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14/08/2024

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (version 2)

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Chapter: 26 | Listen: 2

An author who means to end a story with some variation of “And they all lived happily ever after” had better deal before that point not just with evil, strife, and terror but also with loss, failure, sacrifice, and death—or the ending will not be credible. And since such negative experiences do not easily lead to happy endings, only the best story-tellers succeed. George MacDonald is one of these. His protagonist, Anodos, discovers on the day he comes of age a path leading into an alternative reality, where a rite of passage awaits him: an entire lifetime in a land of marvels resembling childhood imaginings and medieval romances. The forces motivating him during his adventure, aside from the curiosity that induces him to enter Fairy Land in the first place, are a yearning after the feminine ideal and a desire to accomplish something worthwhile. Other people’s kindness, love, wisdom, and high expectations support him, while malice, selfish exploitation, and tyranny challenge him. Nor are these hostile forces all purely external. Rarely has an author explored so searchingly as MacDonald the soul of a faithful squire and a rejected lover—for this is what Anodos is, when all is said and done. None of the most famous beta males in literature—certainly not Vergil’s “faithful Achates,” not Cervantes’ unforgettable Sancho Panza, not even Homer’s Eumaios (“Oh! my swineherd!”)—is portrayed with the richness, depth, and multi-dimensionality of MacDonald’s visitor to Fairy Land. Just possibly Spenser’s Timias (Prince Arthur’s squire, whose tale is told in […]

14/08/2024

Instructions to Light Keepers

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Chapter: 7 | Listen: 1

“Office of the Light-House Board, Washington, D.C. July 1, 1881. The following Instructions are published for the guidance of light-keepers. They are required to read them carefully and attentively, and to refer to them whenever they are any doubt in regard to their duties or the manner of performing them. Each keeper and assistant keeper will be furnished with a copy, to be kept and used at the light-stations where they are employed; to be handed over to their successors when they are relieved or discharged or left at the light-stations in case there should be no successors. By order of the Light-House Board.” ( from introductory notice to book)     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Earlier Poems

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Chapter: 44 | Listen: 1

This is a collection of the earlier poems of Julia Caroline Dorr.     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Warlord of Mars (version 2)

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Chapter: 16 | Listen: 2

In this third installment of the adventures of John Carter on Mars, our hero labors under sentence of death (for having returned from the land of the dead) in a heroic struggle to recover the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium. He scours the planet from pole to pole, enduring imprisonment and torture, outwitting antagonists, reveling in carnage, accepting aid from unlikely sources, and dealing tactfully with women who love him despite his devotion to his wife. Having deprived an entire planet of its false religion, he offers in its place worldwide alliances and the promise of lasting peace.     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Great Chicago Fire

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Chapter: 17 | Listen: 2

Historical information relating the nature, extent, and consequences of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the insurance losses, and the relief costs. A brief interlude of comic relief is inserted midway in the form of a poem regarding the event..     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Ring and the Book

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Chapter: 166 | Listen:

“Better translate–“A Roman murder-case: “Position of the entire criminal cause “Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman, “With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay, “Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death “By heading or hanging as befitted ranks, “At Rome on February Twenty-Two, “Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight: “Wherein it is disputed if, and when, “Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet ‘scape ‘The customary forfeit.’” (Excerpt from first chapter of The Ring and the Book.) Note from reader: The main text I have read from follows the first edition; but there are some words or lines that do not make sense, either through copying mistakes or because they are difficult if not impossible to make sense of in the first edition. In such cases, I have relied upon an alternate text, found at archive.org and also in the public domain, that contains the wording of the later editions. –Tony Oliva     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Puck of Pook’s Hill (version 2)

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Chapter: 10 | Listen: 1

‘Puck of Pook’s Hill’ is a fantasy book by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1906, containing a series of short stories set in different periods of English history. It can count both as historical fantasy – since some of the stories told of the past have clear magical elements, and as contemporary fantasy – since it depicts a magical being active and practising his magic in the England of the early 1900s when the book was written. The stories are all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling’s own house Bateman’s, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself. (Puck, who refers to himself as “the oldest Old Thing in England”, is better known as a character in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) The genres of particular stories range from authentic historical novella (A Centurion of the Thirtieth, On the Great Wall) to children’s fantasy (Dymchurch Flit). Each story is bracketed by a poem which relates in some manner to the theme or subject of the story.     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Omnilingual (version 2)

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Chapter: 4 | Listen: 2

This short story was first written and published in the year 1957, as part of a collection of short science fiction stories in the collection Astounding Science Fiction. Piper’s story is unusual in focusing on the problem of archaeology on an alien culture. How is is possible to decipher writings of an alien race that died out 50,000 years ago? What could we possibly have in common with them? There can be no ‘Rosetta Stone’ with a shared language so is it impossible? That is the struggle of the protagonist and against all odds she does indeed find a way for our two cultures to meet. An excellent story well written.     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

2 Maccabees

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Chapter: 15 | Listen:

The Book of 2 Machabees (more commonly rendered 2 Maccabees) is an abridgement of another work, now lost, which describes the events surrounding the defeat of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the rededication of the Jewish temple in the 2nd Century BCE. It’s canonicity (status as Holy Writ) was established later in the Christian era, and hence forms part of the deuterocanon (2nd canon). It is excluded from the Jewish bibles as well as modern Protestant bibles. The Church of England, in 1571, affirmed that 2 Machabees, as well as several other books excluded from the Protestant canon, “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article VI). The defeat of Antiochus IV Epiphanes is celebrated annually during the Festival of Hannukah, which is referred to prophetically in the Jewish Scriptures (Daniel 8, 11) and explicitly in the Christian Scriptures (John 10:22).     [chương_files]  

14/08/2024

Dombey and Son (version 3)

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Chapter: 62 | Listen: 1

To Paul Dombey, the business is everything, and he must have a son who will learn the business and eventually inherit it. Will his newborn, but sickly son be the fulfilment of his hopes and dreams? And what about his daughter Florence, who made the mistake of being born a girl?     [chương_files]