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Underground > Creation >

Reading Charles Fort's Book of the Damned

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

22:48 / 18.05.06

Recently started volunteering for Librivox, a public-domain book-reading project, and decided to take on the monolithic Book Of The Damned by Charles Fort, the original Mystery Archaeologist.

Thought some of you might like to hear it... it's longish (35 minutes and change), but interesting stuff. And, since it's public domain, it's available for any collaborative monkeying anyone might want to do to it. Librivox prefers its projects "naked," but some enterprising trance/IDM musician could probably map it onto an interesting soundscape.

My reading is pretty rough, but I imagine it'll get better in subsequent chapters.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

23:54 / 18.05.06

Uh... it'd help if I added a link, I suppose.

Doy.

Chiropteran

00:05 / 19.05.06

...some enterprising trance/IDM musician could probably map it onto an interesting soundscape.

I'm so there.

(!!!)

Korso Jerusalem

00:51 / 19.05.06

That sounds so samplable. I could see the Canadian Boards or maybe Aphex Twin messing about with something like this.

I'll listen to it for its literary merits another time this week. We need more Forts in the world.

Ticker

19:08 / 19.05.06

holy crap that's awesome!

I'll give it to my back room crazy sample junkies.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

04:21 / 12.06.06

Shifted files, added more... good God, some of these chapters are long. I'm not thrilled with my reading all the time, but given the bulk of the chapters, just getting through this will be an accomplishment.

deadfunny.com/Librivox/bookdamned_01_fort.mp3
deadfunny.com/Librivox/bookdamned_02_fort.mp3
deadfunny.com/Librivox/bookdamned_03_fort.mp3
deadfunny.com/Librivox/bookdamned_04_fort.mp3

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

13:11 / 25.10.06

UPDATE OCTOBER 24, 2006: three more chapters online:

Chapter Five,
Chapter Six, and
Chapter Seven.

If anyone is still interested in extracting audio samples from this, or even just providing some interesting aural ambience for the project as a whole, let me know (since it's public domain, you can hack n' slash as much as you like, but credit would be nice if you ever release something).

I'm planning on making a "real" audiobook without the Librivox tags when I'm done, either with found sound or some stumbling ambience. If anyone wants to soundtrack it up a bit, please contact me. This won't be happening for at least another eight months, though.

And Chapter Seven is where things start getting a bit stranger, especially at the end when Fort gets into Genesistrine, his extraplanetary supercontinent that is regularly dumping matter on our humble Earth. Good stuff.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:42 / 25.10.06

Heh. I just downloaded the original text of this amazing book to print out for some light reading.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

14:29 / 31.10.06

Bumping my own thread, which is rather gauche but I'm wondering if people actually like the reading. I'm trying to hit a gonzo note but not TOO gonzo, and hold back a bit so I can get increasingly more frantic as the book progresses.

I'm also worried that taking on all twenty-seven chapters was just stupid, and if this will wind up being so hella boring that I'm just killing weeks in total of my life working on something nobody will ever actually listen to. FORTEAN ANGST.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

14:37 / 31.10.06

I'd rather read it. It gets you funny looks on your morning strolls.

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