Showing results by narrator "Phil Chenevert" in All Categories

I started to read a story once. It was a good one. There was in it not a single allusion to brandy-and-soda, or divorce, or the stock market. The dialogue crackled. The hero talked like a live man. It was a shipboard story, and the heroine was charming so long as she wore her heavy ulster. But along toward evening she blossomed forth in a yellow gown, with a scarlet poinsettia at her throat. I quit her cold. Nobody ever wore a scarlet poinsettia; or if they did, they couldn't wear it on a yellow gown.

A man returns to his home town from prison. He hopes to sneak in, pay a quick visit and vanish before people recognize him. But this may not be possible. What happens to a man's soul after years in prison? Ferber explores this poignant and sad subject in this story. But the ending is full of hope.

A researcher goes on an expedition to find "The Tablets of the Gods" which have plagued his dreams since his boyhood. He finds them, and the horrible truth of humanity's true purpose in the universe. This story, The Man Who Found Out is an example to me of pure cosmic horror in that the horror comes totally from knowledge which is (in-story) so terrible that it forever blights the minds of anyone who discovers it.

The story of Peter Pan, retold by Daniel O'Connor from the fairy play by Sir J. M. Barrie. O'Connor took the story from the original play, with the approval of Barrie, and shortened it into a book. This shorter story was published before Barrie wrote the longer novel Peter and Wendy, using the same plot and characters.

Who ever heard of a plain and downright homely heroine? Isn't a heroine by definition beautiful? Well, Edna Ferber, in her well known style that later produced Show Boat and Giant, tells us about just such a heroine in this special short story. It is special to me because of her insight into the deep courage and faith of 'ordinary' people, people like most of us. And of course our failings and frailties and sometimes, the prince does not marry the right person. Yep.

A poor queen with three beautiful daughters, but one is more beautiful than the others. She survives plots to kill them all, magic fairies, pirates and oh so much more make in this wonderful tale adapted from Hans Christian Andersen.

Henry Stanton’s 1922 book Sex: Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain English is intended as a frank (although consevative and moralistic) guide to human sexual behaviour and relationships. It is partly a self-help book, partly an attempt to relay the scientific knowledge of the day in relation to sex and reproduction in a way suitable for popular consumption.

An enchanted frog and his adventures with a beautiful princess - need I say more?

Lady Windermere's Fan is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs. Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. Or does she?

The well-known tale of the adventurous boy and what happens when he finds a magical lamp.

This story chronicles the adventures of a girl named Dorothy Gale in the Land of Oz. As Baum says in the introduction "It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out." And it succeeds wonderfully. It is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated.

Dorothy is swallowed by an earthquake! And that is just the start of Dorothy's adventures in this exciting and fun book. She and her kitten, Eureka, are on their way home and stop to visit a relative in California. But the earthquake opens the ground under their feet and everyone, including the horse and buggy and her cousin Zeb fall deep, deep into the Earth. Down there they find they can walk on air, but are attacked by the strange and dangerous vegetable creatures. But who should drop in but Dorothy's old friend the Wizard of Oz with nine tiny piglets!

The tale of the wonderful, magic goose that laid golden eggs and what the people around her did. A cautionary tale indeed!

This is the original story about a poor family that wished so earnestly for a child that the fairies heard them and answered with a tiny boy that could bathe in a teacup. Many adventures and scrapes indeed follow this tiny boy but in the end he finds the love of a beautiful tiny fairy.

This retelling of the old tale about the three bears who left their porridge to cool has some amusing twists and turns.

Wahb (meaning White Bear) is an orphaned Grizzly Bear who learns to respect his fears, fight for peace, and trust the healing powers of a stinky hot-spring. The story is aptly titled "The Biography of a Grizzly" because it is about the life of a Grizzly. Seton writes with a folksy tone that will enlighten children to the gore and war that Grizzly Bears endure.

This is the handwritten book that Carroll wrote for private use before being urged to develop it later into Alice in Wonderland. It was meant to entertain his family and friends. When a sick child in a hospital enjoyed it so much, the mother wrote him saying it had distracted her for a bit from her pain and led eventually to Carroll expanding the story.

Orthodoxy has become a classic of Christian apologetics. In the book's preface Chesterton states the purpose is to "attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it." In it, Chesterton presents an original view of the Christian religion. He sees it as the answer to natural human needs, the "answer to a riddle" in his own words, and not simply as an arbitrary truth received from somewhere outside the boundaries of human experience.

The Brave Tin Soldier, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier is a classic Andersen tale about a toy soldier with only one leg. His love of the aloof ballerina leads into many adventures where his bravery is tested severely but he always remains brave and steadfast.

Everyone knows the story of the Headless Horseman but perhaps you, like me, did not remember what a marvelous story teller Washington Irving was. He observed human nature closely and, like any good humorist, lets us laugh at our own silly and superstitious sides through the joy of having strangers be the ones to display them. If you, like me, have only vague and muddy memories of this story, you owe it to yourself to listen and laugh along with the rest of the world.