Essays Contents
Audiobooks
January 12, 2023
I spent many winter days reading books...
Such fond memories when I was young...
staying warm... away from the cold...
curled up in front of a window... my mind far, far away...
with a great book.
Now, there is good literature available as audiobooks...
so much better than watching the television.
The real treasure can be found at Librivox.
LibriVox.org
LibriVox Audiobooks
on YouTube
Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina
is an excellent reader for LibriVox.
Most of these audiobooks were recorded by him.
He posts book summaries in video descriptions.
There are no advertisements to interrupt the story.
Other audiobooks recorded by Mark Smith:
searchable on YouTube by his name or at
LibriVox Audiobooks
I believe these are all ADVERTISEMENT-FREE audiobooks.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe
the audiobook
Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.
Daniel DeFoe per Wikipedia
Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names. It was a very common
practice in eighteenth-century novel publishing to initially publish works
under a pen name, with most other authors at the time publishing their works
anonymously. As a result of the anonymous ways in which most of his works
were published, it has been a challenge for scholars over the years to properly
credit Defoe for all of the works that he wrote in his lifetime.
If counting only works that Defoe published under his own name, or his known pen name "the author of the True-Born Englishman," there would be about 75 works that could be attributed to him.
The name of the ship that found them was... La Podesta.
from the video description:
The Swiss Family Robinson has delighted generations of readers with its exciting tale of a family which, though shipwrecked, displays “the right stuff” and builds a charming colony that later, they do not want to leave.
Cut off from the comforts and companionship of other humans, they use a familiarity with natural history and biology to find the resources and build the tools to construct a canoe, weave cloth, irrigate a garden, and turn an immense hollow tree into a lofty house with a spiral staircase. They domesticate buffaloes, wild asses, and monkeys. They establish farms and plantations. And finally, they have a terrifying encounter with natives from a nearby island.
Johann David Wyss, the author, did not live to complete his tale. Storytellers over the years have injected so many episodes into the various versions that probably none closely match the original. (Indeed, the Baroness de Montholieu expanded the book from two volumes into five when she translated it into French.) This effort was re-translated into English in 1849 by W.H.G. Kingston, abridging the edition severely. It follows the British sensibilities of the period in terms of sentence structure and emphasis.
Charles Dickens per Wikipedia
Dickens grew up experiencing all the worlds of those times.
Charles Dickens wrote about those things he had lived.
Charles' father, John Dickens, was forced by his creditors into the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Southwark, London in 1824. His wife and youngest children joined him there, as was the practice at the time.
Charles, then 12 years old, boarded with Elizabeth Roylance, a family
friend, at 112 College Place, Camden Town. Mrs Roylance was "a reduced impoverished old lady, long known to our family", whom Dickens later immortalised, "with a few alterations and embellishments", as Mrs Pipchin in "Dombey and Son."
Later, he lived in a back-attic in the house of an agent for the Insolvent Court, Archibald Russell, "a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman ... with a quiet old wife" and lame son, in Lant Street in Southwark. They provided the inspiration for the Garlands in "The Old Curiosity Shop."
Prelude:
"Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom's chain,
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain."
a quote from John Myers O'Hara.
(this quote is analyzed prolifically on the web)
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American author Jack London published in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush—a period when strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in California as the story opens.
Stolen from his home and sold into the brutal existence of an Alaskan sled dog, he reverts to atavistic traits. Buck is forced to adjust and survive cruel treatments, fight to dominate other dogs, and survive in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts through lessons he learns, to emerge as a leader in the wild.
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal rights, workers’ rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.
His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay", and "The Heathen".
All of Jack London's books are very good reading/listening.
When White Fang is birthed in a cave to a wolf sire and a wolf/dog halfbreed dam, he is heir to two traditions. At first he is content to explore and learn laws of the Wild. But then his mother is caught and held by old memories of a past relationship with Man, and White Fang follows her into service with the Indians.
Life among sled dogs is hardly less cruel and dangerous than living in the Wild, but brutality notches upward when his drunken master sells him to a nasty, twisted hanger-on at a riverside town of white men. He is stripped of everything soft and gentle when forced to fight to the death for a crowd of bettors.
Taming this savage spirit and reclaiming the nobility within looks impossible. Fortunately, and heart-warmingly, a man arrives in White Fang's life to try.'White Fang' is often called the mirror image of Jack London's acclaimed 'The Call of the Wild' in which a dog follows the reverse arc from tame to free. (summary by Mark)
LibriVox Audiobooks
on YouTube
Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina
is an excellent reader for LibriVox.
Most of these audiobooks were recorded by him.
He posts book summaries in video descriptions.
There are no advertisements to interrupt the story.
Other audiobooks recorded by Mark Smith:
searchable on YouTube by his name or at LibriVox Audiobooks
I believe these are all ADVERTISEMENT-FREE audiobooks.
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe
the audiobook
