I recently finished listening to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, from Librivox. It was far better than other things I’ve tried to listen to from there for one simple reason. One person recorded the entire thing. With all the others I’ve listened to, every chapter was a different voice, which was hugely distracting.

Also very distracting is that every chapter begins with “This is a librivox recording. All librivox recordings are in the public domain. Blah blah blah. Blah blah.” This goes on for roughly 20 seconds at the beginning of every chapter. It is an unwelcome interruption.

But this one was pretty good. The reader had an annoying habit of mumbling over norman (french) names that he didn’t know how to pronounce. And he frequently butchered English coloquiallisms, too. The bulk of the reading, however, was really very good, and conveyed this great story very effectively.

The biggest thing lacking with Librivox at the moment is their selection, which is very sparse. But they’ll get there eventually.