Audio book of the month?

[RobAnt]

Reading through the Reading and Writing forum, I note they have book of the month recommendations. How about something similar here, for those of us that are only learning to speak the language at the moment.

For those that can't read English, many books are read aloud, recorded (sometimes abridged) and sold. Are there any such Chinese publications?

Where might I order them?

I'm an absolute beginner - still at the "Janet & John" stage of learning to speak Putonghua. What would be your recommendations?

Of course, these type of books are unlikely to give you speaking practice, but immersion in the language, even at a rudimentary level, must be helpful.

[roddy]

I'd mentioned this to Wushijiao as a suggestion for next months Book of the Month selection. Audio books are available. If you search on VeryCD.com you can find 活着, 骆驼祥子 and 围城 among others.

Roddy

[Song You Shen]

i would also be interested in finding a few audio-books to listen to while in the car for my 3 hours of commute!

Youshen

[stephanhodges]

Can you suggest one or two that have the simplest vocabulary/grammar?

[rose~]

I bought the audiobook of 長[pop=hates/hèn]恨[/pop][pop=song/gē]歌[/pop] by [pop=Wang An/wáng ān]王安[/pop]憶, but I was really disappointed when I listened to it as it is not the original text being read out at all, but a kind of summary of it. My original idea was to listen and read at the same time, as that is one of the best ways to improve your reading, like when you are a child, your parents read to you and that is how you learn to read.

The audiobook I bought can be seen here, but I didn't download it, I paid 150 yuan for it in the [pop=Shanghai/shànghǎi]上海[/pop][pop=book/shū]书[/pop][pop=city/chéng]城[/pop]...

I saw in another thread that audiobooks were found here:http://www.cnr.cn/library/lbbqtj/. (thread).

Was I just unlucky with 長恨歌, and the other audiobooks do actually read out the text?

[carlo]

Yes there are audio books with the full text of novels etc. I have a couple of novels by 海岩, a contemporary author, you can listen to a chapter a day (one chapter is maybe 30-40 minutes). I bought a collection of complete readings of short stories in Shanghai last year, I think it was in the Foreign Language Bookstore on Fuzhou Lu (?), 5 CDs with 40+ 短篇小说, very nice.

[rose~]

Thanks. So the audio books everyone else has follow the text so you could read and listen at the same time?

[tianjinpete]

There's a variety of full-length audio books (mp3) here:

http://mmmppp333.com/

I'm listening to 平凡的世界 ... I found the text by searching baidu.com ...

[rose~]

hey, that's cool, thanks.

I also found that the audiobook version of 長恨歌 from verycd does actually follow the text. Now what to do with those CDs I paid 159 yuan for?!

[wushijiao]

Another thing that is worth checking out is www.listenworld.com

This site has tons of novels, books, lectures...etc.

[tianjinpete]

And www.audio-books.cn ... Rose might be able to find her trashy novel here, but it looks like you have to pay to download ...

[self-taught-mba]

My original idea was to listen and read at the same time, as that is one of the best ways to improve your reading, like when you are a child, your parents read to you and that is how you learn to read.

Try this tool: Speech Chinese Version: 3.0

Not as good as humans because of stress issues but good for your purpose

[chaxiu]

Found this in another forum, might be an easy book to start with

The Little Prince in Mandarin book+audio

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18250&KW=little+prince

The audio seems pretty good.

Chaxiu