Audio Books: a booming sector

The arrival a few days ago of the music streaming platform Spotify on the audiobook market previously dominated by Audible demonstrates the significant growth in this sector. This digital or physical format allows readers to transform their practice and listen to Books while doing other activities, but also to rediscover certain texts in a different way… The opportunity to find out more about this practice , while today there are 20,000 titles available to listen to in France. But as sociologist Claire Ducournau points out, the audio book, although booming, is not so new:

“There is some excellent work on this issue that has been done by reading historians. Matthew Rubery in the UK has done a fascinating book on the history of the audio book and he believes that the first forms appear with Thomas Edison from the invention of the phonograph at the end of the 19th century which allows the voice to be reproduced. Then the audio book followed technical developments and therefore different media which have succeeded one another over time: the vinyl record, the cassette,. the CD and now the dematerialized MP3 formats But afterwards, on the editorial book market itself, it was especially during the 90s that this format was taken into account more systematically.

News of the day:

• The four finalists for the Goncourt Prize have just been announced in Bucharest: Houris by Kamel Daoud (editions Gallimard), Jacaranda by Gaël Faye (published by Grasset), Madelaine before dawn by Sandrine Collette (editions JC Lattès) and Archipelagos by Hélène Gaudy (editions of L’Olivier). The announcement of the final four is now made abroad to highlight the cultural links between France and the chosen country. The name of the winner will be revealed on Monday November 4 at the Drouant restaurant in Paris.

• Actress Christine Boisson died yesterday at the age of 68. It was revealed by the famous film Emmanuellein which she played the role of Marie-Ange. She then joined the Conservatory and continued her career in front of the camera of Philippe Garrel, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Being offered too many bare roles, she then turned to the theater, playing the greatest texts, from Musset to Chekhov, via Tennessee Williams.

• A platform has just appeared in the newspaper Le Monde signed by Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis and Arnaud Desplechein, who calls for the construction of a national museum dedicated to cinematographic art. Although France invented cinema with the Lumières Brothers, has more than 6,000 theaters and 800 festivals, it does not have a major museum dedicated to the 7th art. The collections of the Cinémathèque, for lack of an adequate exhibition space, thus lie dormant in crates. For these professionals, this is an error when we know the success achieved by such museums in the United States or Italy.

• The National Gallery in London has taken strong action to combat attacks on works of art. In recent years, several paintings in the institution have been vandalized to highlight different political struggles. Even if these operations are spectacular, the works being protected, they are rarely damaged. Faced with the increase in these acts, the National Gallery has therefore decided to ban the introduction of liquids into the museum since October 18.

• An unpublished text by Bram Stocker, the author of Draculahas just been discovered. Titled Gibbet Hillthis news was found in the archives of the National Library in Dublin. The Irish writer had published this story in a local newspaper in 1890 without it being mentioned in his biographies. The short story, which tells the macabre story of a man who encounters three children in front of a monument to a murdered sailor, was written during the writing of Dracula. It sheds new light on his famous novel and explores his favorite theme: the struggle between good and evil.