I (my Second Life avatar) has been reading sketches and chapters from the works of Mark Twain since March of this year (2011). I don't really know why I started doing this other than to create some interesting content for my web site and to try to come up with some justification for playing around in that virtual realm of Second Life. I've long been a fan of Mark Twain but not a scholar. I must say, however, that with just the small portion I've worked on, my appreciation for his works has increased.

I record the reading sessions and for most I've recorded video of the avatars. I wanted to post the recordings on this site but YouTube will accept only videos. Consequently these recording have been converted into video files. Yes, I know there are other services that will host audio files but they limit storage capacity for freeloaders such as myself. YouTube does not. I had not done any video editing previously so there's been quite a bit of experimentation in whats been posted. For most of the recordings from Roughing It an audio/video file was produced that included footage from the reading in Second Life. I was never very satisfied with the results. The videos are actually very boring. I couldn't do anything with changes in camera angles and shots as I was too busy reading. And, no one volunteered to make a video record of any of the sessions.

For some of the earliest recordings the video produced is actually just a slide show. I created title pages, end pages and sought out copyright free images of Twain and the times and locations he was in while writing. These are better, I think. I started reading from The Innocents Abroad in July but only in the last few days have I published any of the recordings. These are all slide shows with no Second Life footage. I incorporate images from the first edition versions of Twain works. I acquired these through Project Gutenberg. There's been only a few missing but these I scanned directly from The Oxford Mark Twain.

I'm getting a fair amount of traffic to these videos, through this site, from Facebook and Google+ and directly accessed in YouTube. What I'm not getting is comments. I would very much like to hear feedback on these so that perhaps I can improve them. Improve my reading, improve the production of the videos, even add more interesting and significant information to the posts. My publishing has actually fallen way behind the performances. I've finished reading Roughing It, although a few chapters have gotten lost and will need to be re-recorded. I'm currently performing Letters from the Earth at one venue named Winterfell and The Innocents Abroad at another named Fate Gardens. Interspersed throughout are sketches from several different volumes. Some Ambrose Bierce has even crept into the collection.

Talking about additional information, I'm including images of the newspaper columns from the Daily Alta California for the Excursion to the Holy Land. This is the main source of The Innocents Abroad. I have not found a source for text files of these columns except for some excerpts. Oh well, the images are readable.