Recording the silent P

So, Your Humble Blogger mentioned the possibility that Leave it to Psmith would be a read-aloud book for the household, and indeed it was. And as Gentle Reader Jacob pointed out, Leave it to Psmith is no longer under copyright protection, which means that I can, in theory, broadcast a recording of myself reading it aloud to my household.

And so I shall. Not immediately—there is one section that I evidently didn't save the file for, and a couple of other bits and bobs of things to be done, and with one thing and another I certainly wouldn't expect to post anything within a week at the very least, and probably more like a month. But it will happen.

I do have a few comments and questions before I begin posting the files, though. I have never done anything like this before, here on this Tohu Bohu or elsewhere, and I don’t listen to podcasts or any such things myself, so I don’t know how people who might be interested in listening to this guff would prefer to scarf up the digital decibels. I don’t even have a sense of what the options are. So the question: how should I post this stuff? It’s about eight and a half hours, altogether, currently broken in to some forty-odd files of varying lengths, from entire chapters of twenty minutes or so to individual parts of a few pages and a few minutes in length.

The book itself has fourteen chapters, which are mostly divided into smaller sections. I could give each chapter an individual post, including a single file of the entire chapter (of however many sections). Some of those would be very long files—the first chapter is almost an hour in itself, and I think there are other chapters that would be longer than that. Or I could give each chapter a post, including between one and six files for each section, depending of course on how many sections that chapter has. That would make a lot of sense to me, but would mean extra clicking for y’all. I suppose I could do both within the post, and y’all could choose. Or I could just post each section in their own individual posts, since it’s not as if it costs more to add a few more posts. Or I could presumably sling up the whole thing as a single post, with links to all the files for y’all to download as you like. Or I could do it as eight more-or-less hour long chunks, ready to be burned to CD and played in a car that has a CD-player, like mine does. What would y’all like?

Alternately—Is this the right place for sharing this? Is there some other platform that would be more convenient, or just generally better? I wouldn’t object to

As for the recordings themselves—I want to emphasize that these are not professional recordings. It’s me, reading to my family, but with a microphone. I didn’t do second-takes. If I stumble over a passage, it’s in the recording. If I crack up, it’s in the recording. If someone else in the room laughs, it’s in the recording. If the Youngest Member asks a question, or the Perfect Non-Reader of this blog expostulates, it’s probably audible in the background, and if I respond, I haven’t edited it out. I didn’t do a lot of that, but it’s there. I don’t want anyone to start listening under the impression it’s a flawless recording that is ready to go up on Audible. I think it’s a good reading, and a lot of fun, and I think the voices largely come off pretty well, albeit some are better than others, but it’s just a guy reading to his household.

If y’all want the real YHB household experience, I’d post in chunks of about twenty minutes or so, five or six evenings a week, lasting about a month or so. And there would be tea, of course.

For what it’s worth, here’s an outtake, or a preview, or something like that.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.