Arts Podcasts
Librivox: Death Be Not Proud by Donne, JohnJoin Now to Follow
This week we’re marking the American Memorial Day with eleven readings of a John Donne poem. Memorial Day was conceived as a time to remember military men and women who had lost their lives in war. Kings and presidents come and go and some of the reasons that wars have come about are now lost from memory or are obscured in our history texts. A consistent aspect of war is that those who fight them are not those who arrange them. The soldiers and sailors who suffer loss of limb, scarred minds or forfeit their lives mostly come from the lower and middle rungs of our societal ladder. They are our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Once gone, it is the family who notices the empty chair at the family table while society at large knows not their name. Death has captured them and taken them forever from our midst. It has become personal and not a vague philosophical idea. The theme of Donne’s poem is that, though Death is irresistible, it has no cause to be proud. The human spirit and its hope for redemption is indomitable. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of May 27th, 2006. (Summary by Robert Garrison)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Zapiski iz podpolya (Notes from the Underground) by Dostoyevsky, FyodorJoin Now to Follow
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a sophisticated novell with extremely hard to comprehend philosophical ideas lying on the border of paranoia, orthodoxal believing of God and psychological researches on human nature. Every sentence sounds like a sort of revelation to an unprepared reader’s mind and causes a deep flashback thoughts which are impossible to get rid of, which also require an immediate solution. Though it’s hard to define precisely what kind of content presented in novell but one can say it is a sort of impossible mixture of traditional Dostoevsky’s ideas of loneliness, ideas of internal human confilct, ideas of freedom and interhuman relationship. Reader keeps interest to the story in all time whilst he reads it. Such an effect is achieved by author’s methodical strikes right into reader’s head, so when you read a novell you have an extremely real experience of YOU being THERE, of you experiencing all that awe of facing loneliness and society exile. All that Dostoevsky literator’s power teleports you right into that underground, right into that dirty yellow (when you read Dostoevsky’s book you realize that yellow is a color neither of sun nor of life nor whatever, but it is a color of decay, corruption and something hectic) underground of poor Saint Petersburg’s borough. And you feel like that underground trying to kill you, trying to eliminate of your individuality and make your soul look like a sort of madness, like all that dirty corners and floors of that dirty yellow room. You can feel like you became totaly crazy with that hero’s feelings and thoughts, and you even may not imagine the level of feeling of threaten you can experience… But while you read the story you should better hold at least a tiny thread to reality in order to realize that you are not in a lunatic asylum yet. If you are not so much frightened you may be encouraged to make a trip to that world of Dostoevsky’s St. Peterburg and encounter with an entire human catastrophe by reading a book or listening to it. (Summary by Yakovlev Valery)
By LibriVox
Librivox: Embankment at Night, before the War: Outcasts by Lawrence, D. H.Join Now to Follow
This was the Weekly Poem for 20 May 2006. We stretched our poetry-reading muscles with five versions of this much longer selection than usual (some 96 lines), in which D.H. Lawrence evokes a gritty yet sensitive picture of urban poverty before the First World War. (Summary by LauraFox)
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Librivox: Daddy-Long-Legs by Webster, JeanJoin Now to Follow
Daddy Long-Legs is a 1912 novel by an American writer Jean Webster, written in the form of letters. It follows the protagonist, a young girl named Jerusha “Judy” Abbott, through her college years. She writes the letters to her benefactor, a rich man whom she has never seen. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Librivox: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by Baum, L. FrankJoin Now to Follow
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz was the fourth of 14 Oz books written by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919). Published in 1908, while Baum was resident in Coronado, California, it is considered one of the “darker” of the Oz tales. However, it also is enlivened by Baum’s considerable wit, penchant for puns, and dry social commentary. In this title, Dorothy, her kitten Eureka, Jim, a cab horse, and Zeb, a ranch hand, descend into the earth through a rift opened by an earthquake. There they encounter the “humbug” wizard who once ruled Oz. In their journey back to the earth’s surface, they meet a number of potentially dangerous magical peoples and creatures including the cold-blooded Mangaboos, invisible bears, the flying wooden Gargoyles, a den of dragonettes, and an eccentric inventor. With a little help from Ozma, the group end up in Oz where they are treated to feasts and celebrations. The animals end up humbled by a few of their experiences in Oz, where all animals can talk, and return home a little wiser. (Summary by Judy Bieber)
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Librivox: Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by Defoe, DanielJoin Now to Follow
Adaptation of the story of Robinson Crusoe for grammar school children. Tells how the shipwrecked sailor makes a new life for himself on the island, providing shelter, food, and clothing for himself from the few tools he rescued from the ship and what he is able to find on the island. He lives on the island over twenty years before he is finally rescued and during that time must re-invent almost everything necessary for daily sustenance. (Summary from The Baldwin Project.)
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Librivox: Fables for the Frivolous by Carryl, Guy WetmoreJoin Now to Follow
One of the earliest works by the American parodist, Guy Wetmore Carryl, these fables are adapted from Jean de La Fontaine’s original writings. The fables are written in verse, and are light-hearted re-tellings of fables from two centuries before, each ending with a moral and a pun. Among the more celebrated of the fables are The Persevering Tortoise and the Pretentious Hare, The Arrogant Frog and the Superior Bull, and The Sycophantic Fox and the Gullible Raven. (Summary written by Chriss)
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Librivox: Euthyphro by PlatoJoin Now to Follow
Awaiting his trial on charges of impiety and heresy, Socrates encounters Euthyphro, a self-proclaimed authority on matters of piety and the will of the gods. Socrates, desiring instruction in these matters, converses with Euthyphro, but as usual, the man who professes to know nothing fares better than the man who claims to be an expert. One of Plato’s well-known Socratic Dialogues, Euthyphro probes the nature of piety, and notably poses the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma: Do the gods love a thing because it is holy, or is a thing holy because it is loved by the gods? (Summary by LauraFox)
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Librivox: Warden, The by Trollope, AnthonyJoin Now to Follow
Amongst the great popular novelists of the nineteenth century who are still read today, Anthony Trollope stands alongside his contemporary, Charles Dickens. His two series of novels, the political (The Pallisers) and the clerical (The Barsetshire Chronicles) are the best known. This book is the first of the Barsetshire series and was also Trollope’s first really successful novel. In the mid nineteenth century there were a number of financial scandals in the Church of England including those of Rochester, where the endowments which should have supported the King’s School Canterbury had been diverted to the Dean and Chapter; and of the hospital of St Cross at Winchester where the Rev. Francis North, later the Earl of Guildford, had been appointed to the mastership of the hospital by his father the bishop. The revenues of the hospital were very considerable, the work involved minimal. The scandal soon broke. Trollope based ‘The Warden’ on the St Cross case, but in the novel the Warden is a kindly, devoted, priest, beloved by all that knew him and is racked by fear that he is accepting money to which he is not entitled. His antagonist is his prospective son-in-law John Bold and his (somewhat unwelcome) ally is one of Trollope’s strongest characters, the Archdeacon of Barchester, Dr. Theophilus Grantly. (summary by Andy Minter)
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Librivox: Spy, The by Cooper, James FenimoreJoin Now to Follow
James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, The Spy (1821), is based on Sir Walter Scott's Waverly series, and tells an adventure tale about the American Revolution. The protagonist is Harvey Birch, a supposed loyalist who actually is a spy for George Washington, disguised as 'Mr Harper.' The book brought Cooper fame and wealth, and is regarded as the first great success in American fiction. (Summary by Gord MacKenzie)
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