The unnamed 14th Century mystic urges us to seek God, not through knowledge or work of our mind, but through intense contemplation, motivated by love and stripped of all thought. This is brought about by putting all thoughts and desires under a ‘cloud of forgetting’, and thereby piercing with a ‘dart of longing love’ the cloud of unknowing that lies between us and God.

The Cloud of Unknowing

As Russia goes to war against Japan, Tolstoy urges those at all levels of society, from the Tsar down to the common soldier, to consider their actions in the light of Christ's teaching, “that every man bethink himself, and ask himself, who is he, why he lives, and what he should and should not do."

Bethink Yourselves!

S D Gordon covers some challenging ground concerning prayer, in an accessible way. It’s very much in line with the teaching about prayer that I’m used to, so it was not only a pleasure to record, but pressed home some important points.

Quiet Talks on Prayer

Tolstoy expounds on the doctrine of Christ, and how the teaching of the church has annulled Christ’s commandments and replaced them with dogma. A meaty and powerful work, which would be followed by ‘The Kingdom of God is Within You’.

The recording took me two-and-a-half years from start to finish, but I was determined to complete it.

What I Believe

Here’s a lovely blog post introducing Librivox, and recommending O Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi”. Looks like a great listen for Christmas.

Many thanks to Joni...

These extracts from George Müller’s autobiographies detail his reliance on the Lord to guide and provide for his mission to orphans in Bristol. “I judged myself bound to be the servant of the Church of God, in the particular point on which I had obtained mercy: namely, in being able to take God by His word and to rely upon it.”

Coincidentally, there’s reference to the China Inland Mission and a quote from J Hudson Taylor’s account of the work there.

Clearly there’s a theme developing...

Answers to Prayer, from George Müller’s Narratives

Written by J Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), founder of the China Inland Mission, this is a beautiful interpretation of the Song of Solomon.

Union and Communion, or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon

My first solo audiobook in over 2 years, this was suggested by a listener as a companion volume to the Imitation of Christ.

On Union with God, by Blessed Albert the Great

At the age of thirty, suffering from a severe illness and believing she was on her deathbed, Julian had a series of intense visions...

Revelations of Divine Love

We've at last unveiled the new catalogue database. This makes it easy to keep track of your own projects, to find particular works, even to find all the projects a particular reader has contributed to.

Here's a link to the list of my projects as a reader.

Here's the finished piece!

LibriVox King Lear

It was a tremendous project, brilliantly executed by all the readers (I only read the stage directions), and completed in record time. It was only when cataloguing it that I realised it was the first group recording of Shakespeare to be completed on LV.

Spurred on by hearing in Andrew Marr's 'Start the Week' on Radio 4 yesterday morning, that King Lear was first performed on Dec 26th (the Feast of Saint Stephen, now of course Boxing Day) 1606, I thought what a great idea it would be to have a LibriVox recording of the play ready to release on Boxing Day.

Mad though it is is to even try to get people to give up time in the week before Christmas to record the parts, and for me to have time to edit it all together and catalogue it, we are giving it a try. Less than 36 hours after the idea, we're now more or less fully cast. Watch this space!

Someone's put CDs (both audio and mp3) of LibriVox recordings for sale on ebay. It's fine as a service for those who can't access the files online, and something LV itself decided not to get involved in. And he does make it clear they are LV recordings; he credits the readers, states they're public domain recordings, and has apparently left the LV disclaimer etc. in the recordings.

It was good to catalogue Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis', a recording I was really pretty pleased with. Three fairly long recording sessions, and an overdue re-acquaintance with the work. The translation is by Ian Johnstone, available at www.kafka.org

It's been several months in the making, but I've at last completed the solo recording of Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ

Well, after 5 months of effort - mostly on the part of our Chinese readers - the LibriVox project to record an audiobook of Three Hundred Tang Poems, Volume 1 唐诗三百首，卷一 is complete.

See the LibriVox catalogue page for this project.

Recordings are in Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien and Taiwanese. Each recording is an individual mp3 file, so they can be linked to individually.

We're working on Volume 2, and welcome any volunteers who can help!