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Wonderful Year

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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]

Common Reader

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Essays & Short Works
Chapter: 27 | Listen: 3

A collection of essays by Virginia Woolf, some of which originally appeared in the Times Literary Supplement or the Dial, and others were originally published for the first time in this volume. “Anything that Virginia Woolf may have to say about letters is of more than ordinary interest, for her peculiar intelligence and informed attitude set her somewhat apart. She possesses the happy faculty simultaneously of enjoying and accepting the work of Daniel De Foe and James Joyce, of Joseph Addison and T.S. Eliot, of Jane Austen and Marcel Proust. Many of these essays are excellent examples of that type of writing which reveals the reactions, nuances, twisting and adventuring threads of thought and surmise which spring from the perusal and spiritual acquisition of other work.” Excerpts from the New York Times Book Review of The Common Reader, May 31, 1925 [chương_files]

Creed of a Credulous Person

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Essays & Short Works
Chapter: 5 | Listen: 2

A series of five essays by G.K. Chesterton, published in “Black and White” magazine in 1903, under the heading “The Creed of a Credulous Person”. (Summary by Maria Therese) [chương_files]