Best Literature Podcasts (Page 400)

Hør interviews og andre samtaler om science fiction, fantasy, horror og superhelte i bøger, på film, på tv og i tegneserier.

After having a difficult time establishing a career as a novelist, O’Donnell discovered to his happy surprise that the reading public was very interested in his hobby of chasing ghosts, which he called “Superphysical Research.” After this, he made a habit of buttonholing friends and strangers to find out what experiences they had had with spirits and phantasms. He happily volunteered to camp out overnight in houses known to be haunted, and he made a concerted effort to discover any unhappy events that had, perhaps, led a ghost to inhabit.This, then, is a collection of his juiciest remembrances of running down ghosts in Europe and America, both in peace and in the horrors of World War. ( Mark Smith)

Using literature to examine our relationship with mortality

An original novel by antipodeanwriter!In The Giants’ War, Hannah finds herself transported magically to Narnia: only to discover that her new friends are endangered by the designs of the wicked giants of Harfang.To save her friends – and to protect Narnia – Hannah accepts from Aslan a dangerous mission to infiltrate Hurung’s palace in Harfang itself. But even if Hannah carries our her task – can she still prevent Narnia’s destruction by the hostile armies now making ready to march?

This is a collection of poems read by LibriVox volunteers for the months of April and May 2011.

Het verhaal gaat over een dromerige en poëtische Amsterdamse jongen, Wouter Pieterse, die opgroeit in een kleinburgerlijk milieu in de Franse tijd. De kleinburgerlijkheid van zijn omgeving en nieuwsgierigheid van Wouter komen vaak met elkaar in botsing, en vormen het hoofdthema van het boek. (Samenvatting geschreven door Wikipedia)

This is a collection of 28 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for February 2017.

This work may not be by Plato, or his entirely, but Jowett has offered his sublime translation, and seems to lean towards including it in the canon. Socrates tempted by irony to deflate the pretentious know-it-all Hippias, an arrogant polymath, appears to follow humour more than honour in this short dialogue. (Summary by Kevin Johnson)

Excerpt from Introduction:"Nana" stands third in popularity among the Zola novels. It is a study of the prostitute type and it gives a memorable picture of the life of the tinsel underworld of the Paris theaters, night life, and its parasites. Perhaps Zola pursues Nana a bit too relentlessly: certainly his putting a period to her career by showing her as a putrefying corpse is more symbolic than is wholly necessary; but it remains a novel of truth and beauty, even if a beauty of a drab and often terrible sort.Summary by Burton Rascoe / Celine Major

"Ecumenical creeds" is an umbrella term used in the western church to refer to the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The ecumenical creeds are also known as the universal creeds. These creeds are accepted by almost all mainstream Christian denominations in the western church, including the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican churches and Lutheran churches. A creed by definition is a summary or statement of what one believes it originates from the Latin credo meaning "I Believe." (Introduction by Wikipedia)

A children's version of the Lives of Artists by Vassari with many Illustrations. Of course we won't be able to show the paintings but the descriptions and the anecdotes are interesting and may lead a child to further interest. - Summary by Susan Morin

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The Social Contract outlines Rousseau's views on political justice, explaining how a just and legitimate state is to be founded, organized and administered. Rousseau sets forth, in his characteristically brazen and iconoclastic manner, the case for direct democracy, while simultaneously casting every other form of government as illegitimate and tantamount to slavery. Often hailed as a revolutionary document which sparked the French Revolution, The Social Contract serves both to inculcate dissatisfaction with actually-existing governments and to allow its readers to envision and desire a radically different form of political and social organization. (Summary by Eric Jonas)

Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. The speculative nature of the genre inspires thought and plants seeds that have led to advances in science. The genre can spark an interest in the sciences and is cited as the impetus for the career choice of many scientists. It is a playing field to explore social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind. - Summary by A. Gramour

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of Snowshoeing Song by Arthur Weir. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for July 31, 2011.Snowshoeing Song is taken from A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908).Arthur Weir was born in Montreal. In 1895 he was selected to read the inaugural poem at the unveiling of the national monument to Sir John Macdonald at Ottawa. He also wrote the inaugural poem for the unveiling of the monument to Maisonneuve, dedicated on the same day. (summary from "Canadian Men & Women of the Time 1898" Ed. by Henry James Morgan, (1843-1913))

This is a collection of poems read by LibriVox volunteers for the month of September and October 2010.

This is a collection of 35 poems read by LibriVox volunteers for March 2016.

A book of short stories by Eden Phillpotts, all involving something of the supernatural. - Summary by Ann Boulais

In LibriVox’s Multilingual Poetry Collection, LibriVox volunteers read their favourite public-domain poems in languages other than English. (Summary by David Barnes).

A collection of ten pieces, read by various readers, about the unreal edges of this world in legend and story; tales of love, death and beyond. If just one story prickles the hair on the back of your neck, or prickles your eyelids with the touch of tears, we will have succeeded.

Von seinem Cousin Mr. Utterson erfährt Mr. Enfield zuerst von dem zwielichtigen Mr. Hyde, der durch sein besonders brutales Verhalten auffällt und auf alle, die ihm begegnen, einen gemeinen und bösartigen Eindruck macht. Als Mr. Enfield erfährt, dass dieser Hyde offenbar ein Bekannter von seinem Freund Dr. Jekyll ist, ist er sehr besorgt. Hat dieser Hyde etwas gegen Jekyll in der Hand? Wird Jekyll von ihm erpresst? Als Mr. Hyde auf offener Straße einen brutalen Mord begeht und daraufhin untertaucht, scheint sich zunächst alles zum Guten zu wenden. Doch nach einiger Zeit wird Dr. Jekylls Verhalten immer seltsamer und es wird klar, dass Mr. Hyde zurück ist. (Zusammenfassung von Hokuspokus)

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

"The Rescue" is the third of Conrad's novels to feature Captain Tom Lingard, an independent buccaneer operating in the Malayan archipelago. Tom Lingard was probably based on the real-life William Lingard, a runaway from an English landed family who owned several ships and traded extensively (and perhaps illegally) around the Macassar Strait in the mid-nineteenth century. In this prequel to both "An Outcast of the Islands" and "Almayer's Folly", Tom Lingard, after several years of expensive preparation, is right on the verge of pulling off a noble plan to restore a tribal prince and princess to their rightful realm with the help of native allies through a show of force when he learns that a wealthy and arrogant Englishman has accidentally run his pleasure yacht aground right in the middle of his own proposed field of operations. The yacht owner refuses Lingard's pleas to leave his yacht for a few days to allow Lingard to carry out his plans, and matters soon get even stickier when a group of Lingard's notional 'allies' on shore capture the yacht's owner just as Lingard and the yacht owner's wife find they are falling in love. - Summary by Peter Dann

A madcap Frenchman posing as an ambassador's barber blackmails a dishonest duke to introduce him as a nobleman to a wealthy belle of Bath. Since the duke himself hopes to mend his fortunes by wedding this very woman, he attempts to murder Beaucaire, and failing that to discredit him. To test the lady's mettle, Beaucaire allows his deception to be exposed--up to a point--and there we must draw the curtain to preserve the surprise ending. ( Summary by Thomas A. Copeland )