Audio Podcast Directory - Podcasts with only audio episodes
Librivox: Anthem by Rand, AynJoin Now to Follow
Anthem is a dystopic science fiction story taking place at some unspecified future date. Mankind has entered another dark age as a result of what Rand saw as the weaknesses of socialistic thinking and economics. Technological advancement is now carefully planned (when it is allowed to occur, if at all) and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the word "I" has disappeared from the language). As is common in her work, Rand draws a clear distinction between the "socialist/communal" values of equality and brotherhood and the "productive/capitalist" values of achievement and individuality. The story also parallels Stalinist Russia, which was currently going on at the time as the story was published. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Librivox: Stalky & Co. by Kipling, RudyardJoin Now to Follow
Rudyard Kipling published Stalky & Co. in 1899. Set at an English boarding school in a seaside town on the North Devon coast. (The town, Westward Ho!, is not only unusual in having an exclamation mark, but also in being itself named after a novel, by Charles Kingsley.) The book is a collection of linked short stories, with some information about the eponymous Stalky's later life. Beetle, one of the main trio, is said to be based on Kipling himself, while Stalky may be based on Lionel Dunsterville. The stories have elements of the macabre (dead cats), bullying and violence, and hints about sex, making them far from the childish or idealised world of the typical school story. Edmund Wilson, critic, in The Wound and the Bow, was both shocked and uncomprehending. Adapted by Tim Bulkeley from the Wikipedia entry.
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Librivox: Boy's Will, A by Frost, RobertJoin Now to Follow
A Boy's Will is Robert Frost's first full volume of poetry. Issued when Frost was approaching forty, it established his reputation and created a revolution in American poetry. With this publication, Frost became an established poet. He later became the major American poet of the twentieth century. A Boy's Will is characteristic of Frost's ability to conjure photographically clear physical images while ruminating on the complexities of the human condition, its frailties and strengths, and its temporal state, like that of his beloved New England landscape. (Summary by Becky Miller)
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Librivox: Foreign Lands by Stevenson, Robert LouisJoin Now to Follow
LibriVox volunteers bring you 17 different recordings of Foreign Lands by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of April 22nd, 2007.
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Librivox: Current Superstitions by Bergen, Fanny DickersonJoin Now to Follow
No matter how enlightened, chances are you've been raised around superstitious lore of one kind or another. Fanny Dickerson Bergen was one of the original researchers of North American oral traditions relating to such key life events and experiences as babyhood and childhood, marriage, wishes and dreams, luck, warts and cures, death omens and mortuary customs, and "such truck," as Huck Finn would say. You'll be surprised at how many of these old saws you'll know. Here's a quote from Chapter One, Babyhood: Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is sour and sad, Thursday’s child is merry and glad, Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child must work for a living; But the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is blithe and bonny, good and gay. --Baldwinsville, N. Y. All of these readings are as short as 5 minutes and no longer than 15 minutes, with plenty of pithy one-liners in the form of proverbs, always given with the locale they came from in Canada or the United States (with clear influences in British tradition). (summary by Denny Sayers)
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Librivox: Alexander's Bridge by Cather, Willa SibertJoin Now to Follow
Bartley Alexander is a construction engineer and world-renowned builder of bridges going through what's known today (but not in 1912) as a mid-life crisis. Although married to his wife Winifred, Bartley resumes his acquaintance with a former lover, Hilda Burgoyne, in London. The affair proves to gnaw at Bartley's sense of propriety and honor. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Librivox: Long Poems Collection 004 by VariousJoin Now to Follow
Librivox’s Long Poems Collection 004: a collection of 9 public-domain poems longer than 5 minutes in length.
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Librivox: War and Peace, Book 01: 1805 by Tolstoy, LeoJoin Now to Follow
War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, Voyna i mir; in original orthography: Война и миръ, Voyna i mir") is an epic novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russki Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It is usually described as one of Tolstoy's two major masterpieces (the other being Anna Karenina) as well as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace offered a new kind of fiction, with a great many characters caught up in a plot that covered nothing less than the grand subjects indicated by the title, combined with the equally large topics of youth, age and marriage. While today it is considered a novel, it broke so many novelistic conventions of its day that many critics of Tolstoy's time did not consider it as such. Tolstoy himself considered Anna Karenina (1878) to be his first attempt at a novel in the European sense. (Summary by Wikipedia) Note: The novel is split in 15 books. This is the recording of book one, which covers the events in the year 1805. The recording of the next book is in progress. The project thread can be found here: http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7275
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Librivox: Little Lord Fauntleroy by Burnett, Frances HodgsonJoin Now to Follow
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a sentimental children's novel by American (English-born) author Frances Hodgson Burnett, serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1885. It was a runaway hit for the magazine and was separately published in 1886. The book was a commercial success for its author, and its illustrations by Reginal Birch set fashion trends. Little Lord Fauntleroy also set a precedent in copyright law in 1888 when its author won a lawsuit over the rights to theatrical adaptations of the work. (Summary from Wikipedia)
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Librivox: Robinson Crusoe in Words of One Syllable by Aikin, LucyJoin Now to Follow
Mary Godolphin was the pseudonym of Lucy Aikin who undertook translating great literature into single-syllable words so that young readers could enjoy plots that were considerably more interesting than, say, the McGuffey readers of the 1880's or the "Dick and Jane" primers of the 1950s (still around today as "decodable readers" in elementary schools). She produced this volume based on Daniel Defoe's most famous work, considered by many to be the first English novel (1719). She also rendered Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson, which she translated as well.
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