The Classic Tales Podcasts and Audiobooks

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...

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 ...