Reagrding the 70-hour unabridged War and Peace audiobook I posted about back in December, the Washington Post has a short profile of the audiobook's reader, Neville Jason. "But if the world has ever been ready for nearly three straight days of recorded Tolstoy it's ready now. A few years ago, publishers had to beg retailers to stock audiobooks longer than three CDs. Now, that's considered an ear snack. Unabridged is king. And abridged isn't just on the wane. It's basically stigmatized." (thx, mr. d)
John Hodgman reports that the audiobook for The Areas of My Expertise is available for free at the iTunes Music Store.
Update: From what I can tell from the first 3:34, THIS IS THE WORLD"S BEST AUDIOBOOK!1!!
LibriVox provides free audiobooks of works in the public domain. Includes Robinson Crusoe, Call of the Wild, Treasure Island, and Pride and Prejudice.
How do audiobook producers deal with things like footnotes, photos, interesting punctuation, and the like? "The voice manipulation, for which audiobook producer John Runnette used a 'phone filter' -- a voice-through-the-receiver effect used in radio dramas -- was an attempt to aurally convey Mr. Wallace's discursive, densely footnoted prose." Includes sample audio with examples. (thx, bill)
