Non-Dramatized Fiction

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2024 JUNE 3
Chapter 88 - Schools and Schoolmasters

2023 AUGUST 20
Chapter 87 - The Grand Armada

2023 JANUARY 30
Chapter 86 - The Tail

2022 DECEMBER 2
Chapter 85 - The Fountain

2022 JUNE 21
Chapter 84 - Pitchpoling

2022 APRIL 29
Chapter 83 - Jonah Historically Regarded

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The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Loyal Books

Originally written for his young daughter Josephine, who died tragically aged six, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling is a collection of short stories which were published separately in magazines before being compiled into a book. The stories are in the form of fables, where animals communicate and speak to each other as humans do and the purpose of each story was to convey a moral or message to the reader. Modern readers would be more familiar with the Disney animated version in which Mowgli the little “man-cub” is raised by wolves. As he grows, he is trained by denizens of the jungle like Bagheera the panther, Baloo the bear and Kaa the snake. The dreaded tiger Sher Khan is a diabolical villain, feared by all. However, the book is quite different from the Disney film which tends to romanticize some of the characters and demonize others! The original Jungle Book includes the delightful Riki Tiki Tavi tales about a valiant and clever mongoose who protects his friends from the dangerous snakes of the jungle. Contrary to the film version again, only a few of the stories are about Mowgli. What strikes the reader is the sense of wonder and magic that Kipling evokes in these stories about the mysterious jungle and its inhabitants. The writer's brilliant skills with the English language are another feature that makes the book such a reading pleasure. Interspersed with delightful poems, this is indeed the perfect choice for a read-aloud with your kids! First published in book form in 1894, the original edition contained beautiful illustrations by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling, an artist and art teacher who spent much of his career in India. It was here that Kipling first heard Indian folk tales and was inspired to recreate his versions of them for his own children. The Jungle Book also gained a great reputation for being a “moral story” and Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts movement requested permission from Kipling to use many of the book's situations and characters as motivational resources. The leader of a Scout pack was dubbed “Akela” after the warrior wolf of the Free People as wolves are called in the Jungle Book. Kipling was a journalist who covered several wars like the Boer War in South Africa. His extensive body of work includes the famous Just So Stories, Kim and several volumes of short stories, articles, essays and poetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and till date, remains the youngest to have won the prestigious award. Today, though his reputation stands dimmed as he is seen as one of the “prophets of Imperialism” the magic of his words cannot be denied. The Jungle Book is a classic that indeed belongs on every bookshelf!

2017 NOVEMBER 4
01 - Mowgli's Brothers (part 1)

2017 NOVEMBER 3
02 - Mowgli's Brothers (part 2) + Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack

2017 NOVEMBER 2
03 - Kaa's Hunting (part 1)

2017 NOVEMBER 1
04 - Kaa's Hunting (part 2) + Road-Song of the Bandar-Log

2017 OCTOBER 31
05 - Tiger! Tiger! (part 1)

2017 OCTOBER 30
06 - "Tiger! Tiger!" (part 2) + Mowgli's Song

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Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

Loyal Books

Ben-Hur is a story of two very different heroes. Judah Ben-Hur, a prince of Jerusalem, is involved in an accident to the Roman procurator which is taken to be intentional. He is seized and sent to the fleet as a galley-slave, while his family is imprisoned and the family goods confiscated. When Ben-Hur saves the fleet captain from drowning after his ship is sunk in a fight with pirates, that officer adopts him as son and heir. With Roman training, Ben-Hur distinguishes himself in the arena and the palistrae and appears to be on the way to high military command.With the help of a faithful family retainer and a generous Arab sheik, Ben-Hur is enabled to take part in a widely touted chariot race, where one of the other charioteers is the boyhood friend who connived to punish him for the accident and split his estate. That rival is crippled, financially and bodily, in a no-holds-barred race (memorable from the 1959 movie with Charlton Heston).Ben-Hur turns his attention to the prophesied King of the Jews, when through the sheik he meets Balthasar, one of the Three Wise Men, and hears of the child born years ago. Will Ben-Hur be the general who brings victories to the King, and finally liberates Israel from the oppressive Roman yoke? In his quest for the answer, Ben-Hur seeks out the Nazarene, now rumored to be The Messiah.THAT hero needs no introduction.Curious about the lack of kingly trappings and ambitions about this man, Ben-Hur begins to suspect that his kingdom is not of this world. And with him, we receive a gut-wrenching eye-witness view of Jesus’ arrest, humiliation, and crucifixion.

2017 NOVEMBER 2
1-01

2017 NOVEMBER 1
1-02

2017 OCTOBER 31
1-03

2017 OCTOBER 30
1-04

2017 OCTOBER 29
1-05

2017 OCTOBER 28
1-06

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Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Loyal Books

This story opens with a lovely, poor and proud young woman who lives with her aunt. The young woman saves the life of a farmer who subsequently falls in love with her. However, the young woman inherits a fortune and moves away. On the flip side the farmer loses everything he has and travels around the country seeking employment. One evening the farmer helps to put out a blazing fire in a lonely farm. When the veiled owner comes out to thank him, he discovers that she is none other than the beautiful woman who once rejected him and moved away. Thomas Hardy was brought up in rural Dorset and was the son of a humble stonemason. He suffered from life long ill health and was schooled at home till he was sixteen. He then trained to be an architect and began writing poetry. He wrote his first novel The Poor Man and The Lady in 1867 but met with little success. Hardy destroyed the manuscript and worked on two others which were published but anonymously. In 1873, he published A Pair of Blue Eyes, to which he put his own name and this book was relatively more successful. In fact the term, “cliff-hanger” which refers to stories in which the reader is left in suspense till the next chapter originated with the book which originally appeared in serial form in a magazine. Far From the Madding Crowd was Hardy's fourth novel and gave him his first taste of literary and commercial success. It also laid the foundation for several themes that Hardy would continue to use. The concept of Wessex itself was an important Hardy motif in which he contrasts the rural setting against a rapidly industrializing urban England. In many of his novels, his characters are unable to stem the flow of events. The effects of overwhelming passion, women's rights, society's constraints and demands which clash with individual wants and desires, are some of the themes explored in his work. The beautiful and proud Bathsheba Everdene, Gabriel Oak, the man who loves her, the rich, lonely and strait laced William Boldwood, the dashing and debonair Sergeant Troy, the tragic Fanny Robin are all memorable characters who make Far From the Madding Crowd an absorbing and thought provoking read.

2017 NOVEMBER 2
Preface

2017 NOVEMBER 1
Chapter 01

2017 OCTOBER 31
Chapter 02

2017 OCTOBER 30
Chapter 03

2017 OCTOBER 29
Chapter 04

2017 OCTOBER 28
Chapter 05

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2023 MAY 1
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 58: Author’s Preface and Introduces All the Rest

2022 MAY 16
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 57: An Old Acquaintance Is Recognised . . . And Dotheboys Hall Breaks Up For Ever and Conclusion

2022 MAY 12
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 56: Ralph Makes One Last Appointment—and Keeps It and The Brothers Cheeryble Make Various Declarations For Themselves And Others

2022 MAY 9
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 55: Wherein Nicholas And His Sister Forfeit The Good Opinion Of All Worldly And Prudent People and Ralph Makes One Last Appointment—and Keeps It

2022 MAY 5
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 54: The Dangers Thicken, And The Worst Is Told

2022 MAY 2
GSMC Audiobook Series: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby Episode 53: The Plots Begin To Fail, And Doubts And Dangers To Disturb The Plotter

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2022 JULY 8
Chapter 41 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

2022 JULY 8
Chapter 40 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

2022 JULY 8
Chapter 39 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

2022 JULY 8
Chapter 38 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

2022 JULY 8
Chapter 37 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

2022 JULY 8
Chapter 36 - Middlemarch - George Eliot

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2023 OCTOBER 14
Chapter23 | Destination

2023 AUGUST 29
#22.5 | The Pilgrims Digress: Enchantment

2023 JULY 6
Chapter 22 | Enchantment

2023 JUNE 8
#21.5 | The Pilgrims Digress: ch. 21

2023 MAY 25
Chapter 21 | Discourse and Discipline

2023 APRIL 28
#20.5 | Pilgrims Digress: Ch.20

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Paradise Lost by John Milton

Loyal Books

Magnificent in its scale and scope, this monumental poem by the blind poet John Milton was the first epic conceived in the English language. It describes an omniscient, all powerful God, the Fall of Man, the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, the disgraced angel who later becomes known as Satan, the Angelic Wars fought by Archangels Michael and Raphael and the Son of God who is the real hero of this saga. The poet John Milton was more than sixty years old when he embarked on this immense work of literary creation. His father was a wealthy merchant who had embraced Protestantism despite opposition from his Catholic family. Milton grew up in a privileged environment, having been schooled at home by private tutors and traveling extensively throughout Italy. It was here that he first read Virgil and Homer and decided to create his own epic in English. Tumultuous historical events intervened, like the English Civil War and the establishment of Puritan Rule. Milton was deeply embroiled in politics and the new parliament. When the monarchy was restored, Milton found himself on the wrong side and he retreated into hiding where he began working on his dream of creating an epic to match the best in Latin and Greek. He completed it after five years of tremendous effort, since he was already totally blind when he began working. The entire work, consisting of nearly ten thousand individual lines of blank verse was dictated by Milton from memory, to a series of scribes. Paradise Lost consists of twelve smaller volumes divided into Books. Each one is devoted to a particular Biblical episode. It begins with a prologue that describes the subject of the epic, much like an introduction. The action shifts to the rebellion of Lucifer and from then on, to familiar episodes like the temptation of Adam and Eve and their disobedience to God's laws. Satan and his unholy legions are described in great detail as are their rebellion and malevolence. Adam and Eve, God and the Son of God are portrayed in brilliant, unforgettable lines and the conflict between the forces of good and evil is represented on a cosmic scale. For lovers of poetry and literature, Paradise Lost represents a seminal work of supreme importance in English literature. Present-day readers will certainly find it fascinating to decode the multitude of classical references, Biblical lore, social and cultural themes that adorn this great work.

2017 NOVEMBER 1
Paradise Lost: 01 – Book One, Part 1

2017 OCTOBER 31
Paradise Lost: 02 – Book One, Part 2

2017 OCTOBER 30
Paradise Lost: 03 – Book Two, Part 1

2017 OCTOBER 29
Paradise Lost: 04 – Book Two, Part 2

2017 OCTOBER 28
Paradise Lost: 05 – Book Three, Part 1

2017 OCTOBER 27
Paradise Lost: 06 – Book Three, Part 2

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A Little Princess

Frances Hodgson Burnett

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 19: Anne

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 18: "I Tried Not to Be"

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 17: "It Is the Child"

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 16: The Visitor

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 15: The Magic

2010 FEBRUARY 5
Chapter 14: What Melchisedec Heard and Saw

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