Building all kinds of housing – nests, burrows, hives – is a major occupation throughout the animal kingdom. One of the biggest achievements of man in this art is certainly the high gothic style, described in detail by John Ruskin in The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

What to do when huddled together in a drafty cave? Talking of course. The step to singing is but a tiny one. How to do it properly, is taught in How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann, considered one of the best singers of her time.

No great voice? You can learn an instrument instead! Clumsy fingers? In that case, the last resort is to become a critic. In How to Appreciate Music, Gustav Kobbé explains all you’ll need for the job.

A well versed and highly dangerous critic hides behind the mask of The Phantom of the Opera. Read the famous novel by Gaston Leroux and glimpse behind the scenes of the theater at their artists and patrons.

Homer De Vere has worked as an actor for ages, but now his voice is failing. The solution for his family is quickly found in the new – silent – film industry. Laura Lee Hope describes in The Moving Picture Girls how they adjust to the new medium.

Paintings cannot move or change. Except for The Picture of Dorian Gray of course, which records every little transformation of its motive, who instead lives on in eternal beauty. Have fun with our dramatic reading of Oscar Wilde’s horror story; or listen to a German translation of it.

William Blake is known for his dark and scary paintings, but also for his Poems. This collection contains his Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Collecting famous paintings can be a very pricey hobby – and also a dangerous one. The lives of a nurse, a pawn shop owner and an art collector meet in The Pagan Madonna, an intriguing novel by Harold MacGrath, set in Shanghai.

Austria is where The Street of Seven Stars is located. Harmony studies violin to become a professional musician. When money runs out, Peter is determined to protect her. But who of them will have to sacrifice their passion? Find out in the love story by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Sarrasine, a young French sculptor, is also madly in love – with La Zambinella, an Italian singer. Honoré de Balzac describes the winding roads the youth is willing to travel in search for his art and his muse.

Enjoy – and be creative!

Henry Morgenthau was the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire 1913 – 1916. He was one of the first and most prominent people to speak out against the Armenian genocide, an account of which can be found in his book Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.

Tamburlaine the Great, a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe, is loosely based on the life of Timur the Lame. Its beginnings take us to Persia.

From there, we go straight to Kafiristan, a remote part of modern Afghanistan, where The Man Who Would be King is set. Two adventurers set up a scheme to become kings – if they succeed or not can be found out in the masterful story by Rudyard Kipling.

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His collection of essays Sadhana, the Realisation of Life, describes Indian culture, beliefs and philosophy from various points of view.

The first Anglo-Burmese War was fought over the control of northeastern India, and marked the beginning of the end of Burmese independence. On the Irrawaddy is a fictionalized account of the war, written by George A. Henty.

Probably the most famous account of Asian court life is Anna Leonowen’s book The English Governess at the Siamese Court. While a great success in the West, her memoir of six years with the Royal family is still deemed controversial in Thailand today.

Assume something terrible happens to you and all you want is to die – so you engage a hitman. But then you change your mind – and you have to get hold of the killer… This is essentially the plot of The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, a humorous adventure by Jules Verne. We also have a French version of this book.

China was only the end of a long journey that started in Siberia and led Ferdinand Ossendowski also through Mongolia on his escape from the Bolshevik Revolution. Beasts, Men and Gods – which were the most dangerous?

One Hundred Verses of Old Japan is a compilation of Japanese poetry by 12th century poet Fujiwara no Teika. It contains one poem each from 100 poets. It has been translated into many languages, but we also have the Japanese original.

Young Crisostomo Ibarra returns to the Philippines after studying in Europe. He expects to get married to his childhood sweetheart, but the wrath of the local curate stands in their way… Read Noli Me Tangere, the novel by José Rizal, which led to the country’s revolution – and to the death of the author.

Enjoy your travels – and send a postcard!

Arabella, The Female Quixote, is a truly mighty woman. After all, she can kill with a mere look! Or so she believes… Read the wonderful parody of “Don Quixote” by Charlotte Lennox, and who knows, maybe Arabella can be cured by her fiance?

Miss Sara Sampson has just eloped with Bellefont, who promised to marry her. Much to the dismay of her father, and to that of the former mistress of the unfaithful Bellefont. Listen to G. E. Lessing’s drama as a furious Marwood uses all female tricks to get her lover back.

In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening, the tables are turned: The female protagonist is the promiscuous one. Never before were the desires of a woman described so forthrightly, and the book promptly caused a scandal.

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin caused many scandals too: she was smoking and wearing trousers at a time women were not supposed to. And she was able to sustain herself as writer – The Devil’s Pool is one of here novels (also available in French) – but only by writing under the male pseudonym George Sand.

At least she grew up in a time when a formal education for women was not a complete taboo any longer. Until then, many a Woman in Science faced almost insurmountable obstacles, as described in their biographies through the centuries, collcted by John Augustine Zahm.

With education off the list, the next item was: voting. And, just as with abolition, the frontiers ran right through families, like in The Sturdy Oak, a novel in 14 chapters by just as many authors. It tells the story of a newlywed lawyer who is deadset against suffragists… until his wife discovers she might be one herself…

A somewhat more realistic description of the suffrage movement is Eighty Years and More, the memoirs of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the best known suffragists of the United States, who was at times also working in Great Britain.

Voltairine de Cleyre was an important leading figure in the American anarchist movement, and a renowned writer and poetess. Here, we put a selection of her Poems in the spotlight.

At this early time of women’s lib, women travelling the world alone slowly became more common. Go with Ida L. Pfeiffer on A Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt and Italy. The proceeds of this book funded her next adventure: Iceland.

If you don’t have a husband or children, and you’re neither intersted in politics nor in foreign lands, you are bound to become a grumpy, lonely woman, like The Third Miss Symons in F. M. Mayor’s story. Right?

Enjoy – and pamper yourself!

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_125.mp3)

Duration: 31m 14s

Multilingual Performances – Part Two of a Two-Part Series.

With contributions from Piotrek81, Nadine Eckert-Boulet, Leni, & Martin Geeson.

Teaser & Intro 0:00
Piotrek81 2:07
“The Ackerman Steppe” read by Piotrek81 in Polish & Algy Pug in English 5:00
Nadine Eckert-Boulet 7:10
Nadine reading “Un Matin” in French 11:32
Martin Geeson on being sampled by a musician and the continuing language-averseness of the British 13:02
Leni on recording in Latin 16:24
Martin Geeson on his strange motivation to record multilingually for LibriVox 17:43
Leni on the Multilingual collection of Poe’s “The Raven” 21:10
“The Raven” A Multilingual Collage 24:30
Conclusion and Outro 29:55

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To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
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Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
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Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on: Archive.org and archived shows for previous years can be found at: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_124.mp3)

Duration: 29m 17s

Multilingual Performances – Part One of a Two-Part Series.

With contributions from TriciaG, Karen Savage, Lars Rolander, Leni, Martin Geeson, and Kristin G.

Teaser & Introduction 0:00
TriciaG with non-English language catalog statistics 2:06
Karen Savage 3:22
Lars Rolander 5:49
Leni 12:16
Martin Geeson 18:39
Kristin 24:12
Outro 27:50

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To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcast

Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211

Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on: Archive.org and archived shows for previous years can be found at: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_123.mp3)

Duration: 25m 15s.

Dickens at 200

Charles Dickens – love him or hate him? Why is he still so popular 200 years after his birth?

With contributions from Lucy Perry, Martin Geeson and Andy Minter, and with readings from:

Mrs. Watkins-Tottle from Sketches by Boz read by David Lazarus (david lazarus)

Our Mutual Friend read by Mil Nicholson (mermaid)

Bleak House read by Cynthia Lyons (acrobatty)

Der Weihnachtsabend – Eine Geistergeschichte read by Elli (aravis)

Een Kerstlied in Proza read by Bart de Leeuw (bart)

Wigilja Bożego Narodzenia read by Nina Brown (NinaBrown)

Frauds on the Fairies in Charles Dickens 200th Anniversary Collection Vol. 1 read by NoelBadrian (due for release 7th February: Dickens’ 200th birthday)

Little Dorrit read by Ellis Christoff (eli_christoff).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcast

Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211

Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on: Archive.org and archived shows for previous years can be found at: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

Let’s start in the West, in lovely green Ireland, where Clodagh, daughter of The Gambler Dennis Asshlin fights for her family’s honor – by marrying the wrong man. Find out in Katherine Thurston’s novel whether she can escape the Asshlin curse by traveling Europe.

When thinking about Portugal, one is often not aware what great discoveries we owe to this seafaring nation. The Lusiads by Luis Vas de Camões, a national epic in poem form, tells mainly about Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India.

To France we owe the first Declaration of Human Rights – and several great novels about people falsely accused and imprisoned. Read the tragic – and real – story of Alfred Dreyfus, an innocent sent to exile in Five Years of my Life 1894 – 1899.

Further to the North we get to another seafaring country, The Netherlands. With about 25 % of the country below sea level, water in all forms is an important topic. What more so when the big prize for the ice skating race is a pair of silver skates! Will Hans Brinker in the story by Mary Mapes Dodge win the race?

Värmland, a province of Sweden, also has many lakes and rivers. Selma Lagerlöf was born there and her debut novel The Story of Gösta Berling about a defrocked priest weaves local stories about cavaliers enjoying cards, music and loveaffairs, into a whole.

The end of love and marriage, and how it came about – by murdering his wife – is told by the main character of The Kreutzer Sonata, Pozdnyshev. This novel by Leo Tolstoy caused international outcries – and was promptly censored in Russia.

Eyes like the Sea is a love story between an artist and a woman who eventually chooses another husband. But the ties between them were made with rubber, loose and tight at different times… Mór Jókai’s novel won the 1890 prize for literature of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Switzerland is famous for its mountains, and climbing them is no science, you think? It certainly is if you are the first to do so – like Edward Whymper who finally seized the peak of the Matterhorn in 1865. This and many other climbing expeditions are recalled in his book Scrambles among the Alps in the Years 1860 – 69.

Another impressive mountain lies on Sicily: Mount Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe. On the opposite side of the island, Luigi Pirandello was born, the third of so far six Italian Nobel Prize winners for literature. His most famous play is Six Characters in Search of an Author.

About 1400 islands and 80% of mountains combine to Greece, considered the true Old World and the cradle of modern civilization and democracy. Herodotus was one of the first people to write a travelogue, his Histories provide a fascinating record of numerous countries, their affairs and traditions in the 5th century BC.

Enjoy your travels – and send a postcard!

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_122.mp3)

Duration: 51m. 27s.

Part Two of a Two-Part Series on Performing in LibriVox Dramatic Works.

With contributions from Carol Box, Linny, Elizabeth Klett, Arielle Lipshaw, David Barnes, Ezwa, JemmaBlythe, Denny Sayers, Andy Minter, and Algy Pug.
 

Bob Gonzalez: Intro and Preview of the show 00:00
Carol Box (carolb) on her experience reading dramatic parts for LibriVox 01:02
Linny on The Orange-Yellow Diamond and dramatic adaptations of fiction 03:24
Bob Gonzalez on working with Elizabeth Klett and Arielle Lipshaw 06:41
Elizabeth Klett (gloriana) dispelling a scandalous rumor 11:09
Arielle Lipshaw (wildemoose) on her LibriVox dramatic experiences 14:39
Bob Gonzalez on Barks & Purrs by Colette-Willy 21:22
 

King Lear in a week

Bob Gonzalez Intro 25:32
David Barnes (earthcalling) on the origin of the project 25:54
Ezwa on playing the King of France 31:55
JemmaBlythe on playing Regan 33:34
Denny Sayers (DSayers) on playing the Earl of Kent 35:05
Andy Minter (ExEmGee) on playing King Lear 38:38
 

Bob Gonzalez on his suggestion to Algy Pug 42:32
Algy Pug on “Why Another Two Lears?” 43:55

Bob Gonzalez – Conclusion & Outro 49:59

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcast

Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211

Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on: Archive.org and archived shows for previous years can be found at: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_121.mp3)

Duration: 73m. 11s.

Part One of a two-part series on Dramatic Works on LibriVox.

Introduction. – 0:00

Availle reports on activity in the Dramatic Works Forum – 1:29

Interview with Kristin G: Part 1 – 4:55

Ezwa sings Shakespeare – 11:26

Interview with Liberty Stump: Part 1 – 13:11

Lucy Perry on short dramatic roles – 20:25

Interview with Amy Gramour: Part 1 – 22:11

Martin Geeson speaks – 29:52

Interview with ChyAnne – 36:02

Algy Pug on “How to get Noticed” – 40:04

Kristin G talks about Peer Gynt – 42:20

Interview with Liberty Stump: Part 2 – 53:28

Interview with Marty Kryz – 59:21

Interview with Amy Gramour: Part 2 – 66:46

Conclusion & Outro – 72:07

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

To Subscribe to the Librivox Community Podcast, go to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrivoxCommunityPodcast

Or hit this itunes link to get you to the subscribe page:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=203970211

Recent past LibriVox Community Podcast files can be found at our spot on: Archive.org and archived shows for previous years can be found at: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Archived shownotes for the Community Podcast can be found at:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/

And the rss feed for those shownotes is:
http://librivox.org/category/librivox-community-podcast/feed

New Year – New Resolutions, which are more often than not thrown out shortly after the Christmas decorations. But maybe the following 10 gems from our catalog help you keep them for longer this year.

Top Resolution #1 is doing less of stuff: drinking, smoking, eating… The successful treatment in the clinic of Charles B. Towns inspired one of his patients to set up Alcoholics Anonymous. Read the doctor’s book Habits that Handicap how addictions of any type come to pass and how to kick them.

Top Resolution #2 is doing more of stuff: exercising, reading, studying… The problem with this is usually a lack of time. But Arnold Bennett knows exactly How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and how to make the best of each one of them.

With all this time on your hands, you should certainly spend some of it on Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management. After all, you never know when you’ll have to wean a calf, cook dinner for 25 people or advise a new butler about his duties.

At least the latter is not a problem for the grandfather of Little Lord Fauntleroy, who also tries to teach real British manners to the young American boy. However, it soon becomes clear in the charming novel by Frances H. Burnett who is really the one in need of lessons.

Obviously, you cannot start such lessons early enough if you want them to stick. The Goop Directory by Gelett Burgess contains a number of little poems to teach the right behaviour to children.

Such lessons were certainly not taught to Harvey Cheyne, who ends up a rather spoilt brat. When he is swept overbord on the Atlantic, a group of fishermen save his life. Refusing him any further indulgences is what turns his life around, as can be read in Rudyard Kipling’s novel Captains Courageous.

Another life-turning experience is the one by little Tip. He receives a Bible and is encouraged to use it as a guiding light to turn around his naughty ways. Pansy’s book Tip Lewis and his Lamp tells you whether he succeeds or not.

Louisa May Alcott tells the story of the four March girls during the absence of their father in the civil war. We hear about their lives, their ambitions and sorrows on growing up to become Little Women.

We all change profoundly while growing up, but often we do not recognize this along the way. A barely fictionalized account of the coming of age of James Joyce is his highly acclaimed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

However you change, and whenever you do it, it’s best not to wait until the very end. Everyman can vouch for that, but not for having led a good life. Listen to our drama prodution to find out whether his friends help him through judgement.

Enjoy – and keep them resolutions!