Mark's Librivox Activity

2011 Was a Good Year...

2012-01-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2012-01-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

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.

2012-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

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)

2011-02-28T17:53:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-06-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-13T19:17:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-05-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-02-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-05T17:42:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-10-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

Down-load Up-date

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

2008-08-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

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).

2008-05-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-03-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

More Solo Book Completions -

Sense and Sensibility - by Jane Austen

This is a story of the English moneyed class and its eternal struggle for creating "sense and sensibility" in its world. A potential marriage prospect must make "sense" by bringing with it enough assets and income to permit the couple to continue to live in happy, idle leisure, complete with servants and a prestigious address. Provided one can find such a match among the eligible persons of the opposite sex, one then hopes for "sensibility", or capacity for emotion, so that if love is not immediately to hand, it might come around later. And while these gentlemen and ladies make their hopeful pirouettes in the social eye, they must of course adhere to all the forms of civility.

Jane Austen writes of the family of a gentleman named Dashwood who dies and leaves most of his fortune to his son, with the understanding that he will "look out for" his mother and three sisters. When that son marries a grasping woman who convinces him that his sisters' funds are suitable to their needs and so require no contributions from his inherited fortune, the sisters are left to play the game of "Sense and Sensibility" in earnest.

But all's not fair in love. Carefully prepared "attachments" can and do go awry when gentlemen find other young women of greater fortunes than the Dashwood sisters. So, will they marry for love? Or money? Or perhaps, not at all?

The Lone Star Ranger - by Zane Grey

Buck Duane, son of a famous gunfighter, falls prey to the old problem - called out by a cowboy who wants to make trouble, Duane kills him and then must ride off to the lawless country near the Neuces River to escape being arrested and perhaps, hanged. His brief encounter with deadly gunplay has ignited a deep urging to repeat the adrenaline rush but is tempered by ghosts that haunt his sleep. He only dares to release his inner demon when he is taking down an outlaw who is particularly known for his brutality.

He develops a reputation for killing the most notorious Texas outlaws, which draws an unexpected interest: a captain of the Texas Rangers offers him a pardon and a ranger's badge if he will infiltrate the gang of the shadowy figure known as "Cheseldine" who wields vast power in West Texas, and make it possible for the Rangers to break the gang's hold on the region's towns. Duane accepts, never guessing in his wildest nightmares that he would sniff out this Cheseldine, his hideouts, his lieutenants... and fall in love with his daughter!

2008-01-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

A Quarter-Million Reads!

Today the download counters at Archive.org totaled up just over 250,000 downloads of the fifteen solo books I've recorded for LV!

Onward and Upward!

2008-01-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

LV Update

Just completed: The Master of the World (Jules Verne)

Chief Inspector Strock gets the tough cases. When a volcano suddenly appears to threaten mountain towns of North Carolina amid the non-volcanic Blue Ridge Mountains, Strock is posted to determine the danger. When an automobile race in Wisconsin is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of a vehicle traveling at multiples of the top speed of the entrants, Strock is consulted. When an odd-shaped boat is sighted moving at impossible speeds off the New England coast, Stock and his boss begin to wonder if the incidents are related. And when Strock gets a hand-lettered note warning him to abandon his investigation, on pain of death, he is intrigued rather than deterred.

Set in a period when gasoline engines were in their infancy and automobiles were rare, and when even Chief Inspectors had to engage a carriage and horses to move about, the appearance of a vehicle that can move at astounding speeds on land, on water - and as later revealed, underwater and through the air - marks a technological advance far beyond the reach of nations. It is technology invented by and for the sole benefit of a man who styles himself (with some justification) "The Master of the World."

December 28: Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates (Mary Mapes Dodge)

With thanks to my friend Ans Winks of Maastricht, The Netherlands, for help with Dutch pronunciation!

The Brinkers are a poor but stoic family under a dark cloud - Raff, the man of the house, fell from the dikes while reinforcing them during a bad storm, and for ten years he has been in a vegetative state. With no steady income, the family's lot is grinding poverty. Despite their unfortunate circumstances, Hans and Gretel are cheerful children, yet always attentive to the needs of their mother and their present-but-not-really-there father. Their social standing is very low, but they both attract firm friends, even among the gentry, for their honesty, industry, and good-heartedness.

Then a glorious skating race is proposed for the town of Broek, with the prize a pair of silver skates for both the winning boy and girl. In the weeks leading up to the race, we follow the adventures of five of the local boys who are showing a visiting relative from England the sights of the Netherlands. Hans improbably meets the one man who might be able to heal his father, and somehow Hans finds a way to afford some skates so that he and Gretel can enter the race.

November 11: The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Imagine a strange, tropical place that is almost inaccessible. Time appears to have stood still there. Species of animal and plant life not seen elsewhere on Earth, except in the fossil record, inhabit the place. The lakes heave with the shapes of huge grey bulks moving under the surface. The woods are places where chittering cries move about above your head, as powerful apes move swiftly in the canopy of leaves. Then, a tree splinters nearby, and a dinosaur steps out from his hiding place... and he's eyeing YOU.

Jurassic Park? Not quite. The Lost World was an inspiration for Jurassic Park; in fact, a character in J.P. has the same name as one of the chief characters in The Lost World. It also inspired King Kong. But this is the original! Four adventurers go off to find the place shown in a dead man's sketch book - they find a war between apes and Indians, prowling dinosaurs, a sparkly treasure hidden in the blue clay - they find the Lost World. And because of the treachery of a native guide, their means of escape is destroyed!

Other Works -

I'm thrilled that LV has finally finished The Three Musketeers! This was probably the first work I contributed to at LV after I joined 23 months ago. For some reason, a lot of chapters were claimed and then dropped, and I responded to two (?) calls for readers to pick up "orphaned" chapters. I ended up reading 11 of the 68 chapters, so I've taken quite a personal interest in this collaborative effort!

For poetry, short stories, and chapters in other collaborative efforts, see the main listing, which I've updated. You will see my body of work in science fiction has grown. Solos include Star Born, Greylorn, The First Men in the Moon, and The Master of the World - all read since the beginning of October. Cori Samuel, an LV admin, and I discussed creating collections of science fiction short stories - and she took on the project. The third collection is halfway done. I have a couple of stories among them.

2007-11-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

More Book Completions!

The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells
Britain won the Moon Race! Decades before Neal Armstrong took his "giant leap for mankind" two intrepid adventurers from Lympne, England, journeyed there using.not a rocket, but an antigravity coating.
Mr. Bedford, who narrates the tale, tells of how he fell in with eccentric inventor Mr. Cavor, grew to believe in his researches, helped him build a sphere for traveling in space, and then partnered with him in an expedition to the Moon.
What they found was fantastic! There was not only air and water, but the Moon was honeycombed with caverns and tunnels in which lived an advanced civilization of insect-like beings. While Bedford is frightened by them and bolts home, Cavor stays and is treated with great respect.
So why didn't Armstrong and later astronauts find the evidence of all this? Well, according to broadcasts by Cavor over the newly-discovered radio technology, he told the Selenites too much about mankind, and apparently, they removed the welcome mat!

Greylorn by Keith Laumer
Commander Greylorn has a problem. No, actually he has two of them. It’s not enough that the remaining residents of Earth have pinned their last hope of salvation on him and his mission. He has to find a colony that presumedly was established at an unknown star two centuries before and beg their help. But first, he has the small matter of a mutiny on board his starship, and people are trying to kill him!
Written in an era when radios used vacuum tubes, the scientific component of the story is quaint and dated. But Laumer makes the centerpiece of his tale the retelling of how, four years out on the voyage, his crew decides it wants to give up and go home when it meets an alien race… that apparently breeds humans in captivity as food animals!
Beating the aliens, shanghaiing the crew, finding the colony and saving Mother Earth - just the ingredients for a rattling good yarn!

Star Born by Andre Norton
Andre Norton's "Star Born" pictures a human colony in another galaxy, driven away from Earth generations ago by a repressive government. Considered outlaws, the colonists are in permanent hiding.
They have developed friendship and cooperation with a local race of "mermen" who are equally at home on land or sea. But that race only took to the sea to escape a malevolent power that hunted them and killed them violently for sport - Those Others.
With a global decline in the population and reach of Those Others, contacts are few and the humans have no direct knowlege of them. So it is a major surprise when Dalgard, a human scout on his coming-of-age expedition, along with his "knife-brother" Sssuri of the mermen, run into a party of Those Others who are bent on reclaiming hideous weaponries left behind in one of their abandoned cities... and find that they are being aided by new arrivals from Earth!

2007-09-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

A Big Milestone!

Somewhen around September 10, my solo books on LibriVox totalled 100,000 downloads!

2007-09-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Considering

My reading of the First Battle of Bull Run has generated 1500 downloads, leading me to think there is interest in the Civil War that LibriVox is not currently tapping. I have available a lot of public domain literature for the Civil War, including the 4- volume "Battles & Leaders of the Civil War" (from which the First Battle of Bull Run was taken). I have recorded Mosby's and Robertson's accounts of how Jeb Stuart did or did not fail General Lee before Gettysburg, and I'm thinking of adding Mosby's 50-page account of Stuart's campaign to make a package on the Confederate cavalry and Gettysburg.

That led me to discover that "Mosby's Memoirs" which I read about a year ago, is PD and therefore a candidate for LibriVox. But I have so many books lined up now, that would be down the road a piece.

If anyone reading this is a Civil War buff and wants to weigh in, follow the link at left to my LibriVox recordings, and then PM (private message) or email me. My LV handle is "Kaffen."

2007-09-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

New Book Completions -

"New Discoveries at Jamestown"
The site of the first permanent English colony in America (now 400 years old) has been studied archeologically for the last century. The items, rare or common, left behind by the early settlers give a window into their lives. Imagine having to pack up to move to a new home in a foreign land - to a wilderness, no less, where you will build your own house, grow or catch your own food, and have to deal with potentially hostile peoples. What do you take? What do you make when you get there? When you start to count all the utensils, tools, crockery, clothes, weapons, and toys to be found in even an 18th century village, you suddenly arrive at a new sense of what civilization looks like. This is an account of the findings at Jamestown, in a well-organized account that puts everything in the context of what it takes to make a colony.

"Tarzan of the Apes"
Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a long string of Tarzan books, of which this was the first. His account of the son of an English lord, bereft as a newborn by the death of his parents and adopted into a tribe of apes, hit a vein of interest with the reading public. In this book, Tarzan teaches himself the use of primitive weapons which help him survive the African jungle and even learns to decipher written English from books his parents left behind. But when a new party of adventurers (coincidentally including his own cousin) is marooned in the same place, he must choose to remain a creature of the jungle, or accept the realization that he is human and move into their world. His instinctive, but not understood feelings for a beautiful American girl in the party decide him. "Me Tarzan, you Jane!"

2007-01-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

Finished -
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Well, most people have heard about this story, even if they haven't read it; it is one of the most endearing and enduring American tales of the last 150 years.
I'm targeting completion by August 25, although I hope to beat that date substantially. (Catalogued July 12!)

Finished -
How to Live On Twenty-Four Hours a Day, by Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett knew a "rat race" when he saw one. Every day, his fellow white-collar Londoners followed the same old routine. And they routinely decried the sameness in their lives.
So Bennett set out to explain how to inject new enthusiasm into living. In this delightful little work, he taught his fellow sufferers how to set time apart for improving their lives. Yes, he assured them, it could be done. Yes, if you want to feel connected with the world, instead of endlessly pacing the treadmill (or, "exceeding your programme", as he called it), you must do so.
Bennett believed that learning to discern cause and effect in the world would give his readers an endless source of enjoyment and satisfaction. Instead of only being able to discuss what they had heard, they could graduate to what they thought... and lift themselves completely from the deadening influence of a day at the office.

Finished -

The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne

A story of castaways, similar to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, this 568 page book details the escape from Civil War-era Richmond, Virginia, of five Northern men who dared to go aloft in a balloon in the midst of a hurricane. Deposited on a lonely island in the Pacific, they make do with Yankee ingenuity where Chance has left them nothing. Only later do they find they have a hidden benefactor: Captain Nemo, of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, who resides, alone, secretly on the island. In time, the tiny colony becomes so prosperous that it is able to rescue another castaway from an island hundreds of miles away. But all their work will come to naught - their island's volcano is about to awake!

2007-01-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

Periodic Updates

I will occasionally update the list of published LibriVox works. The list is now updated to March 25, 2008.

LibriVox has instituted an internal catalog for their readers, which contain links to each actual work! Follow the link at left to see Mark's!

2006-11-27T10:09:00.000-08:00

Mark's chief hobby in retirement in publishing on LibriVox. Here is a summary of his completed work to date:

Updated May 19, 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)

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
- 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

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)
- Richard Cory (Robinson)
- Robinson Crusoe's Story (Carryl)
- The Santa Fe Trail (Lindsay)
- Sea Fever (Masefield)
- The Secret (Monkhouse)
- Snow Song (Teasdale)
- Song (Behn)
- 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)