The Classic Tales Podcasts and Audiobooks

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 ...

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...

Purchase the Podcast Release of Moby Dick here! I've realized that this is a book I've had to do for some years now, since it is one of the books that pops into people's heads when you hear the word "Classic" in its relation to fiction. It's one of those novels that everybody's heard of, and nobody ever reads. It's definitely no featherweight. When I first read Moby Dick, (I should say here that this is the first time I have actually "read" the book i.e. decoding the words mentally. I have listened to the audiobook twice before producing it.), I was struck by the fact that it felt like two books: a textbook and an adventure novel. Only now that I have had the opportunity of being deluged in the text has it hit me how inextricably connected is the plot with the expository information of whaling. Since we are now historically so distant from whaling, (or are we? The main ingredient of WD-40 is Fish Oil), the novel could almost be d...