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Holiday Round

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Essays & Short Works, Humor, Satire, Single Author Collections
Chapter: 11 | Listen: 6

Alan Alexander Milne, popularly known as A. A. Milne, is best known – perhaps to most people only known – for his children’s book, Winnie the Pooh. Yet he was an incredibly prolific author. He published dozens of successful plays, myriad humorous articles written for internationally prominent journals, a wide range of social, political, and other nonfiction works, and even a murder mystery. This collection is humorous throughout, but humorous in a particularly Milnesque way: he consciously and quite openly rejected the bitterness of satire in favor of a peculiarly gentle, often self-deprecating humor. Included here are dozens of short essays showing, among other things, Milne’s extraordinary capacity to understand – and be understood by – children, and his special affinity for women, as friends and as lovers. – Summary by Kirsten Wever [chương_files]

Psychology of Peoples: Its Influence on Their Evolution

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Psychology, Social Science (Culture & Anthropology)
Chapter: 17 | Listen: 9

“It is barely a century and a half ago that certain philosophers, who, it should be remarked, were very ignorant of the primitive history of man, of the variations of his mental constitution and of the laws of heredity, propounded the idea of the equality of individuals and races… It is in the name of this idea that socialism, which seems destined to enslave before long the majority of Western peoples, pretends to ensure their welfare… The object of this work is to describe the psychological characteristics which constitute the soul of races, and to show how the history of a people and its civilisation are determined by these characteristics… We shall then examine whether the elements composing a civilisation, its arts, its institutions, its beliefs, are not direct manifestations of the soul of races, and whether in consequence, it is not impossible that they should pass from one people to another. We shall conclude by attempting to determine what are the necessities under the influence of which civilisations decay and die out.” – extracts from the Introduction. Also, “…The author’s central thesis is that chance, environment and institutions play but secondary parts in the history of a people. Character (race) is the important thing. This character – a people’s morality and conduct – is determined mainly by its ancestry. After character, ideas, and particularly religious ideas are the most important factors in the evolution of a civilisation. The possession of a small number of highly developed minds is what […]

Wonderful Year

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Published 1900 onward, Travel Fiction
Chapter: 24 | Listen: 8

Martin Overshaw and Corinna Hastings are leading dull and unproductive lives in Paris, having fled humdrum England. They fall in with Fortinbras, who calls himself a Marchand de Bonheur. He predicts a bright future for them and suggests they set out on a journey through France together. The book follows their adventure which turns out to be far more complicated than it might at first seem. They meet a variety of characters on the way and the looming threat of the First World War overshadows the second half of the book, which nonetheless ends happily for all concerned. [chương_files]

Sunny Side (Version 2)

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Anthologies, Essays & Short Works, Humorous Fiction, Single Author Collections
Chapter: 9 | Listen: 1

A. A. Milne is best known for his creation of the perennially popular Winnie the Pooh, though he was and is highly acclaimed for hundreds of gently humorous essays and poems published in, among other famous venues, Punch Magazine, most of which have been collected and published as books. The Sunny Side is his last collection of articles and verses because, as he wrote in the American Introduction to the volume, “this sort of writing depends largely upon the irresponsibility and high spirits of youth for its success, and I want to stop before …the high spirits become mechanical …” He called this assortment “scrappy, because, “…Odd Verses have crept in on the unanswerable plea that, if they didn’t do it now, they never would; War Sketches protested that I shouldn’t have a book at all if I left them out; an Early Article, omitted from three previous volumes, paraded for the fourth time with such a pathetic ‘I suppose you don’t want me’ in its eye that it could not decently be rejected.” He concludes: “So here they all are.” Summary by Kirsten Wever [chương_files]

Daredevil

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Published 1900 onward, Romance
Chapter: 20 | Listen: 5

Roberta, daughter of an American soldier and a French marquise, is returning to the childhood home of her father after his death in the Great War. Upon reaching New York she realizes that her Uncle, a woman-hater, has confused the genders of her and her small crippled brother. In order to please her Uncle and ensure medical treatment for Pierre, she becomes “Robert”, his nephew. In her new identity she secures supplies for France, has many hilarious close-calls, and manages to fall in love with the Governor. – Summary by LikeManyWaters [chương_files]

Frank Merriwell at Yale; Or, Freshman Against Freshman

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Published 1900 onward
Chapter: 34 | Listen:

Gilbert Patten, writing under the pen name of Burt L. Standish, wrote innumerable novels that were very popular in their time. His Frank Merriwell stories were later adapted for radio and these, too, were very popular. Frank is the All-American boy—scholar, athlete, gentleman—and always displays quick thinking and fairness in all that he does. – Summary by KevinS [chương_files]

City of Endless Night

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Published 1900 onward, Science Fiction, Suspense, Espionage, Political & Thrillers
Chapter: 18 | Listen: 8

An example of early dystopian science fiction written shortly after World War I, “City of Endless Night” imagines a future with a very different ending to the Great War. Set in 2151 and in an underground Berlin, our protagonist is Lyman De Forrest, an American chemist who enters the city to discover the hidden truths of a forbidden metropolis. The subterranean world hosts a highly-regimented society of 300,000,000 sun-starved humans. As the first outsider to enter, he’s horrified by what he finds, but will he accomplish his mission and escape the living tomb? – Summary by Kate Follis [chương_files]

Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 085

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Essays & Short Works, Non-fiction
Chapter: 20 | Listen: 3

“A regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the regard for one’s own dignity” was novelist Joseph Conrad’s take on fame, a quote from the preface to his autobiography A Personal Record (1912). Other lives chosen by readers to examine in vol. 085 include the Borgias; the Cynocephali; Hermann von Helmholtz; Edgar Allan Poe; John Burroughs; a pre-Revolutionary War magnate named Browne, who built a mansion on the ridge of a hill; women as a social class; and an 1821 rabies victim named Thomas, who exhibited hydrophobia. Political history receives scrutiny in Some Materials and a Possibility; The House Famine; Cracow; The Dutch East India Company; and Across Africa by Air and Rail. The art of Japanning illuminates an ancient craft. Literature, by Irvin Cobb, is welcome humor. And for hungry souls, there are recipes for ice cream and for Army chow! Summary by Sue Anderson. [chương_files]

G.K. Chesterton in The Bibliophile Magazine

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Essays & Short Works
Chapter: 2 | Listen: 5

Two essays/articles by G.K. Chesterton, published in ‘The Bibliophile’ magazine in 1908. (Summary by Maria Therese) [chương_files]

Not That it Matters (Version 2)

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Essays & Short Works, Humorous Fiction, Satire, Single Author Collections
Chapter: 45 | Listen: 2

A. A. MILNE: …was best known for the perennially popular Pooh (Winnie the), arguably one of his lesser contributions to the literature of his day. He was highly acclaimed for dozens of popular plays. Moreover, he was both a contributor to and editor of Britain’s famous Punch Magazine; and for Punch, The Atlantic Monthly and dozens of other internationally acclaimed journals he wrote hundreds of essay, sketches and poems. THE WORLD WARS: Milne argued aggressively against the many enemy atrocities characterizing both World Wars, and also fought in both. All four years of the Great War he spent primarily in the trenches, sustaining the greatest dangers of the new warfare at close range. His war experiences are forcibly captured in some of the poems in this collection and others. INFLUENCE ON THE STYLE OF BRITISH HUMOR: His immense popularity doubtless helped influenced the very basis of British wit and humor: His gentle, often self-deprecatory but always kind style of humor lured readers and publishers away from the more ironic, cynical, and acerbic humorous works of recent decades. – Summary by Kirsten Wever [chương_files]