Spencer Baum's self-published first novel One Fall explores the world of professional wrestling through the eyes of an up-and-coming star, a taken-for-granted women's division wrestler, a head booker with no authority, and an internet fanboy, all trying to navigate the line between fiction and nonfiction. Baum is now releasing the novel one chapter at a time as a Creative Commons audiobook. The book closely parallels the Monday Night Wars, with sly references to infamous reality-blurring events like the Montreal Screwjob (the subject of an excellent National Film Board documentary you can now watch online) and Bash at the Beach 2000. (mild spoiler inside) [more inside]
posted by roll truck roll on Nov 5, 2009 - 3 comments

One day ago, Neil Gaiman wrote the beginning of a story, which was retweeted by BBC Audiobooks America as the first of a thousand or so tweets that would compiled and edited to become an audiobook. People are still contributing, and BBCAA's blog has four scenes compiled (1, 2, 3, summary of scenes 1-3, and 4), for a total of 175 tweets. When 1,000 or so tweets are logged, they'll be edited into a script, and produced in a studio to make the final audiobook, which will be released for free on BBCAA's website. This isn't the first game of exquisite corpse played via twitter that made a piece to be refined and presented in some way. The first Twitter opera was one of a few recent "gimmicks" to garner attention for the Royal Opera House (twitter opera feed, ROH twitter feed, ROH blog). The result, Twitterdammerung, was given a decent review by opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic.
posted by filthy light thief on Oct 14, 2009 - 32 comments

The awesome Michael Palin, who's comedy group used to gently mock Biggles adventure stories back in the Python days, has been reading a 1940's Biggles adventure book "Biggles Flies North", on BBC Radio 7. It's available worldwide via BBC iPlayer, five episodes available as I post, but episode one expires today, so there's no time to waste. [more inside]
posted by w0mbat on Aug 2, 2009 - 32 comments

The Brazen Android by William Douglas O'Connor, is a 19th century science fiction story based on the myth of the Brazen Head, a steam-powered head that told fortunes. It's available as an audio book from the Internet Archives. (Via)
posted by The Whelk on May 19, 2009 - 18 comments

Shit's gettin' way too complicated for me 1. Barack Obama puts some salty language (in quotations attributed to others) in his memoir Dreams of My Father. 2. Obama reads the audiobook himself. 3. Obama gets elected President. 4. Blogger posts remix-ready clips of POTUS profanity online. I can't wait to see what teh intertubes make of this.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Feb 5, 2009 - 79 comments

MeFite John Hodgman's latest book, The Areas of My Expertise, is free through iTunes today.
posted by keswick on Dec 19, 2006 - 76 comments

LibriVox is out to share public domain literature via podcast and soundfiles. Free. Volunteers do the reading. The catalog has only a short list of completed works, but there are many "in progress." I was pleased to see Psmith in the City is complete.
posted by mmahaffie on Dec 27, 2005 - 14 comments

Telltale Weekly launched today. It's public domain meets Creative Commons meets Ogg Vorbis. Their mission is to build a free audiobook library of public domain texts. Four are available now, but Twain, Chekov Doctorow (Corry, not E.L.) and more are on the way.
posted by turbodog on Feb 27, 2004 - 7 comments