Middlemarch - George Eliot - Audio Book

Middlemarch - George Eliot : Named for the fictional community in which it is set, Middlemarch is George Eliot's rich and teeming portrait of provincial life in Victorian England. In it, a panoply of complicated characters attempt to carry out their destinies against the various social expectations that accompany their class and gender.

At the center of the narrative is Dorothea Brooke, a thoughtful and idealistic young woman determined to make a difference with her life. Enamored of a man who she believes is setting this example, she traps herself into a loveless marriage. Her parallel is Tertius Lydgate, a young doctor from the city whose passionate ambition to spread the new science of medicine is complicated by his love for the wrong woman.

Epic in scope and unsurpassed in its study of human nature, Middlemarch is one of the greatest works in all of world literature.

What THEY said about it:

"One of the most profound, wise, and absorbing of English novelsand above all, truthful and forgiving about human behavior."--Hermione Lee

"One of the few English novels written for grown-up people."--Virginia Woolf

"No Victorian novel approaches Middlemarch in its width of reference, its intellectual power, or the imperturbable spaciousness of its narrative. No writer has ever represented the ambiguities of moral choice so fully."--V. S. Pritchett

Regrettably, I have nothing more to say about it apart that I totally agree with them !

The Arabian Nights - Sir Richard Burton - Audio Book

The Arabian Nights - Sir Richard Burton : Though The Arabian Nights are generally known as stories for children, they were originally tales for adults full of adventure, sexuality, violence and the supernatural.

They certainly inspired the imagination of Sir Richard Burton, the 19th century explorer, linguist and erotologist who brought all his worldly experience and a superbly expressive prose style to bear on the tales of Sindbad the Seaman and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Scheherazade must keep her king entertained with stories if she is to avoid the promised sentence of death.

The tales told are mainly of fantasy and love. The tales within the Arabian Nights are light hearted and amusing. More than half of the stories are of charming Princes whose wits are captivated by the beauty of Princesses and the end of such tale are of course "happy". I have to say that its difficult for me to distinguish between what is Arabic and what is Persian in these beautiful tales. It does'nt matter:I am just enjoying it !

Crucible, The - Arthur Miller - Audio Book

Crucible, The - Arthur Miller : Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. A community stands accused of witchcraft, and in the mood of fear and recrimination that quickly develops men denounce their neighbours, truth is perverted by superstition, and an innocent word or deed can be distorted
into damning evidence of guilt.

The voice of reason is drowned by the rising tide of hysteria as events acquire their own momentum and run out of control.

Drawing its inspiration from the McCarthy hearings in the United States in the 1950s, 'The Crucible' uses seventeenth-century history to explore the consequences for society when men allow the dark forces of unreason to be unleashed.

Do we really have to go back in the 50s to read the story of such an event? Today, in the 21st century, there are still and it seems to me more and more such events which are happening. Just listen to this audio book : the story is a masterpiece.

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift - Audio Book

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift : "A masterwork of irony that contains both a dark and bitter meaning and a joyous, extraordinary creativity of imagination. That's why it has lived for so long." Malcom Bradbury

Gulliver's Travels tells of the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an Englishman and ship's surgeon, who travels to the "several remote nations of the world." In the beginning, he becomes shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput, where the distressed inhabitants are only six inches tall. His second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, where lives a race of giants. At Glubdubdrib, the Island of Sorcerers, he speaks with great men of the past and learns from them the lies of history. Further adventures find Gulliver in a land ruled by intelligent horses.

This novel contains everything to content children as well as adults