Reviews and other ponderings
When reading, one bit I knew by heart was the disclaimer. (aside: how many other words are only negative, and don’t work as positives? Uncouth, perhaps?)Anyway, I signaled my membership of the Gordon Mackenzie Appreciation Society by spelling out the ‘.org’ of the URL, but my accent prevented me from indicating an allegience to the [...]
Well – my tiny contribution to the vast Librivox project is complete and catalogued (here), as part of the March Madness drive to complete as many projects as possible. I found the whole process both harder and easier than I expected. Firstly, one day after volunteering, my three-year-old lad passed on a lousy head cold, [...]
I am listening to Moby Dick at the moment, and am enjoying it thoroughly. I was always a little intimidated of this book in the past, but am finding it to be very accessible and enjoyable. This makes me wonder – what put me off reading it for so long?It seems there are a list [...]
Well, the day has finally arrived – I have volunteered to read a chapter for Librivox. I am rather nervous about this, and deliberately offered to read a long overdue chapter, in the half-hope I would be refused. I was, initially, but then I was given the job. Eek.This is where the all-comers-are-welcome approach really [...]
Get it here.I was introduced to Trollope by Librivox, last year, when I listened to ‘The Warden’, the first of the ‘Barsetshire’ novels. ‘Barchester Towers’ is the second, and I was following its progress through the recording process with interest, having enjoyed the first so much. This one is a very different book, and is [...]
Of course, another author with a high regard for the value of a unit of currency, was Jane Austen. During her lifetime genteel women could not work, and could only inherit or marry it. And genteel men had very limited ways of earning a living as well: the law, the church, the army (which would [...]
I posted a while ago that Tolstoy seemed to think the profit motive to be an evil one, and that writers generally look down on money making as beneath them, and I have been pleasantly surprised by Trollope’s acknowledgment of money, as having a place in the motivations of even (otherwise) decent people.I was gratified, [...]
One of the great problems for a modern reader of nineteenth century fiction, is that the characters use terms to describe everyday things which we no longer have. I remember reading Jane Austen and being amazed by the number of names they seemed to have for horse drawn carriages. It is a shame that wikipedia [...]
Get it hereThis is just the sort of book I would never have read if it were not free. I wouldn’t take the risk on a book that, on the face of it, is not really my cup of tea. The great thing about LibriVox, and project Gutenberg, is that you get introduced to authors [...]