My summary of LibriVox work to date.

Updated June 24, 2009

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)

Solo Shorter 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

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

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
- 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"
- 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, My Faith Looks Up to Thee (Sung with Karen Savage)
- Science and Hypothesis (Poincare), Chapter 9 (Relative & Absolute Motion), Chapter 13 (The Calculus of Probabilities)
- Le Morte D'Arthur (Malory), Chapter 42
- In Search of the Castaways (Verne), Chapters 25 & 26
- Nostromo (Conrad), Chapter 2
- Ivanhoe (Scott), Chapter 31
- 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

Short Stories:
- The Hoard of the Gibbelins (Dunsany)
- The War Prayer (Twain)
- Bread Overhead! (Leiber)
- The Wogglebug Book (Baum)
- All All the Earth a Grave (MacApp)
- Gambler World (Laumer)

Essays, Histories:
- 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

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:
- Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight (Lindsay)
- Against Indifference (Webb)
- Anthem for Doomed Youth (Owen)
- A Nautical Ballad (Carryl)
- A Pinch of Salt (Graves)
- Baby (MacDonald)
- Beautiful Soup (Carroll)
- Betsey and I Are Out (Carleton)
- Catawba Wine (Longfellow)
- The Chaos (Trenite)
- Concord Hymn (Emerson)
- Dover Beach (Arnold)
- Dulce et Decorum Est (Owen)
- Epigramme (French) (Maynard)
- The Face on the Barroom Floor (D'Arcy)
- The Fetch (Shorter)
- Foreign Lands (Stevenson)
- Garden Fairies (Marston)
- The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (Wallace)
- Heaven (Brooke)
- High Waving Heather (Bronte)
- Home (Bronte)
- The House on the Hill (Robinson)
- How Betsey and I Made Up (Carleton)
- In a Garden (Lowell)
- Incontrovertible Facts (anonymous)
- I Saw the Sun at Midnight, Rising Red (Plunkett)
- Jabberwocky (Carroll)
- Jazz Fantasia (Sandburg)
- Je Ne Scai Quoi (Whitehead)
- The Jumblies (Lear)
- Kitty McCrae - A Galloping Rhyme (Boake)
- The Kraken (Tennyson)
- Kubla Khan (Coleridge)
- Life (Bronte)
- Lines Written in Early Spring (Wordsworth)
- Love (Coleridge)
- Merlin and Vivien (Tennyson)
- The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (Longfellow)
- My Madonna (Service)
- The Moon Is a Painter (Lindsay)
- My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares (Tichborne)
- Nephelidia (Swinburne)
- Nippon (Noyes)
- October (Dunbar)
- O, Southland! (Johnson)
- The Phantom Wooer (Beddoes)
- Psalm 5 (Bible)
- The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay (McGonagall)
- Recuerdo (Millay)
- Remembrance (Bronte)
- Richard Cory (Robinson)
- Robinson Crusoe's Story (Carryl)
- The Santa Fe Trail (Lindsay)
- Sea Fever (Masefield)
- The Secret (Monkhouse)
- Snow Song (Teasdale)
- Song (Behn)
- Song of the Shingle-Splitters (Kendall)
- Sonnet 43 (Browning)
- Sonnet 73 (Shakespeare)
- Sonnet 116 (Shakespeare)
- Sympathy (Dunbar)
- The Village Blacksmith (Longfellow)
- Ulysses (Tennyson)
- The Unconquered Dead (McCrae)
- The Village Blacksmith (Longfellow)
- War Is Kind (Crane)
- The Wasteland (Eliot)
- When Stars Are in the Quiet Skies (Bulwer-Lytton)
- When We Two Parted (Byron)
- Who Loves the Rain (Shaw)
- You Are Old, Father William (Carroll)

My Reading Plans

I'm finding my original plan too challenging to maintain pace. First, there's spiffing up the house (see home blog page) and then employment (again, see home page) taking chunks of time. So I'm a bit behind where I thought I'd be. Here's an update.

Now Reading:
"Ben-Hur" by Lew Wallace. Completion - June 21
Upcoming:
"Sons & Lovers" by D. H. Lawrence.
"The Magnificent Ambersons" by Booth Tarkenton.
"Triplanetary" by E.E. Smith.


This is in addition to poetry submissions, collaborative books, and dramatic books!

More Solo Books -

"The Man in the Iron Mask" by Alexandre Dumas, pere. Completed March 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!

Solo Book Update (get them on www.librivox.org)

Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest, by W. H. Hudson (Aug 20)

"Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest" is a narration of his life story by Abel, a Venezuelan, to a comrade. Once a wealthy young man, he meddled in politics to the extent of provoking a revolution... which failed.

Escaping into the tropical forests of Guyana Abel takes up gold hunting, then journal-writing, and fails at both. Now with no aim for his life, he drifts until he takes up residence with a remote Indian tribe. Soon he learns of a wood the Indians avoid, as it is inhabited by a dangerous Daughter of the Didi, who, they say, slew one of them with magic. The fellow was in fact hit with a poisoned dart by accident, but his dying belief that she had caught the dart and hurled it at him survived him.

Intrigued, Abel visits the wood repeatedly, and eventually encounters Rima. She indeed is something magical. She seems to have a pact with nature: animals don't molest her, she speaks in a melodious birdsong (as well as Spanish), and she even makes her garments of spider silk. When Abel is bitten by a venomous snake that acts protective of her, she and her "grandfather" Nuflo nurse Abel back to health.

Both Abel and Rima are wonderments to each other, someone unlike any other person they have ever encountered. They fall in love, a love that is stymied by Rima's inability to understand the feelings Abel creates in her. On a long trek to discover Rima's origins, they find that her unique people no longer exist, but they finally confront the magnetism that is drawing them together. Finally they find joy, and make plans... until Rima is murdered by the Indians.

And then it is time for vengeance!

Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Jul 31)

David Balfour, a lad of seventeen and newly orphaned, is directed to go and live with his rich uncle, the master of the estate of Shaws in the lowlands of Scotland near Edinburgh. His uncle, Ebenezer (as close a miser as Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge), is shocked to suddenly have his young relative descend on him and tries to rid himself of David with an arranged accident. Failing that, he pays the captain of a brig to kidnap David and sell him into slavery in Carolina.

A collision in the fog brings onboard the brig a survivor, Alan Breck Stewart, who is carrying a dangerous amount of gold on his person. David warns him of a plan by the brig's captain and crew to overpower him and seize the money, and then finds himself fighting alongside Alan in a battle royale. By good fortune, Alan is handy with a sword and they have access to the firearms locker, and the pair so completely defeat the crew that barely enough hands remain to sail her. Limping to port, she is holed by rocks, and David finds himself a castaway.

Being in Alan's presence continues to be a chancey business. David is talking to Colin Roy Campbell, the King's Factor who has been oppressing Alan's people, when the man is shot to death, and David is chased as an accomplice. The two "take to the heather" and barely survive near brushes with redcoats as they thread through the Trossachs and other highland ranges of Scotland. Only after an arduous weeks-long trek through territory where they are actively hunted do they emerge in the more settled districts around the river Forth, only to find guards upon the bridge. With no money remaining, they must somehow cross to Queensferry, find Ebenezer's lawyer, and lay claim to David's inheritance in order to send Alan safely on to France.

The Outline of Science, Vol. 1, by J. Arthur Thomson (Jul 3)

In The Outline of Science, Thomson gives us a window into scientific thinking as it stood in 1922 on the big, the little, and the biological. With straightforward language intended for a general audience, this book covers astronomy from the Solar System to the Milky Way, the submicroscopic makeup of matter from protons and electrons, and the evolution of simple living beings into the varied fauna of the world today. Thomson cites many examples that would have been familiar to his readers of the day and notes where scientific understanding leaves off and conjecture begins. He clearly shows how the accumulation of observation and experiment stacked up to form the body of knowledge reported in the book. For even the scientifically well-versed, there will be interesting nuggets, for investigation into how the world came to be as it was, was both wide and deep.

To a modern listener, what was not known may be as interesting as what was. With the 100-inch Mt. Wilson reflector the largest telescope in the world, the existence of galaxies outside the Milky Way was suspected but not confirmed. Neutrons, soon to become important in the field of nuclear energy and atomic bombs, were as yet unguessed-at, yet the prospect of liberating the immense energy of the atom was already a keen interest. Although the famous Michaelson-Morley experiment had already been seen as disproof of an all-pervading "ether" which facilitated the flow of energy across empty space, scientists still retained ether as a place-holder for properties they could measure but not explain - an approach very similar to the "dark matter" of modern cosmology.

Regardless of your personal sentiments on Darwin's theory of evolution, Thomson provides well-chosen examples that illustrate why this theory arose. He examines not only the fossil record but the evidences present in modern living beings that the process of evolution is by no means finished, but ongoing.

Even at that time, Thomson worried over the future of energy sources. He contemplated the exhaustion of the coal fields and indeed, the eventual exhaustion of all usable energy in the universe, foreshadowing our concept of entropy.

This book has been consistently among the "Top 100 E-Books" published by Project Gutenberg.

This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Jun 20)

Amory Blaine grew up in a wealthy family and was given an Ivy League education. Without a need to learn a profession, he chiefly dabbled in literature and partying. His school chums were of similar background, and the ideas they reflected to each other grew in their minds to be of the greatest importance. Amory began to think of himself as somewhat of a character in a Rupert Brooke poem (from which the book's title is taken).

World War I intervened in this happy fog and brought focus to some, doubt to others.

In the rapidly changing technology of the war era, the financial underpinnings of the Blaine fortune began to fall apart. The deaths of Amory's parents left the finances without a rudder and as Amory's situation deteriorated he came to realize he had only his interest in literature to fall back upon.

Meanwhile, a series of young women traipsed through his life, attracted to his handsome face and bright wit like moths to a candle. But Amory could never master the role of being a real person... and, one by one, they traipsed out.

This Side of Paradise was F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel and was one of the nation's most popular books in the year it was published. It has some definite parallels with Fitzgerald's own life, and is in some ways an autobiography.

The Point of Honor, by Joseph Conrad (May 18)

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, “The Point of Honor” (English title: “The Duel”) features two French Hussar officers, D’Hubert and Feraud. Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out struggle over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. At the beginning, Feraud is the one who jealously guards his honor and repeatedly demands satisfaction anew when a duelling encounter ends inconclusively; he aggressively pursues every opportunity to locate and duel his foe. As the story progresses, D’Hubert also finds himself caught up in the contest, unable to back down or walk away.
This Conrad short story evidently has its genesis in the real duels that two French Hussar officers fought in the Napoleonic era. Their names were Dupont and Fournier, which Conrad disguised slightly, changing Dupont into D’Hubert and Fournier into Feraud. In 1977, it was turned into a movie, “The Duellists”, starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel.

New Milestone!

Somewhen around May 6, downloads of my 21 solo books passed 500,000! It took only four months to reach this after hitting 250,000 in January (with 15 books in the catalog).

New Books on LibriVox

May 13 - The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby (Mosby)

This is not a work of fiction! These are the actual memoirs of a legendary leader of partisans who bedeviled the Union army for years, almost within sight of the capitol. With only a few local men under command, John Singleton Mosby's ability to strike fast and then melt away before an effective pursuit could be organized kept the Yankee forces awake and often snarled in knots. With daring feats like capturing a Yankee general out of his bed within his defended headquarters, Mosby made his name a synonym for guerrilla warfare. Even today you can purchase in Middleburg, Virginia, a map showing "Mosby's Confederacy."
The mettle of the man may be judged by the enemies he kept. Said General Joseph Hooker, "I may here state that while at Fairfax Court House my cavalry was reinforced by that of Major-General Stahel. The latter numbered 6,100 sabres. . . . The force opposed to them was Mosby's guerrillas, numbering about 200, and, if the reports of the newspapers were to be believed, this whole party was killed two or three times during the winter. From the time I took command of the army of the Potomac, there was no evidence that any force of the enemy, other than the above-named, was within 100 miles of Washington City; and yet the planks on the chain bridge were taken up at night the greater part of the winter and spring."
Mosby outraged many of his Southern admirers after the war when he publicly endorsed General U.S. Grant for President. After an appointment of U.S. Consul to Hong Kong and a 16-year career with the Southern Pacific Railroad, he came to Washington as an assistant attorney in the Department of Justice. Loyal to the end to his commander, J.E.B. Stuart, Mosby also answered accusations that Stuart's grandstanding cost Lee the battle of Gettysburg.

May 2 - Captains Courageous (Kipling)

Real men don't take guff from snotty kids. Neither does Disko Troop, skipper of the "We're Here", a fishing schooner out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, when his crew fishes Harvey Cheyne out of the Atlantic. There's no place on the Grand Banks for bystanders, so Harvey is press-ganged into service as a replacement for a man lost overboard and drowned. Harvey is heir to a vast fortune, but his rescuers believe none of what he tells them of his background. Disko won't take the boat to port until it is full of fish, so Harvey must settle in for a season at sea. Hard, dangerous work and performing it alongside a grab-bag of characters in close quarters is a life-changing experience.
And when Harvey at last is reunited with his parents, who have thought him dead for months, he must face the hard decisions of how he will allow his experience to change his life.

Apr 16 - Around the World in 80 Days (Verne)

Mysterious Phileas Fogg is a cool customer. A man of the most repetitious and punctual habit - with no apparent sense of adventure whatsoever - he gambles his considerable fortune that he can complete a journey around the world in just 80 days... immediately after a newspaper calculates the feat as just barely possible.
With his excitable French manservant in tow, Fogg undertakes the exercise immediately, with no preparations, trusting that his traveling funds will make up for delays along the way. But unbeknownst to him, British police are desperately seeking to arrest him for the theft of a huge sum by someone who resembles him, and they will track him around the world, if necessary, to apprehend him.
This is an adventure novel of the first water, with wholly unexpected perils, hair-breadth escapes, brilliant solutions to insoluble problems, and even a love story. And can this be? - That he returns to London just five minutes too late to win his wager and retain his fortune?

Mar 26 - Diary of a U-Boat Commander (King-Hall)

Captain Karl von Schenk of the Kaiser's Navy is a stereotypical German nobleman - supremely self-confident, touchy about the divisions of class and any infringement on his place. He thinks he is handsome, has a suitably manly physique, an excellent singing voice, and a facility with writing. His wartime service related in his diary is a series of triumphs over harrowing circumstances, bringing his boat back in spite of the best efforts of the Royal Navy to stop him.
His one vulnerability is a young lady he meets on leave in Bruges, Belgium. Although she is the trophy girlfriend of a German colonel who could cause him much harm if he were to find out, von Schenk pursues his Zoe with Teutonic straightforwardness. And both he and the reader are entirely blind-sided by the unexpected thunderclap that puts an end to the sweet affair.
Stephen King-Hall, a Royal Navy officer during the war and writing as "Etienne", penned this book as if he had simply discovered it on a surrendered submarine. In fact, some editions of the book list the author as "anonymous." King-Hall's knowlege of naval affairs lend authority to this yarn of men that go to the sea in ships that sink... on purpose.