Making an audio book recording this weekend

[Mr.Grumpy]

Just thought I'd throw out something a little different from the plethora of "how's my singing?" threads.

My wife's a high school English teacher, and a couple of times I've recorded audiobooks or excerpts of books for her class. I'm assuming this is permitted under 'fair use' copyright interpretation because these recordings are used for EDUCATION. I don't receive any compensation.

This weekend I'm reading excerpts from The Scarlet Letter; it takes place during colonial times and the language used is archaic and flowery. Stuff like this:

Quote

Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous
garb, he had endeavoured to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to
Hester Prynne that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the
first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed
her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of
pain.

Whew! And that's not even a whole paragraph. Thankfully, I'm just reading excerpts and not the whole book, the language and vocabulary is challenging even for me. Most of the prose is narration by the author, but there is some dialogue and that means I have to change my voice to show the reader it's a person talking and not the narrator, so "voice acting" is needed too. 

My vocal booth is a walk-in bedroom closet that's been acoustically treated with my homemade  bass traps, studio foam and recycled couch cushions. I have a large diaphragm condenser mic, a Rode NT-1 and use a Mackie Big Knob recording interface.  I use a desktop PC running 64-bit Windows 7 and edit the audio is edited in either Reaper or Audacity. I can post pictures tomorrow if there's any interest.