2011 Was a Good Year...

My total of solo books on LibriVox rose to 61.  Together, they accounted for 953,000 downloads from Archive.org during the year; I don't have stats for iTunes or other outlets, like torrents. Five of the books were downloaded 50,000 times or more (in order): Great Expectations, Huck Finn, Sherlock Holmes, Swiss Family Robinson, and Mysterious Island. Tarzan almost made that list.
Great Expectations was for part of the year an Archive.org Editors' Pick.

I enjoyed the many comments left for me on the LibriVox "Thank a Reader" thread.

For your support in listening to my books, THANK YOU!

My Reading Plans (updated January 5, 2012)

Recently Finished:

"Senseless Panic: How Washington Failed America" by William Isaac (former chief of the FDIC). I partnered with John Wiley & Sons through ACX on this account of what went wrong with our economy in 2008 and why. Available on Audible.com, Dec 2011.


"Sweet Love: Erotic Fantasies for Couples" edited by Violet Blue. This is a collection of short stories, very graphic and .steamy - a book to get hot and bothered with on a cold winter night! I partnered with Cleis Press through ACX. Available on Audible.com, Dec 2011.

Now in Progress

:For Iambik.com-

"Psychology: An Exploration" by Saundra Ciccarelli & J. Noland White.  This is a college textbook, with the first edition appearing in 2009, and this 2nd Edition will be published in print tomorrow. (Now I understand why the audiobook was given a very short timetable to be produced - so short, in fact, that three narrators are teaming up to get it done in time.) I'm doing the final four chapters, probably 8-9 hours worth.

For Audiobooks by Mike Vendetti-

"Key Out of Time" by Andre Norton. This is an SF adventure where several humans and porpoises get stranded on another planet at another time. Oh, the perils of time travel, when you can fall through the keyhole!

For LibriVox -
Nothing in the hopper right now! I will probably do "The Ebb-Tide" by Robert Louis Stephenson next.

My summary of LibriVox work to date.

Updated January 5, 2012


Solo Books (in order of completion):
- The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame)
- The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss)
- Uncle Remus (Joel Chandler Harris)
- The Lost Princess of Oz (Baum)
- Little Wars (Wells)
- The Mysterious Island (Verne)
- How to Live On Twenty-Four Hours a Day (Bennett)
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
- New Discoveries at Jamestown (Cotter & Hudson)
- Tarzan of the Apes (Burroughs)
- Star Born (Norton)
- Greylorn (Laumer)
- The First Men in the Moon (Wells)
- The Lost World (Doyle)
- Hans Brinker (Dodge)
- The Master of the World (Verne)
- The Lone Star Ranger (Grey)
- Sense and Sensibility (Austen)
- Diary of a U-Boat Commander (King-Hall)
- Around the World in 80 Days (Verne)
- Captains Courageous (Kipling)
- The Memoirs of Col. John S. Mosby (Mosby)
- The Point of Honor (Conrad)
- This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald)
- Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (various)
- Kidnapped (Stevenson)
- Green Mansions (Hudson)
- Tom Swift and His War Tank (Appleton)
- The Pathfinder (Cooper)
- The Poison Belt (Doyle)
- Great Expectations (Dickens)
- Over the Top (Empey)
- The Man in the Iron Mask (Dumas)
- The House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
- Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ (Wallace)
- Triplanetary (Smith)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (Tarkington)
- Nightmare Abbey (Peacock)
- Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
- The Young Railroaders (Coombs) This is number FORTY!
- Mate of the Ship "Pirate" (Hains)
- The Blockade Runners (Verne)
- Beasts, Men and Gods (Ossendowski)
- William Tell Told Again (Wodehouse)
-  The River War (Churchill) 
- The Battle of Life (Dickens)
- The Royal Book of Oz (Thompson)
- Conquest Over Time (Shaara)
- Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe)
- This World is Taboo (Leinster) Yay! Number FIFTY!
- Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung (Appleton II)
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)
- The Kama Sutra (Vatsyayana)
- The White Feather (Wodehouse)
- White Fang (London)
- The Call of the Wild (London)
- Nights With Uncle Remus (Harris)
- Reminiscences of Forts Moultrie and Sumter (Doubleday)
- Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (Doubleday)
- The Time Machine (Wells)  (Number Sixty)
- The Communist Manifesto (Marx)

Solo Shorter (non-chapter) Books:
- More Goops, And How Not To Be Them (Burgess)
- The Reluctant Dragon (Grahame)
- Floor Games (Wells)

Plays:
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare), voice of Theseus
- As You Like It (Shakespeare), voice of Touchstone
- The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), voice of The Prince of Morocco
- Richard II (Shakespeare), voice of Mowbray
- The Tragedy of Macbeth, voice of Macbeth
- 1 Henry IV (Shakespeare), voice of King Henry IV and Earl of Douglas (electronically altered)
- 2 Henry IV (Shakespeare), voice of King Henry IV
- The Taming of the Shrew, voice of Vincentio
- The Dutchess of Malfi (Webster), voice of Malatesti, 4th Officer, & 4th Madman
- Richard III (Shakespeare), voice of Henry, Earl of Richmond and voice of Lord Mayor
- Arms and the Man (Shaw), voice of Sergius Saranoff
- The New York Idea (Mitchell), voice of Phillip Phillimore
- Othello (Shakespeare), voice of Cassio 
- The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare), voice of Florizel
- Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles), voice of Theseus, King of Athens
- Henry VI, Part 1 (Shakespeare), voice of Earl of Warwick
- Mary Stuart (Schiller), voice of Earl of Kent 
- Cymbeline (Shakespeare), voice of Caius Lucius 
- The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare), voice of Falstaff

Dramatic Readings:
- 1601 (Twain), voice of Sir Walter Raleigh
- 2BR02B (Vonnegut), voice of Hospital Orderly
- The Perils of Pauline (Goddard), voice of Ben Summers
- Rinkitink in Oz (Baum), voice of Narrator for Chapter 19
- The Scarecrow of Oz (Baum), voices of The Bumpy Man and Googly-Goo
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum), voice of The Scarecrow
- Ozma of Oz (Baum), Narrator (chapter 21), voice of Tik Tok, voice of General 1
- Once On a Time (Milne), voice of King Merriwig  
- The Picture of Dorian Grey (Wilde), voices of Sir Jeffrey Clouston and The Old Gentleman
- Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival, The Belle of the Delaware (Percival), voice of Horace
- Crucial Instances (Wharton), voice of Paul Ventnor

Songs:
- Hymns of the Christian Church,  My Faith Looks Up to Thee (Sung with Karen Savage)
- Hymn Collection 001, Blessed Assurance (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden) 
- Christmas Carol Collection 2009, Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden)
- Christmas Carol Collection 2010, What Child Is This? (Sung with Laurie Anne Walden)


Group Projects:
- Aesop's Fables, Collection 6 Numbers 2 & 5
- An Arthurian Miscellany, Merlin & Vivien (Sections 9 & 10)
- The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux), Chapters 24, 25, 26, Epilogue
- Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne), Chapter 13
- At the Back of the North Wind (McDonald), Chapters 6, 7, 27, 28
- The Merrie Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle), Chapters 18, 19
- The Three Musketeers (Dumas), Chapters 1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14, 27, 28, 41, 42, 67
- Legend Lands (Lyonesse), "The Old Woman Who Fooled the Devil"
- Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory), Book 3 Chapters 1-8
- The Iliad (Homer), Chapter 8
- Rewards and Fairies (Kipling), Section 4 "The Wrong Thing" and Section 12 "The Tree of Justice"
- The Golden Age (Grahame), Chapter 12
- Peter Pan (Barrie), Chapters 5, 13
- The Blue Fairy Book (Lang), "Hansel & Gretel"
- The Lilac Fairy Book (Lang), "The Stones of Plouhinec" and "The Castle of Kerglas"
- The Yellow Fairy Book (Lang), "The Witch and Her Servants" and "The Story of King Frost"
- The Red Fairy Book (Lang), "Princess Rosette" and "Jack and the Beanstalk"
- The Green Fairy Book (Lang), "The Snuff-Box" and "The Golden Blackbird"
- Tik-Tok of Oz (Baum), Chapters 12, 13, 14
- Glinda of Oz (Baum), Chapters 21, 22, 23, 24
- Tom Jones (Fielding), Chapters 12 & 13
- Tristram Shandy (Sterne), Chapter 11
- The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, Chapters 46, 47, 48, 49
- Robin Hood (Pyle), Chapters 18 & 19
- Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts (Stockton), Chapters 5, 6, 23
- Hymns of the Christian Church, The Day is Past and Over
- Science and Hypothesis (Poincare), Chapter 9 (Relative & Absolute Motion), Chapter 13 (The Calculus of Probabilities)
- Pioneers of Science (Lodge), Chapter 10 (Roemer & Bradley and The Velocity of Light)
- Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory), Chapter 42
- In Search of the Castaways (Verne), Chapters 25 & 26
- Nostromo (Conrad), Chapter 2
- Ivanhoe (Scott), Chapter 31
- Waverley, Vol.1 (Scott), Sections 6 & 7
- Famous Sea Fights (Hale), Chapter 14 Part 3
- Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Fox), Chapters 2,5
- The Wars of the Jews (Josephus), Book 6, Ch1
- Through the Looking Glass (Carroll), Chapters 1,4
- Grimm Tales Made Gay (Carryl), Chapters 15-20
- The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Raspe), Chapters 9-14
- Steep Trails (Muir), Chapters 8, 20
- Travels in Alaska (Muir), Chapter 12
- Topsy-Turvy (Verne), Chapters 4, 5
- Amadis of Gaul (de Lobeira), Chapter 6
- Robbery Under Arms (Boldrewood), Chapter 12

Short Stories:
- The Hoard of the Gibbelins (Dunsany)
- The War Prayer (Twain)
- Bread Overhead! (Leiber)
- The Wogglebug Book (Baum)
- And All the Earth a Grave (MacApp)
- Gambler World (Laumer)
- Blessed Are the Meek (Edmondson)
- A List to Starboard (F H Smith)
- The Thin Santa Claus (Butler)
- Pigs Is Pigs (Butler)
- Her Lover (Gorky)
- Mother of Five (Harte) 
- Last Revel in Printz Hall (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Edward Randolph's Portrait (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Headless Skeleton (Skinner), in PD Goth
- Werewolves of Detroit (Skinner), in PD Goth

Essays, Histories, Other Nonfiction:
- Yes, Virginia, There IS a Santa Claus (Church)
- The First Battle of Bull Run (Beauregard)
- Different Degrees of Enjoyment Presented by the Contemplation of Nature (Humboldt)
- The United States Bill of Rights
- Prohibition (Swinnerton)
- Body-Painting of the Orinoco Indians (Humboldt)

Speeches:
- The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln)
- Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death! (Patrick Henry)
- Report on the Battle of Balaclava (Earl of Lucan)
- Tariffs or Taxation (Abraham Lincoln)
- We Shall Fight on the Beaches... (Winston Churchill)

Poetry:
- A Birthday (Rossetti)
- Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (Lindsay)
- A Channel Passage (Brooke)
- Against Indifference (Webb)
- Angler, The (Read)
- Anthem for Doomed Youth (Owen)
- A Nautical Ballad (Carryl)
- A Pinch of Salt (Graves)
- A Sad Case (Fawcett)
- At Broad Ripple (Riley)
- A Visit From St. Nicholas (Moore)
- Baby (MacDonald)
- Ballad of the Tempest (Fields)
- Beautiful Soup (Carroll)
- Betsey and I Are Out (Carleton)
- Birches (Frost)
- Briefless Barrister, The (Saxe)
- Business (Bierce)
- Catawba Wine (Longfellow)
- Chanson Automne (Verlaine) in French
- Chaos, The (Trenite)
- Choosing a Mast (Campbell)
- Concord Hymn (Emerson)
- Desert, The (Blind)
- Dover Beach (Arnold)
- Down the Bayou (Townsend)
- Dulce et Decorum Est (Owen)
- Epigramme (French) (Maynard)
- Face on the Barroom Floor, The (D'Arcy)
- Faults (Teasdale)
- Fetch, The (Shorter)
- Flatting-Mill, The (Cowper)
- Foreign Lands (Stevenson)
- Garden Fairies (Marston)
- Going Down Hill on a Bicycle (Beeching)
- Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The (Wallace)
- Heaven (Brooke)
- Hidden Gems (Wilcox)
- High Waving Heather (Bronte)
- History of a Life (Cornwall)
- Home (Bronte)
- House on the Hill, The (Robinson)
- House Where We Wed, The (Carleton)
- How Betsey and I Made Up (Carleton)
- In a Garden (Lowell)
- Incontrovertible Facts (anonymous)
- In the Long Run (Wilcox)
- In the Morning of Life (Moore)
- In the Rain (Story)
- I Saw the Sun at Midnight, Rising Red (Plunkett)
- It Couldn't Be Done (Guest)
- Jabberwocky (Carroll)
- Jazz Fantasia (Sandburg)
- Je Ne Scai Quoi (Whitehead)
- Jumblies, The (Lear)
- Kitty McCrae - A Galloping Rhyme (Boake)
- Kraken, The (Tennyson)
- Kubla Khan (Coleridge)
- Last Buccaneer, The (Macauley)
- Life (Bronte)
- Life (Raleigh)
- Lines on the Mermaid Tavern (Keats)
- Lines Written in Early Spring (Wordsworth)
- Little Homer's Slate (Field)
- Love (Coleridge)
- Lydia is Gone (Reese)
- Merlin and Vivien (Tennyson)
- Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, The (Longfellow)
- Mid-Ocean in War-Time (Kilmer)
- My Madonna (Service)
- Moon Is a Painter, The (Lindsay)
- Moth Terror (Casseres)
- Music on Christmas Morning (Bronte)
- My Heart and Lute (Moore)
- My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares (Tichborne)
- Nephelidia (Swinburne)
- Nippon (Noyes)
- October (Dunbar)
- Old Ireland (Whitman)
- Oh, No! Not Even When First We Loved (Moore)
- O, Southland! (Johnson)
- Phantom Wooer, The (Beddoes)
- Psalm 5 (Bible)
- Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, The (McGonagall)
- Recuerdo (Millay)
- Remembrance (Bronte)
- Retort (Dunbar)
- Richard Cory (Robinson)
- Robinson Crusoe's Story (Carryl)
- Santa Fe Trail, The (Lindsay)
- Sea Fever (Masefield)
- Secret, The (Monkhouse)
- Snow Song (Teasdale)
- Song (Behn)
-Song of the Kicking Horse (Fort)
- Song of the Shingle-Splitters (Kendall)
- Sonnet 43 (Browning)
- Sonnet 73 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
- Spell of the Yukon, The (Service)
- Sympathy (Dunbar)
- Through the Wood (Nesbitt)
- Ulysses (Tennyson)
- Up the Line (Carleton)
- Unconquered Dead, The (McCrae)
- Village Blacksmith, The (Longfellow)
- Velvet Shoes (Wylie)
- War Is Kind (Crane)
- Wasteland, The (Eliot)
- When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies (Bulwer-Lytton)
- When We Two Parted (Byron)
- When You Are Old (Yeats)
- Who Loves the Rain (Shaw)
- You Are Old, Father William (Carroll)

TWO MILLION

 A very large thanks goes out to my listenership - here at the end of February 2011 the total downloads for my 56 LibriVox solo books stand at just over 2,011,000.  The first of these books came out on March 30, 2006, not quite five years ago (in fact, I passed my fifth anniversary with LV earlier this month). And this occurs two years to the day after I celebrated the first million!

When I heard the LibriVox spot on National Public Radio that caused me to register, I certainly never thought I would be ruminating in this fashion in the future. I just knew that reading books out loud was something I liked to do and considered myself pretty good at.

I had taken an early retirement just four months earlier, and I'd thought I'd finally find time to sit down and write books.  It didn't turn out that way! Reading someone else's books appealed to my lazy side.  Although I still write up story ideas for my file when they occur to me, I haven't yet gotten around to trying to be an author.  Quite frankly - I'm having too much fun!

I'm hoping as a result of this success to ease into professional narration. I have three books out now, from three different publishers, and a fourth just cleared my desk.  I recognize there is a large gap between someone being willing to pay to hear me narrate a book, and downloading LibriVox's free material. On the plus side, I'll generally be reading much more modern books. And I've had a lot of practice by now at the art.

If you're reading this page, you have probably listened to at least something I've narrated. I hope I've entertained you.  Thank you for listening!

Enough Summaries!

I've decided to stop printing the summaries of my books.  They're all there on Archive.org where the download links are.

New Solo Summaries -

Nightmare Abbey, by Thomas Love Peacock

Deep in the fens of the British coast sits the gloomy mansion that goes by the name Nightmare Abbey. It is inhabited by persons of very low opinion of the human race, and in fact they pride themselves in the depths of their detestation. Others of its denizens believe the ultimate exercise and product of the human mind ought to be chaos.
Now let the young master of the house get snared by the wiles of a beautiful young lady. And for good measure, toss in another beautiful young lady. Now Scythrop (named in honor of an ancestor who became bored with life and hanged himself) is about to find that two such make too much of a good thing!
Peacock wrote Nightmare Abbey as a satire, and he has folded in allusions to or quotations from literally dozens of other works. He makes use of many long, impressive-sounding words (some of which he very possibly made up!). Ignore these and his occasional Latin phrase, treat the rest as a farce, and you’re on track for a fun listen!

The Magnificent Ambersons, by Booth Tarkington

In a world where a gentleman’s life is defined more “by being, rather than by doing,” a family’s reputation can be compromised if it is not guarded carefully, and the sole heir of the Amberson family is proving himself to be a difficult person. Expected by the family to carry on its proud traditions, George Amberson Minafer is trusted implicitly. But though rich relatives provide the elegant suits, the handsome young man who wears them is filled with little but appearances. And this happens in spite of, or perhaps, because of, his mother’s selfless love that places him above her own happiness.

As George’s uncle perceptively remarks, “life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks.” With the new automobile industry transforming fortunes and coal heat transforming city air into sooty clouds, anything that stands still is apt to be run over, or at least begrimed.

What is magnificent about the Ambersons is their faithful reliance on old money and old ways in a world changing rapidly around them. Or perhaps it is the magnificence of the train-wreck created when George’s relatives, with the best intentions, shield him from the new realities and defer to all his wishes.

Booth Tarkington’s most popular novel, “The Magnificent Ambersons”, will continue to draw readers for its well-crafted portraits of what existed for just a short while – the MidWestern aristocracy.

More Solo Books - (update July 19)

"Triplanetary" by "Doc" E.E. Smith. Completed July 19.

“Doc” E.E. Smith pretty much invented the space opera genre, and Triplanetary is a good and well-known example. Physics, time, and politics never stand in the way of a plot that gallops ahead without letup.
Having earned a PhD in chemical engineering, it’s understandable that the heroes of Smith’s story are all scientists. He didn’t want to be constrained by the limits of known science, however, so in his hands the electromagnetic spectrum becomes a raw material to be molded into ever-more amazing and lethal forms, and the speed of light is no bar to traveling through the interstellar void.
Come enjoy this story of yesteryear, set in tomorrow, where real women ignite love at a glance, real men achieve in days what governments manage in decades, and aliens are an ever-present threat to Life-As-We-Know-It!

"The Man in the Iron Mask" by Alexandre Dumas, pere. Completed Mar 3.

In this, the last of the Three Musketeers novels, Dumas builds on the true story of a mysterious prisoner held incognito in the French penal system, forced to wear a mask when seen by any but his jailer or his valet. If you have skipped the novels between The Three Musketeers and this, a few notes will bring you into the story:

On one side – Aramis, now a bishop and secretly the Captain-General of the Jesuit Order, who believes he has found a path to a higher honor – the papacy. Monsieur Fouquet, the vastly rich minister of finance, Aramis’ ally. Philippe, the identical twin of King Louis XIV, who grew up in ignorance of his pedigree, and whose surrogate parents were murdered on the king’s order and himself sent into the notorious Paris prison, the Bastille, there held in solitary confinement.

On the other side – King Louis XIV, selected as the twin who would be king by his mother, and who intends that his brother will never challenge him. Monsieur Colbert, first minister, who is jealous of Fouquet and plots his downfall.

Unaligned and in danger of collateral damage – d’Artagnan, now captain of the King’s Musketeers and so the king’s chief defender, who suspects plots running beneath the surface and who is trying to unearth them. Athos, now the Comte (Count) de la Fer and one of the most respected noblemen of France. Raoul, Athos’ son and vicomte (viscount), desperately in love with Mademoiselle de la Valliere, who the king has taken as his mistress. Porthos, grown extremely stout and happy as the Baron du Vallon.

Aramis discovers the hidden Philippe and hatches a plot to substitute him for the sitting king, putting Louis in Philippe’s cell in the Bastille. This even succeeds… for a short while. But Aramis has not reckoned with a man whose loyalty to the throne exceeds his own welfare and who disastrously reverses the plot. Now it is time for the plotters to scurry to cover, there to figure some way to recover their lost ambitions.

"The House of the Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Completed April 13.

"The wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and... becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief."

Hawthorne's moral for "The House of the Seven Gables," taken from the Preface, accurately presages his story.The full weight of the gloomy mansion of the title seems to sit on the fortunes of the Pyncheon family. An ancestor took advantage of the Salem witch trials to wrest away the land whereon the house would be raised... but the land's owner, about to be executed as a wizard, cursed the Pyncheon family until such time as they should make restitution. Now, almost two centuries later, the family is in real distress. Hepzibah, an old maid and resident of the house, is forced by advanced poverty to open a shop in a part of the house. Her brother Clifford has just been released from prison after serving a thirty-year sentence for murder, and his mind struggles to maintain any kind of hold on reality. Cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is making himself odious by threatening to have Clifford committed to an institution. And after all these years, the deed to a vast tract of land, that would settle great wealth on the family, is still missing.

One bright ray of sunshine enters the house when cousin Phoebe arrives for an extended stay to allow unhappy matters in her end of the family to sort themselves out. While she lightens the lives of Hepzibah and Clifford, she also attracts the attention of a mysterious lodger named Holgrave, who has placed himself near the Pyncheon family for reasons that only come clear at the end of the story.

The real crisis arrives when the Judge, who strongly resembles the Colonel Pyncheon who built the house so many years ago, steps up his demands on Hepzibah and Clifford and unwittingly triggers the curse.

Made It!

Since discovering that Archive.org tracks downloads, I've checked my personal catalog of solo books twice a month.

Today I hit the goal I set myself then: my 32 books cumulatively have been downloaded 1,015,000 times!

At LibriVox, it's not about the numbers; it's about the audio liberation of books in the public domain. After all - the million downloads generated not one dollar in revenue! But as a reader, validation counts, and I will sit a little straighter in front of the microphone in consequence!

Yet Another Solo Summary:

Great Expectations -
This classic tale by Charles Dickens tells of an orphan, Pip, who through a series of strange circumstances first finds a trade as a blacksmith's apprentice and then learns that he has "great expectations" of a future inheritance from an anonymous benefactor. He soon learns to live the profligate life of a gentleman as he gradually sheds his associations with the gentle souls of his past, Joe (the blacksmith) and Biddy (a level-headed young lady). He throws his money at improving the prospects of his roommate and friend Herbert and his heart at an "ice princess" whose heart will never respond. But then an escaped convict from his distant past comes calling, and all Pip's hopes dissolve.

The Poison Belt (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) -
Three years after the events that took place in The Lost World (http://librivox.org/the-lost-world-by-sir-arthur-conan-doyle/), Professor Challenger urgently summons his fellow explorers (Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and reporter E.D. Malone) to a meeting. Oddly, he requires each to bring an oxygen cylinder with him.

What he soon informs them is that from astronomical data and just-received telegraphs of strange accidents on the other side of the world, he has deduced that the Earth is starting to move through a region of space containing something poisonous to humankind.

Shutting themselves tightly up in Challenger's house, they start to consider what may be done. But as their countrymen start to drop, will their oxygen last long enough to determine and implement a solution?

The Pathfinder (by James Fenimore Cooper) -
Natty Bumppo goes by many names: La Longue Carabine, Hawk Eye, Leatherstocking, and in this tale, The Pathfinder. Guide, scout, hunter, and when put to it, soldier, he also fills a lot of roles in pre-Revolution upstate New York. An old friend, Sergeant Dunham of the 55th Regiment of Foot, asks him to guide his daughter through the wilderness to the fort at Oswego where Dunham serves. With the French engaging native Indian allies against the British and the Yankee colonists, such a journey is far from safe.

Dunham has a plan in mind - to see his daughter Mable married off to the most redoubtable frontiersman and marksman in the territory, who is Pathfinder himself. But as an attractive and marriageable young lady, she draws other suitors. Then a military expedition contrives to put Sgt. Dunham, Mable, Pathfinder, and two other wooers into an isolated and dangerous garrison. Here treachery raises the stakes, and with the soldiers of the detachment shot down or captured, all of them must show mettle for any of them to escape with their scalps.

Tom Swift and His War Tank (by Victor Appleton) -
Tom Swift, that prolific youthful inventor, is engaged in trying to help the Allies win WWI. After reading newspaper accounts of the British tanks, Tom takes a sheet of paper and sets out to design a better one from scratch. And fortunately, he can throw the whole family business behind his venture.

He has two problems: First, his friends and acquaintances are questioning his patriotism because he hasn't enlisted as a rifleman for the front lines. Even his girl is worried his blood isn't true-blue. But that's because he is developing his tank in secret, and they don't know he's concentrating on winning the war the American way, with machines.

The second problem is that the German spies have penetrated the secret of what is being built in the high-security shop on the Swift property. And they will stop at nothing to steal its design - not kidnapping Tom, and not kidnapping the tank itself, complete with crew.

Tom and his buddies had better work fast, or the American riflemen are going to find the Kaiser's soldiers using American-designed tanks against them!

Down-load Up-date

Somewhen around October 2 my book-length solo readings totaled 28 titles and 750,000 downloads. Onward and upward!