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April 18, 2008
Audio Drama
I am illiterate.
I've never been able to read well and even at 30 years old I can still count the number of fiction books I've read (front-to-back) on my fingers and a couple toes. For some reason I've always felt a little sensitive about this, the printed word being the primary medium for all things highbrow. The truth is, though, is that just about every story I've ever absorbed has been via audio book.
In addition to feeling inherently unintelligent for "resorting" to books-on-cd, I've had to live with two major restrictions: first, audio books are expensive 5-10 times as much as paperback and second, publishers only hire actors to do audio books if they know they'll sell. I like John Grisham and the like, but obscure, cool stuff never makes it into sound files. limiting my literary experience.
I was reading a friend's blog today and noticed that she said something about her old friends moving into radio drama as a creative endeavor. I was intrigued.
While I'm much too young to have ever experienced real radio drama, I vividly remember having books with a read-a-long tape as a kid. These were much like radio drama and tended to have multiple voice actors and some primitive background noises. I simply loved these things. Audio books, generally having only one reader and no accompanying sounds are just not the same.
Recently, my mother-in-law discovered one of these read-a-longs (on vinyl, no less) featuring Wonder Woman. My daughter seems to like them too and I've been feeling a bit nostalgic. When Muriel mentioned active development of radio drama, I immediately felt excited and stupid (of course they do radio drama, jackass, it's the iPod age).
I started searching out some audio drama and found a huge amount of content available. Here are some links for some stuff that looks promising. Finally! Obscure pulp stories for those of us who can't read.
Dramapod
Darker Projects
Podiobooks.com
Oh, and you'll know it's time to turn the page when you hear this sound.
Posted by james at 09:32 PM | Comments (2)