LitReading - Classic Short Stories
Summary: Humans have shared short stories for millennia. For most of that time, telling tales was a verbal process. A storyteller would regale an audience with accounts of adventure, bravery, compassion, despair, enlightenment, and fear. Stories were a shared experience, until the advent of inexpensive mass-printing processes in the 19th century which allowed most of us to read to ourselves. Yet, that desire to have a short story read aloud is still ingrained in our collective soul. While we still read books for pleasure, most of today’s stories are told via newer forms of visual media like movies and television. Consuming stories via any visual medium requires an active commitment to the process. You probably shouldn’t read a book or watch a TV program while driving, but your brain still craves a good story. Audiobooks are suitable for long road trips. But what about those times when you only have a few minutes? Enter narrated short stories. Spoken short stories are quick, satisfying snack, while an audiobook is a seven-course meal. Allow me to help you fill those moments and fulfill your need for a captivating tale with my renditions of some of the world’s greatest literary masters best short stories. My love of the spoken word has been honed by a more than 30-year career in radio and voice acting with a modicum of performance passion from decades of stage performances. This venture is my hobby (I have a great full-time job), so all of the content is free of cost and commercials. I hope you enjoy them. If you have a public domain short story you would like me to read or would like to share thoughts or comments, please drop me a line. If you enjoy these short stories, please spread the word, subscribe, and leave a review on your favorite podcast service. Thanks for stopping by, Don McDonald
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- Artist: Don McDonald
- Copyright: Performance © 2019 Don McDonald
Podcasts:
Here is the second half of Kahlil Gibran's global bestselling book with sage advice on pain and pleasure, good and evil, and the inevitability of death.
For almost a century, the profound words of The Prophet have stirred the hearts and moved the souls of millions of readers around the world.
The end of the old year and the start of the new has traditionally been seen as an opportunity to start fresh by setting aside old grievances and moving forward with a clean slate.
You've heard it a dozen times, so why not one more. Here's a Visit from St. Nicholas, was it penned by Clement Moore?
Santa and his friends face the most challenging Christmas in their long history as Santa is kidnapped.
When a bad harvest on the Canadian prairie means no Christmas for her cousins, a young woman does the only thing she can to rescue their holiday.
When does the end justify the means and who gets to decide? One person's definition of morality may not be shared by others.
Loneliness is painful enough under normal circumstances, but social rejection in the face of a personal crisis can be devastating.
Money has the power to take us away, if only temporarily, from the dull routines of life. However, there is always a price to pay for our fiscal flights of fancy and real life eventually hoists its humdrum head again.
In the 19th Century particularly, good boys are supposed to enjoy the fruits of the righteousness, and bad boys were destined for eternal damnation, at least according to Sunday School books, but according to Mark Twain, life often contradicted expectation.
Somewhere there’s a great story for almost every holiday, even the decidedly American tradition of Thanksgiving and who better to tell such a story than one of America’s finest authors, O. Henry.
Pride does seem to go before a fall… In this very short story a young man’s life unravels thanks to a small vanity-induced dissimulation.
Humans are rarely content with their lot in life. We long for something more and, all too often believe that, given the right opportunity, our lives can be made better in an instant through some fortunate event, like winning a lottery.
As Halloween approaches, here is a bonus scary Litreading from one of my favorite authors. It’s the story of a mysterious death in the 19th-century American wilderness.
This special short, short story centers on a different kind of haunting, not from without, but from within. The darkness that comes from a profound loneliness that quietly haunts the souls of many.
