Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel Always Coming Home was originally published with a cassette tape, Music and Poetry of the Kesh, music by Oregon Shakespeare Festival Resident Composer Todd Barton, words by Ursula K. Le Guin, who performs many of the selections.
Book View Café offers Music and Poetry of the Kesh as a ZIPfile of MP3s, plus an ebook of the liner notes, including lyrics and translations, in MOBI/Kindle and EPUB form.
Free sample: Heron Dance
Free sample: Twilight Song
Buy Music and Poetry of the Kesh at the Book View Café Ebookstore.
REVIEWS:
“Reading Always Coming Home is an act of discovery…. Everything Le Guin does is interesting, believable and exquisitely detailed.”—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“An appealing book as well as a masterly one…. The future world she has created here is awesomely complex.”—Newsweek
Is that really UKL’s voice? It sounds so young. Are there audiobooks where she reads her own works? (Without music, please. I don’t like music).
She recorded Kesh Poetry in 1985, so your observation is accurate.
Her website includes a sampling of her reading her work:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/MenuContentsList.html#Audio-Video
and the blog here has a podcast of “City of the Plain” from The Wild Girls:
https://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2011/05/02/ursula-k-le-guin-reads-city-of-the-plain/
Catwings is available as an audiobook, read by Ursula. Here’s a sample:
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/MP3s/Catwings01.html
Here’s a link to the audiobooks site:
http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com/audio-books-narrator/Ursula+Le+Guin/nrt/16369/
Thank you so much! I’m usually afraid of listening to English (a language I mostly know in its written form, like Latin) but I’ll give the samples a try.
I love Ursula’s work. I lived in Astoria. OR, at the time she brought out Lavinia. I just missed meeting her at Godfather’s Books in Astoria when she was there signing copies. I came in the following week and was able to buy a signed copy.
Always Coming Home is one of my favorites. I have the audiotape that came with it, but audiotapes don’t last.
We are opposites in a way. I love music but get only slight pleasure from poetry. My great-aunt Marie was like you in that respect; she didn’t like music at all. We are all pure types.
Best regards,
Ian Elliott
Pingback: Celebrating Ursula K. Le Guin | Book View Cafe Blog
Pingback: Is Google Knowledge? Is a Library? | Emerging Technologies Librarian