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:
As Halloween approaches, our tales of horror grow more grisly with a classic scary story, The Black Cat by one of America’s greatest devisers of dread, Edgar Allan Poe
Ghost stories have been told around the world and often based on mythical creatures or spirits. Those living in the cold, snowy regions of Japan created the legend of a winter spirit called Yuki-Onna (or snow woman) whose beauty allows her to prey on those lost in brutal winter storms.
What led a man to live an isolated life at his ramshackle cabin, with a boarded up window, in the former American wilderness? What is the tragic story that led him to this doleful existence? Here is his traumatic tale.
What should we do, when should we do it, and whose direction should we take? Those three questions have plagued humanity throughout time. Where can the answers be found or are they unanswerable?
Would it be better to start life as an old man and end it as an infant? That was the question posed by Mark Twain that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald to write his short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."
Prepare to be moved by one of the most unusual short stories ever written, which tells a chilling tale of the simple life and complex death of a slave-owning planter in Union-occupied Alabama during the Civil War.
This classic Mark Twain tale is a witty commentary on poverty and wealth. There is much of Twain’s personal circumstance reflected in the story, as Twain had himself recently gone from riches to bankruptcy.
From the mind behind "Alice in Wonderland" comes one of the best examples of nonsense poetry. Jabberwocky tells the tale of a young knight who slays a mythical beast.
