Greener Than You Think - audiobook
Ward MOORE (1908 - 1973)
Do remember reading a panic-mongering news story a while back about genetically engineered "Frankengrass" "escaping" from the golf course where it had been planted? That news story was foreshadowed decades previously in the form of prophetic fiction wherein a pushy salesman, a cash-strapped scientist, and a clump of crabgrass accidentally merge forces with apocalyptic consequences. A triple-genre combo of science fiction, horror, and satire, Read more [...]
Category: Satire
Aphorisms audiobook
Oscar WILDE (1854 - 1900) and David P. ABBOTT (1863 - 1934)
In 1894, Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) published two collections of aphorisms: "A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated", in the Saturday Review newspaper, and Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young", in the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon. By turns witty, intellectual, counter-intuitive and obtruse, the collections came to be seen by many as emblematic of Wilde's style, and countless collections Read more [...]
The Big Bow Mystery audiobook
Israel ZANGWILL (1864 - 1926)
It's a cold and foggy night in London. A man is horribly murdered in his bedroom, the door locked and bolted on the inside. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement. Detective fiction afficionados will be happy to learn that all the evidence to solve the case is provided. One Read more [...]
Crome Yellow audiobook
Aldous HUXLEY (1894 - 1963)
Crome Yellow, published in 1921 was Aldous Huxley's first novel. In it he satirizes the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story of a house party at 'Crome' where there is a gathering of bright young things. We hear some of the history of the house from Henry Wimbush, its owner and self appointed historian; Apocylapse is prophesied, virginity is lost, and inspirational aphorisms are gained in a trance. Our hero, Denis, tries to capture Read more [...]
Mansfield Park audiobook
by Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Mansfield Park features Austen's frailest and perhaps most scrupulous heroine, Fannie Price. As the eldest daughter in a poor family, Fannie is sent to rich relatives when she's just old enough to fully appreciate the shame of her circumstances. Without pride or prejudice, Fanny sticks to principles in all matters. And matters certainly put her to the test. (Summary by Anita) (FULL Audiobook)
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Pride and Prejudice audiobook
Jane AUSTEN (1775 - 1817)
Jane Austen's classic novel chronicles the events in the lives of the Bennet family. Take a family with five unmarried daughters and a lack of wealth, throw in a new wealthy neighbor or two, plus a whole regiment of soldiers in town, and add a heaping spoonful of pride and a pinch of prejudice. Mix it all together and you get a story full of tears and laughter, embarrassment and pride, and, of course, love. (Summary by Annie Coleman)
Genre(s): Read more [...]
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
by Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.
The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem Read more [...]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow audiobook
by Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome. It was the author's second published book and helped establish him as a leading English humorist. The book consists of 14 independent articles arranged by themes. (Summary from Wikipedia) audiobook
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Crome Yellow audiobook
by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Crome Yellow, published in 1921 was Aldous Huxley's first novel. In it he satirizes the fads and fashions of the time. It is the witty story of a house party at 'Crome' where there is a gathering of bright young things. We hear some of the history of the house from Henry Wimbush, its owner and self appointed historian; Apocylapse is prophesied, virginity is lost, and inspirational aphorisms are gained in a trance. Our hero, Denis, tries to capture Read more [...]
Penguin Island audiobook
by Anatole France (1844-1924). Translated by A.W. Evans.
The novel (original French title — L'?le des Pingouins) is a satire on human nature. The first publication was in 1908. These penguins are mistaken for humans by the 97-year-old priest, Father Mael, because of his bad eyesight. He baptizes them, and once baptized, they have no choice but to become human. They take on human traits (build civilizations, go to war, etc.). The book is very funny and powerful. (Summary Read more [...]
Erewhon audiobook
by Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Erewhon, or Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as the word Nowhere backwards, even though the letters "h" and "w" are transposed. It is likely that he did this to protect himself Read more [...]
The Devil's Dictionary audiobook
by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Ambrose Bierce (1842 -- 1914?), satirist, critic, poet, short story writer and journalist. His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour. In the Devil's Dictionary, he let his sense of humour and his cynical outlook on life colour a collection of dictionary-like definitions. (Summary by Peter)
The Devil's Dictionary
The Cynic's Word Book
Author(s)
Ambrose Read more [...]
Don Quixote audiobook
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). Translated by John Ormsby (1829-1895).
This is volume 1 of 2.
Don Quixote is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story in the character of the Morisco historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli, whom he claims to have hired to translate the story from an Arabic manuscript he found in Toledo's bedraggled old Jewish quarter.
The protagonist, Alonso Quixano, Read more [...]
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer audiobook
by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (published 1876) is a very well-known and popular story concerning American youth. Mark Twain's lively tale of the scrapes and adventures of boyhood is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, where Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have the kinds of adventures many boys can imagine: racing bugs during class, impressing girls, especially Becky Thatcher, with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting Read more [...]
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn audiobook
by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River, and its sober and often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
The book has been popular with young readers Read more [...]
Gulliver's Travels audiobook
by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), officially Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, is a novel by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is widely considered Swift's magnum opus and is his most celebrated work, as well as one of the indisputable classics of English literature. (Summary from Wikipedia)
Gulliver's Travels
First Read more [...]
The Girl with the Golden Eyes (FULL Audio Book)
by Honor? de Balzac (1799-1850)
Translated by Ellen Marriage (1865-1946)
"Give me a feast such as men give when they love," she said, "and whilst I sleep, slay me..."
Listeners who like to plunge straight into a story would do well to skip the lengthy preamble. Here, Balzac the virtuoso satirist depicts the levels of Parisian society as a version of the Inferno of Dante - but perhaps keeps the reader waiting too long for the first act of his Read more [...]
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman, living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.
In this reading, Librivox volunteers Read more [...]
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (Audio Book)
by Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It was published in 1893--1894 by Century Magazine in seven installments, and is a detective story with some racial themes. The plot of this novel is a detective story, in which a series of identities — the judge's murderer, Tom, Chambers — must be sorted out. This structure highlights the problem of identity and one's ability to determine one's own identity. Broader issues of identity are the central ideas of this Read more [...]
Babbitt (Audio Book)
by Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Sinclair Lewis' George F. Babbitt is a complicated and conflicted character. When you think you have his next move figured out he surprises you. As you begin to like him, he does something to evoke the "what a rat" response.
Male menopause wasn't a pre Great Depression term, but I would say George has all the symptoms. At a pudgy balding forty six he looks at his life, wife, family and business. He sees himself as a pretty successful business Read more [...]