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Re: Nabokov on audiobook ...
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Sandy: I¹m over-the-moon to see the VN additions on audible.com, to which
club I¹ve long been a happy subscriber. I must have at least 80 audible.com
audiobooks in my iTunes libraries (Mac, iPod, iPad), including 10 rare hours
of Richard Feynman¹s CalTech lectures recorded live in the 60s and neatly
digitized (the Bronx sound of NOOTON¹s Laws is a counter-example to those
who associate lowly¹ accents with ignorance.)
By paying a modest optional fee, I get two free¹ downloads each month. 26
hours of Ulysses (with all the right accents) for a snip highly
recommended. I¹m now waiting impatiently for 13th December when I can grab
my pre-paid¹ pair ... but, which two to pick first from the new VN
cornucopia? I¹ll resist the natural temptation to go for the most expensive
(which maximizes the value of the fixed-price deal). They are all
unabridged¹ (much relief!), which is a prime criterion. Audible lets you
play a sample before purchase This is vital since the choice of narrator can
mar or enhance the greatest of texts.
The only VN work available on audible.com until recently was Lolita,
brilliantly read by Jeremy Irons (matching his film role as HH, with
plaudits on the VN-list from DN).
Here came a tiny rub: I already had this audio Lolita on cassette. Had I
owned the CD set, transfer to iTunes would have been trivial but tiresome*.
I have the gadgets and software to copy from cassette-to-disk, but it¹s
quite a chore. So foutre la dépense, Marie (give the cat another goldfish),
I bought the simple audible.com download.
All of which, incidentally, adds a fresh nuance to the Nabokovian re-read¹
mandate. Nothing can replace my cosseted printed VN books, which I read and
re-read to myself (with perfect intonation, of course), fascinated by
texture of words and feel of paper. With VN also available in audio and
film, we can now supplement our instruction re-listening and re-viewing (not
to be confused with reviewing?)
Corresponding to printed typos,¹ we have what I¹ve dubbed (in Unix Review)
misspoken soundos.¹ (These are especially annoying in recorded mathematical
and scientific texts: we hear Polkinghorne¹s narrator speaking of
a-particles (the page has alpha-particles) and the Greek letter nu (for
frequency) comes out as vee.¹ Einstein¹s coordinate, x-prime, is pronounced
x to the one.¹)
After audible.com¹s Lolita came their Enchanter (historical reversal!),
which for diverse reasons, including the choice of narrator, I declined, or
rather postponed. For my next downloads, I¹m inclined to Invitation to a
Beheading and the generous collection of
Stories.
* Many older audio CDs lack proper transferable
title/author/genre/track-chapter-tags. These have to be edited manually
before matching the iTunes searching methods and sorting sequences. You can
find Track 10¹ sorting lexicographically before Track 2¹, adding an
unwanted random modernism to 19th century novels. I once heard Darcy
marrying Elizabeth before they had been introduced. Discuss: which of VN¹s
works would survive similar stochastic shufflings, beyond, of course, those
performed by VN on his pack of cards.
> Stan Kelly-Bootle. Oswestry, Salopia, UK
>
> On 04/12/2010 17:24, "sandy klein" <spklein52@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/12/nabokov-on-audiobook.html
>
> A COMMON READER <http://bookcents.blogspot.com/>
> INDIFFERENCE, THE ORGANISM'S LAST SELF-PRESERVATIVE REACTION, HAS BECOME OUR
> DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC.
>
> - ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN
>
> FRIDAY, DECEMBER 03, 2010
> Nabokov on audiobook
> Having run through most of what our local library had available in audiobooks,
> I took the plunge and joined Audible.com <http://Audible.com> . So now I'm
> like a kid in the candystore...I want this. And this. And all of that. Like
> Earl in the movie Diner, I feel like ordering the entire left side of the
> menu.
>
> I noticed earlier this week that several additional works by Vladimir Nabokov
> have been added just in the past month: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov,
> Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Invitation to a Beheading, Bend
> Sinister, and Mary. I wanted to pass this on to those that enjoy
> audiobooks--some of these are available outside of Audible.com
> <http://Audible.com> while others will be released later this month.
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