9781504743938
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The Untold Story of the Talking Book audiobook

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The Untold Story of the Talking Book Audiobook Summary

Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account is nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry.

The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books–yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert–to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment.

We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read.

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The Untold Story of the Talking Book Audiobook Narrator

Jim Denison is the narrator of The Untold Story of the Talking Book audiobook that was written by Matthew Rubery

Jim Denison is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and a Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS) Voice Arts Award nominee. He has experience as an actor on a variety of television shows and movies, appearing on Netflix, HBO, the National Geographic Channel, Investigation Discovery, and other networks, as well as appearances and voice-overs in regional and national television and radio ads.

A Florida native, he has worked and traveled in many locations within the United States and abroad. For five years he hosted religious programs broadcast from several Caribbean radio stations. He changed careers to voice-over and audiobook narration after forty years of working with Christian churches in Florida, Texas, Trinidad and Tobago, Alabama, South Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky. Jim and his wife of over thirty-five years, Renee, currently reside in southern Indiana near Louisville, Kentucky. They have two grown daughters. He holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate.

About the Author(s) of The Untold Story of the Talking Book

Matthew Rubery is the author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book

The Untold Story of the Talking Book Full Details

Narrator Jim Denison
Length 11 hours 31 minutes
Author Matthew Rubery
Category
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Release date May 05, 2024
ISBN 9781504743938

Subjects

The publisher of the The Untold Story of the Talking Book is Blackstone Publishing. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Books & Reading, Literary Criticism

Additional info

The publisher of the The Untold Story of the Talking Book is Blackstone Publishing. The imprint is Blackstone Publishing. It is supplied by Blackstone Publishing. The ISBN-13 is 9781504743938.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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