Reading Stories For A Friend

May 08, 2009 03:10 PM Filed in: Now Playing
MoonlightNVines1
My friend V up in The Netherlands has become a big Charles de Lint fan over the winter. He’s a very inventive writer from Ottawa, Ontario and a longtime favorite of mine. For the past few months V and I have been reading books together and talking about them, and it’s been a lot of fun. We’ve read some good stuff. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell I think was our first, a wonderful cross of sorts between a bit of Harry Potter magical humor and a Jane Austen book of manners and social intrigue. I loved it. And we’ve read Cloud Of Sparrows and The Shadow Of The Wind, both of which were excellent and a lot of fun. The Shadow of The Wind in particular I liked because it felt a bit like something Victor Borges or Umberto Ecco might have penned, but with a good dash of Jane Eyre added to it. Real Gothic Romance fun! We just finished de Lint’s Moonheart, and V also read two more of de Lint’s short story collections, Dreams Underfoot and The Ivory And Horn. But there was one Charles de Lint book V wanted to read that she couldn’t find over there anywhere, not even online, Moonlight & Vines.

So after thinking about it for a bit I decided to knock the rust off my vocal cords and do a little audio book recording for my friend over seas. It was fun! All together the stories totaled some 19 hours of reading/recording, so the project kept me out of trouble this winter, and V has enjoyed listening to Charles de Lint’s fey, edgey, and sometimes faery-like tales read out loud.

MoonlightNVines2


Crow Girls (57 minutes)


Heartfires (40 minutes)


Twa Corbies (32 minutes)



On the off chance that someone out there might be a potential Charles de Lint fan if you only knew what you were missing, or perhaps some of you out there are just bored and could use a good story or two to pass the time, here are three of the twenty-two stories I recorded for V this winter. Be patient, the audio files are a bit large. Oh, and I won’t be winning ‘Narrator Of The Year’ anytime soon or be getting any Grammies, Jim Dale I am not! Besides, living with two sometimes rambunctious cats, you never know what you might be hearing in the background. LOL! But if you lower your standards a bit you might at least enjoy a few of these stories and perhaps find a new author to read and follow. One can only hope!

Cheers,
JB