Jack London's The Call of The Wild - Free Release Through The Classic Tales Podcast

By -
This week, we embark on a five week journey with Buck, a St. Bernard Scotch-Collie who begins life as a happy pet and through bad luck and careless men, ends up as an Alaskan sled dog.  This is one of  Jack London's most beloved books, The Call of the Wild.  London got his inspiration from a hard year he spent living in the Yukon, where he gathered material for many of his books.

This book has always been popular.  It was immediately well received by critics and earned London a place in the canon of the great American novel.  You probably read it as a kid when you were in school.  If you have a kid, s/he's probably brought it home (or will soon).  And I'm sure you loved it, and so does your kid.

It is my theory that the reason that book has been in the school syllabus for the past 50 years or so, is that it is such a wild ride, such a great read.  It helps teachers to instil a love of literature in youngsters who are also dealing with harder books, like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, or Golding's Lord of the Flies.  I remember thinking, if the Call of the Wild is so good, chances are that the rest of them are also worth reading.  So I gave myself some extra time and patience and I haven't stopped reading since.  Let's think of this as a gateway book!

There is only one problem, you probably can't remember why you loved it so much.  The details don't stick to your brain as well as you'd like.  But you are in luck!  B.J. Harrison is bringing it to you via the podcast, or better yet, the Classic Tales App!  Listen to it with your family, maybe as you travel during these last wonderful weeks of Summer vacation!

Regrettably, I can't think of a good movie version of this book.  Most of them have been turned into happy-go-lucky stories or excuses for handsome men to meet beautiful women (I rather like this movie, but it has little to do with the book).  So if you know of a good one, leave it in the comments, will you?

If you enjoyed this title, why don't you check out "The Unexpected," and "To Build a Fire," both by Jack London.

So, to paraphrase B.J., let's join him, and together, discover the greatest stories the world has ever known!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Download The Classic Tales Direct to iOS devices!

By -
Image
I love The Classic Tales, but I only have an iPad. I’m on the road, and I’d like to download an audiobook for the ride home. Does this sound familiar? Now, with a little help from some friends, you can download any title from The Classic Tales website without a computer. Let’s face it, iPads, iPhones and iPods are great, right? But when it comes to audiobooks and music, Apple doesn’t like you to get your stuff from anywhere else. And so if you try to download an mp3 file, or an m4b audiobook file while using Safari on your iOS device, it will start streaming it in a window. No download options available. Nope. And even if you could download it, iTunes won’t recognize it. Now, with a little finagling, we can set it up so that you can buy an audiobook from The Classic Tales website , download it and play it on your iPad, iPhone or other iOS device. These are the two things we’ve got to do: Download the file and Play it. Now, to do this, we need to pick up a couple apps at t...
Read more

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare

By -
Image
The latest production of The Classic Tales Podcast is an episodic presentation of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare – a miniseries in 5 episodes. Hamlet has been my favorite play for many, many years and if I had to point to one work of literature that has turned my casual pursuit of books into a passion for the classics, this is it. When I was a teenager, and a junior in high school, I wanted to take it easy. So, instead of enrolling in Honors English 2, as I could have, I thought I’d take the year off , essentially, and enrolled in the “lower grade” English class. This was a profound misstep. While my friends were reading Great Expectations , I was reading Cold, Sassy Tree . When they studied Shakespeare, I read Mrs. Mike . I have no one to blame but myself, I’m afraid. For my elective reading, I chose Hamlet, and it literally changed my life. I memorized the soliloquies and performed them in drama class. I watched the film productions of Derek Jacobi, Kenneth ...
Read more

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, from The Arabian Nights - free release through The Classic Tales Podcast

By -
Image
The Arabian Nights originated in the oral folk tales originating from India, Persia (Iran), Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey among others. The original manuscript is now lost, consisting of a ninth-century text translated into Persian called Hazar Afsanah (A Thousand Tales). By the end of the thirteenth century, the principal tales were compiled and written down. The book’s Arabic title means Thousand and One Nights . Over the years, the collections anonymous editors added new tales to justify the title. The French scholar Antoine Galland was the man instrumental in bringing the tales to Western Culture, releasing his collection of Arabian Tales in 1704. The text used for the Classic Tales Podcast releases of the Arabian Nights tales are an English translation by H.W. Dulken, which is based on Galland’s sweeping translation. There are several other remarkable translations to date, perhaps the most notable being Sir Richard Burton’s translation (1885-1888) . The Burton tra...
Read more