Charles Dickens – Page 8

The Penguin Podcast, the new podcasting arm of …

The Penguin Podcast, the new podcasting arm of Penguin Books UK and has decided to give a Christmas gift to everyone! They’ve started posting Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the unabridged audiobook as podiobook-like podcast instalments! The first of five episodes presenting the classic Christmas ghost story starts today. They will only be available until January 3rd 2005 so start grabbing it now for FREE now!

A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story Of Christmas
By Charles Dickens; Read by Geoffrey Palmer
5 MP3s – Approx. 3 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Penguin Podcast
Podcast: Dec 15th 2005 to January 3rd 2006
Themes: / Fantasy / Christmas / Ghosts / Victorian /

Ebenezer Scrooge, whose name is now synonymous with greed and parsimony, believes Christmas to be ‘humbug’. Refusing to donate any of his fortune to the poor, he comforts himself by saying, ‘I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.’ But then the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley, returns from the grave to haunt him. Dragging a long and heavy chain, representing his many sins, Marley sends down the three spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future to warn Scrooge against a similar fate…

posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Scary Stories with Alan Maitland by Various

Scary Stories with Alan Maitland
By various; Performed By Alan Maitland
1 Cassette – 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: CBC Radio
Published: 2002
ISBN: 0660187825
Themes: / Horror / Classics / Family / Short Stories /

Alan Maitland is a veteran Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcaster, who reads seven classic horror stories and poems here. The cassette makes for quality family listening, and Maitland reads with energy and enjoyment.

My favorite of the group is The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s true that I’ve read it several times and have heard it performed a couple of other times, but still – I enjoy it every time, and did again here. The heart beats below the floorboards, and Maitland helps us feel it.

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes is a classic poem. I know it best from Loreena McKennitt’s musical version, and it was interesting to hear the poem read aloud.

Other stories and poems included on the 1 hour cassette: Goblins Who Stole a Sexton by Charles Dickens, The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service, The Witches’ Convention and Reunion of the Night Creatures by Rose Robert, and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.

The whole recording had a sort of Ray Bradbury feel to it, but that could be because I identify Bradbury so strongly with Halloween. This audio would be a worthwhile and appropriate purchase for family listening.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Happy Holidays everyone! SFFAudio won’t post till…

SFFaudio News

Happy Holidays everyone! SFFAudio won’t post till the new year, probably on January 3rd. We wish everyone a peaceful holiday season!

Until then…

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Chapter 1 – Marley’s Ghost

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail… -MORE-

Posted by Scott D. Danielson