on in the room around her. I try to render Granny's internal monologue with a softer southern accent and her actual speech with a more harsh one, appropriate to someone who is old and in failing health.
The big problem for the reader here is how to do the goblin voices and how to distinguish Laura from Lizzie. I tried to picture the goblins as creatures like the gremlins in the movie of the same name. I give Lizzie a slightly higher voice than Laura since she is the more naive of the two.
My daughter has always been really creeped-out by moths. So Erin, this one's for you.
Clarke has fantastic ideas but a rather dry and uninspiring writing style. His stories are pretty easy to read. Here are three of my favorites:
I confess that Hound is my favorite novel of all: the most perfect detective story ever written. I try to give Holmes a rather cultivated British accent and Watson a more blustery, middle class one. Sir Henry is easy for me since he is American. I try to picture John Wayne when he's speaking. An occasional low class (Cockney) accent is called for, which I fake by throwing in an occasional "aitch". The novel also calls for a brief German accent (which I can do) and a French accent (which I can't do at all - fortunately Lestrade has only a brief cameo.)
Each chapter is a separate mp3.
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
This novel poses a problem for the reader in that it has unusally many levels of indirect speech, sometimes extending to 4 levels deep: Mr. Lockwood, the top-level narrator, relating what he has been told by Mrs. Dean, who is relating what Mrs. Heathcliff told her about the contents of a letter she wrote! When Mr. Lockwood is narrating I attempt to give each character a very distinctive voice, but use only minimal distinctions when Mrs. Dean is talking, as might be expected from an informal narration by an inexpert narrator.
Each chapter is a separate mp3.
This famous story comes, of course, from the Martian Chronicles. Burgess Meredith made a recording which is way better than mine, but can you find it? I love Sara Teasdale's poem. At her best she comes close to Emily Dickenson.