Hear, hear

While I have doubted the necessity of eBooks, I do like earBooks. To tempt me further, Naxos Audiobooks has launched a Download Shop with some promising titles: Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Kafka's Metamorphosis. The audio sample of the former, however, is very disappointing as it offers not one word from the text itself. And the blog doesn't have an RSS feed!

While audiobooks seem to be aimed at people who can't be bothered to read, some works demand to be uttered. Poetry is an obvious case. But novels like Ulysses are transformed with the right voice. And though Irish too, Beckett's Molloy and Malone Dies have an irresistible verbal momentum irrespective of accent. I've yet to hear The Unnamable, the most utterable of all (another one for the wishlist). It's unlikely, I know, but I'd like to see Naxos follow Germany's fine taste in offering audiobooks of Josipovici's novels. Everything Passes would be terrifyingly good with the music that inspired it.

To mark the opening of the shop, you can download a free copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales (and though it's in the Children's section, some believe they shouldn't be so isolated).

UPDATE: the blog now has an RSS feed!