Persuasion - Jane Austen

Blazed Trail Stories and Stories Of The Wild Life by Stewart Edward White.

Thirteen short stories by a popular writer of the early 20th century (not to be confused with an earlier book Blazed Trail). White's books were popular at a time when America was losing its vanishing wilderness. He was a keen observer of the beauties of nature and human nature, yet could render them in a plain-spoken style. Based on his own experience, whether writing camping journals or Westerns, he included pithy and fun details about cabin-building, canoeing, logging, gold-hunting, and guns and fishing and hunting. He also interviewed people who had been involved in the fur trade, the California gold rush and other pioneers which provided him with details that give his novels verisimilitude. He salted in humor and sympathy for colorful characters such as canny Indian guides and "greenhorn" campers who carried too much gear.

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Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Jacob's Room (version 2) by Virginia Woolf.

Largely from the comments of others we come to know the sequence and some moments of Jacob’s life but we never fully learn who Jacob is. The literary experimentation in Jacob’s Room is used even more successfully in Woolf’s later novels.

Featured on Persuasion - Jane Austen.

Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).

This episode includes AI-generated content.

When Knights Were Bold by Eva March Tappan.

This book is in no degree an attempt to relate the involved and intricate history of the Middle Ages. Its plan is, rather, to present pictures of the manner of life and habits of thought of the people who lived between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. Our writings and our everyday conversation are full of their phrases and of allusions to their ideas. Many of our thoughts and feelings and instincts, of our very follies and superstitions, have descended to us from them. To become better acquainted with them is to explain ourselves.

Featured on Persuasion - Jane Austen.

Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Art of Story-Telling, with nearly half a hundred stories by Julia Darrow Cowles.

In preparing this book the author has sought to awaken a keener perception and a higher appreciation of the artistic and ethical value of story-telling; to simplify some of its problems; to emphasize the true delight which the story-teller may share with her hearers; and to present fresh material which answers to the test of being good in substance as well as in literary form.

Featured on Persuasion - Jane Austen.

Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).

This episode includes AI-generated content.

Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton.

Wharton miraculously finds it possible to satirize the very rich while simultaneously showing compassion and even grudging admiration for some of her victims. Every character she introduces is vividly depicted, no matter how minor. Yet for all the clarity of these depictions, the lives these people live, though busy, are empty and meaningless. The novel is a brilliant description of evasion and inauthenticity.

Featured on Persuasion - Jane Austen.

Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).

This episode includes AI-generated content.