Classic Audiobook Collection

Latest Episodes:

The Empire of Business by Andrew Carnegie ~ Full Audiobook [business] Jun 28, 2023

Show notes

The Empire of Business by Andrew Carnegie audiobook.

Genre: business

This collection of essays by Scottish-American steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie, gathered from various periodicals and first published in book form in 1902, provides insight into one of history’s richest and most notable entrepreneurs/philanthropists. Carnegie shares his outlook on the economic situation in America at the turn of the 20th century, the state of the US oil, coal, rail, and steel industries, the relationship between capital and labour, individualism vs. socialism, the public/private sector partnership, the upward climb of humanity into prosperity, the importance of land and population, trade and the best uses of tariffs, etc. He also discusses the personal rewards of hard work, integrity, thrift, how to accumulate wealth, cultivation of the lifelong reading habit, use of libraries, and other advice for achieving success. Included is one of his most famous little essays, 'The Three Legged Stool'

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:25:02) Chapter 02

(00:57:42) Chapter 03

(01:05:12) Chapter 04

(01:43:44) Chapter 05

(02:33:33) Chapter 06

(02:56:20) Chapter 07

(03:29:59) Chapter 08

(03:57:56) Chapter 09

(04:02:29) Chapter 10

(04:20:18) Chapter 11

(04:56:03) Chapter 12

(05:29:02) Chapter 13

(06:13:19) Chapter 14

(06:29:11) Chapter 15

(06:34:10) Chapter 16

(06:53:15) Chapter 17

(07:21:00) Chapter 18

(07:37:20) Chapter 19

(07:52:47) Chapter 20

(08:04:46) Chapter 21

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschlager ~ Full Audiobook [folklore] Jun 28, 2023

Show notes

Aladdin by Adam Oehlenschlager audiobook.

Genre: folklore

In Adam Oehlenschlager's Aladdin, the familiar tale from One Thousand and One Nights is reimagined as a sweeping dramatic poem, where street life, palace intrigue, and the unseen world of spirits collide. Aladdin is a handsome but aimless young man, a burden to his hardworking parents, until a mysterious stranger, the sorcerer Nureddin, draws him into a perilous expedition for a hidden treasure. Deep underground, Aladdin stumbles into a power that can reshape his fate: a wonder-working lamp, guarded by forces that do not serve human pride lightly. Back in the city, Aladdin is pulled toward the court of Sultan Soliman and the radiant Princess Gulnare, while rival ambitions tighten around the throne and a promised match threatens to close every door. Between the tenderness of home, the glitter of royal ceremony, and the temptations of sudden power, Aladdin must learn what kind of man he intends to become - and what it truly costs to command miracles.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 00

(00:11:10) Chapter 01

(01:00:10) Chapter 02

(01:45:06) Chapter 03

(02:27:47) Chapter 04

(03:00:11) Chapter 05

(03:46:42) Chapter 06

(04:21:20) Chapter 07

(05:17:21) Chapter 08

(05:55:57) Chapter 09

(06:44:39) Chapter 10

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare ~ Full Audiobook [poetry] Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

The Sonnets by William Shakespeare audiobook.

Genre: poetry

William Shakespeare's The Sonnets gathers 154 compact, emotionally charged poems that move from private confession to sharp social observation, tracing desire, time, art, and the complicated bonds that tie people together. The collection is often read as unfolding in intertwined sequences: many poems address a dazzling, often elusive young man whose beauty and promise seem threatened by change and mortality, while others turn toward a dark, captivating lover who inspires both craving and distrust. Across these shifting addresses, Shakespeare tests love's vocabulary at its limits - praise becomes accusation, devotion becomes rivalry, and longing becomes a debate with the clock. He wrestles with jealousy, betrayal, self-knowledge, and the fear that everything precious will fade, while also arguing for poetry's strange power to preserve a moment, a face, a feeling. Witty, sensual, and psychologically precise, these sonnets invite listeners to hear a living mind at work: turning a single problem again and again until it flashes with new meaning. Whether encountered as an intimate drama or a masterclass in language, The Sonnets remains a daring exploration of what we owe to beauty, truth, and one another.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:09:27) Chapter 02

(00:19:23) Chapter 03

(00:28:52) Chapter 04

(00:38:58) Chapter 05

(00:48:58) Chapter 06

(00:58:58) Chapter 07

(01:08:35) Chapter 08

(01:18:19) Chapter 09

(01:28:03) Chapter 10

(01:37:49) Chapter 11

(01:47:29) Chapter 12

(01:56:57) Chapter 13

(02:06:21) Chapter 14

(02:15:58) Chapter 15

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris ~ Full Audiobook [fantasy] Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris audiobook.

Genre: fantasy

The Wood beyond the World is a fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first modern fantasy writer to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. His use of archaic language has been seen by some modern readers as making his fiction difficult to read, but brings a wonderful atmosphere to the telling.

Morris considered his fantasies a revival of the medieval tradition of chivalrous romances. In consequence, they tend to have sprawling plots of strung-together adventures. In this story, Walter leaves his father and his own unfaithful wife and sets sail in search of adventure. This he finds aplenty, encountering love, treachery and magic in the Wood of the title and in travelling through the Mountains of the Folk of the Bears. But can he find happiness and peace by means of his Quest?

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:22:57) Chapter 02

(00:48:33) Chapter 03

(01:06:29) Chapter 04

(01:45:41) Chapter 05

(02:15:23) Chapter 06

(02:40:24) Chapter 07

(03:08:45) Chapter 08

(03:49:54) Chapter 09

(04:16:14) Chapter 10

(04:45:25) Chapter 11

(05:01:23) Chapter 12

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf audiobook.

Genre: drama

Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse invites listeners into the summer home of the Ramsay family on the Isle of Skye, where a simple plan to visit a distant lighthouse becomes a quiet measure of desire, disappointment, and devotion. At the center are Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay: he, a celebrated but anxious intellectual hungry for reassurance; she, luminous in her attention to others, holding the household together through warmth and tact. Around them gather their children and a circle of guests, including the painter Lily Briscoe, who struggles to make her vision real on canvas while resisting the pressures and judgments that surround her. As days pass and years press in, the promise of the lighthouse trip lingers like a question: what can be saved of a moment, a family, a work of art? Moving through shifting perspectives and sensations, Woolf traces how love and ambition, memory and time, shape the inner lives of ordinary people. The novel becomes an intimate exploration of consciousness and the fragile, persistent hope of reaching some fixed point beyond change.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:32:09) Chapter 02

(01:02:10) Chapter 03

(01:38:19) Chapter 04

(02:15:43) Chapter 05

(02:42:11) Chapter 06

(03:01:54) Chapter 07

(03:35:19) Chapter 08

(04:09:41) Chapter 09

(04:37:06) Chapter 10

(04:58:04) Chapter 11

(05:17:34) Chapter 12

(05:45:34) Chapter 13

(06:18:39) Chapter 14

(06:43:16) Chapter 15

(07:08:25) Chapter 16

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot ~ Full Audiobook [poetry] Jun 27, 2023

Show notes

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot audiobook.

Genre: poetry

First published in 1922, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is a landmark modernist poem that moves through a shattered cultural landscape after World War I, where memory, desire, faith, and daily survival collide. Told in a collage of shifting speakers and sudden scene changes, the poem drifts from crowded city streets and tense domestic rooms to ruined chapels and mythic shorelines, each fragment haunted by echoes of literature, religion, and legend. Eliot weaves together voices that sound intimate, overheard, and prophetic, creating a kind of dramatic chorus that asks what remains when shared meaning breaks apart. As images of drought and decay press against fleeting moments of tenderness, humor, and music, the poem becomes both an elegy for a depleted world and a restless search for renewal. Dense with allusion yet powered by raw atmosphere, The Waste Land invites listeners to surrender to its rhythm, follow its recurring symbols, and hear how the past keeps speaking through the present.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney ~ Full Audiobook [poetry] Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

Astrophil and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney audiobook.

Genre: poetry

In Astrophil and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney crafts a sparkling sequence of interlinked sonnets and songs that trace the inner life of Astrophil, a witty, self-aware courtier-poet whose name means 'star-lover.' From the opening lines, Astrophil sets himself a task: to turn feeling into verse so powerful it might move his beloved, Stella, to pity and perhaps to love. But poetry proves as troublesome as desire. As Astrophil praises Stella's beauty and virtue, he also wrestles with jealousy, frustration, pride, and the nagging fear that his own artistry is not enough. Each poem becomes a new attempt to argue his case, to interpret Stella's glances and silences, and to make sense of the moral tensions between sincere devotion and selfish want. Along the way, Sidney plays with the conventions of Renaissance love poetry - borrowing from and challenging them - while giving Astrophil a voice that shifts from playful to anguished, from confident rhetorical display to raw confession. The result is an intimate portrait of love as both inspiration and ordeal, where language is a battleground and the heart refuses easy resolution.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

(00:27:50) Chapter 2

(00:56:03) Chapter 3

(01:25:16) Chapter 4

(01:52:11) Chapter 5

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson ~ Full Audiobook [horror] Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

Olalla by Robert Louis Stevenson audiobook.

Genre: horror

In the rugged hills of northern Spain during the Peninsular War, a wounded British officer is sent to recuperate in a remote country house far from his regiment. What begins as a welcome refuge - quiet rooms, thick stone walls, and a physician's watchful care - soon turns unsettling as the household's secrets press in from every shadowed corridor. The officer encounters the family's stern caretaker and a noblewoman whose beauty and sorrow seem inseparable: Olalla. Drawn to her intelligence and strange reserve, he tries to understand the forces that keep her apart from ordinary life, even as the behavior of her relatives grows increasingly alarming. As his strength returns, so do his doubts, and he finds himself caught between compassion and self-preservation, between romantic yearning and a dawning fear that something in this lineage is profoundly wrong. Stevenson blends Gothic atmosphere with psychological tension, exploring themes of heredity, temptation, and the thin line between civilization and savagery. The result is a tightly wound tale of desire and dread, where one man's convalescence becomes a perilous awakening.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

(00:23:27) Chapter 2

(00:50:21) Chapter 3

(01:13:25) Chapter 4

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West audiobook.

Genre: drama

In the shadow of World War I, life at Baldry Court seems settled: Captain Chris Baldry is away at the front, his elegant wife Kitty maintains the routines of privilege, and Chris' cousin Jenny narrates from the quiet center of the household. Then Chris returns home - not as the man they remember, but as a soldier shaken by shell shock and missing years of his life. His memory has slipped back to an earlier time, erasing his marriage and the careful identity the family has built around him. The shock of his condition cracks open long-buried tensions: Kitty's polished control gives way to desperation, Jenny confronts her own unspoken devotion to Chris, and an unexpected figure from Chris' past arrives with a claim that cannot be ignored. As doctors, loved ones, and social expectations press for a cure, the women of Baldry Court must decide what 'recovery' really means - and what it may cost. Rebecca West's poignant, psychologically sharp novel explores the collisions between love and duty, class and authenticity, and the wounds war inflicts far beyond the battlefield.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 01

(00:27:57) Chapter 02

(00:57:47) Chapter 03

(01:12:45) Chapter 04

(01:46:46) Chapter 05

(02:11:50) Chapter 06

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis ~ Full Audiobook [drama] Jun 26, 2023

Show notes

Life in the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis audiobook.

Genre: drama

In a smoky industrial town where the furnaces never seem to cool, Life in the Iron Mills follows Hugh Wolfe, a weary mill hand whose days are measured in heat, soot, and exhaustion. Gifted with a sculptor's eye but trapped by poverty, Hugh works alongside his cousin Deborah, a quiet, fiercely devoted woman who endures long hours and constant hardship simply to stay near him. When a group of wealthy visitors tours the mill, their casual curiosity collides with the workers' relentless reality, and Hugh is briefly pulled into a world that can admire his talent without offering him a way out. As the gulf between classes becomes impossible to ignore, Hugh and Deborah face a tightening web of hunger, ambition, shame, and desperation. Told through a sharp, compassionate narrator who asks the listener to look closely at lives society prefers to overlook, this landmark realist novella confronts the human cost of industrial progress and the question of what becomes of genius when it is born in chains.

For ad-free listening try our premium subscription

Chapters (Approximate)

(00:00:00) Chapter 1

(00:26:21) Chapter 2

(00:56:00) Chapter 3

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices