One can easily imagine a story like this actually happening at an upper-crust English country seat like the fictional Downton Abbey – Ruth Golding’s fabulous narration is spot on for this cute little “ghost story” by Saki.
The Hedgehog
By Saki; Read by Ruth Golding
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox
Published: 2012 The busybodies at a vicarage garden party invite a one Miss Ada Bleek, from the “Society for Psychical Research”, to have a bit of a snoop at their local ghosts – she finds a very large and rather pale one.
Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)
By Stephen King; Read by Will Patton
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date: 24 September 2013
ISBN: 9781442362390
[UNABRIDGED] – 18 hours, 35 minutes
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
I’m not a fan of sequels. I’m not really sure The Shining needed a sequel. Sure there were lingering questions about Danny and Wendy at the end, but they weren’t critical in my mind. That said, Mr. King’s novels tend to interconnect on several levels, so I was curious to see what he would do in a sequel to one of his most popular books.
Doctor Sleep is a very different book from its predecessor. The shining plays a key role of course, but I would categorize this book more as Paranormal Thriller rather than Horror. I would however recommend you read/reread The Shining before this though.
The first part of the book catches you up with Danny, his mother and Dick Halloran, and then proceeds to catch us up to Danny in the present day.
Unfortunately for Danny, Mr. King is a big believer in like father like son. Danny has become an alcoholic and has the same anger issues Jack struggled with in the first story. It hard to blame him given his traumatic childhood coupled with the horrors being so strong in the shinning has exposed to him.
A good part of this story felt like an advertisement for the Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m not sure if that’s how Mr. King got himself sober, but it certainly seems like it, as he talks about it to excess. It does make for an interesting idea of “what might have happened if Jack Torrence sought help?”, but I could have done with less time being spent on that aspect of the story.
Keeping with his themes of the cyclical nature of life, the other main protagonist is a young girl who is even stronger in the shinning than Danny was in his youth.
We are also introduced to the True Knot, a pack of “physic vampires” that are near immortal by traveling the country and feeding on the shinning for their longevity. Can you guess where this is going? I could.
So it wasn’t the most unpredictable of stories, but in many ways I enjoyed it more then The Shining. I’m not a big horror fan. This book explores the shining in much greater detail than its namesake novel. Mr. King introduces some well developed new characters, and doesn’t just retell the same story again with minor changes like many sequels tend to.
Mr. Patton does an excellent job reading this book. He has many distinct voices and accents that adds a little something to the story. I was surprised they used a different reader than the The Shining, but as it turned out to be a fairly different book, I think it was a good decision.
So will you like it? If you’re a big horror fan hoping that Mr. King can scare the hell out of you again, probably not. If you’re like me and enjoy the fantastical nature of Mr. King’s novels then you just might.
I’ve edited together, cleaned up, and Levelated the 2009 solo LibriVox narration of Henry James’ 1908 novelette The Jolly Corner.
The Jolly Corner is a ghost story, said to be rivaled only by The Turn Of The Screw. Here is narrator Nicholas Clifford’s own description:
James’s protagonist, Spencer Brydon, is an American of 56, returned to New York after 33 years in Europe, where he has apparently accomplished little while living off his New York rentals. His friendship with Alice Staverton, and his engagement in the development of a property awaken him to the possibilities that might have been his, had he chosen a different course of life. The “ghost,” if that’s what it is, is that other self that might have been, and his confrontation with that self and its possibilities leads to a deeply unsettling, yet ambiguous, conclusion.
Having been downloaded more than 7,000 times there’s still only one review on Archive.org page – but it is a very positive review, writes Kydiana:
This is an intriguing and thought-provoking tale. On the surface a ghost story, it is really a story about the ghosts which haunt our own interiors. It poses deep existential questions–Who are we, really? Would we even recognize ourselves in a life in which in which we had made different choices? What does it mean to love someone regardless of how that person develops over the course of a lifetime? Well-read. Highly recommended.
The SFFaudio Podcast #212 – Jesse, Mirko and Mr. Jim Moon discuss The Willows by Algernon Blackwood.
Talked about on today’s show:
Algernon Blackwood’s television show, “the ghost man”, the expansion of consciousness, the extension of human personality, ghosts, Saturday Night Story, H.P. Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror In Literature, almost nothing happens, “ghoulish work”, cosmic horror, Mr. Jim Moon outlines of the story, the nameless Swede, travelogue, the Danube, a lonesome expanse, an elemental presence, the rising spirits, the shunned place, the man’s body (or the black otter), “never human in the first place”, overlapping dimensions, The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson, The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard, why is it set in Europe?, The Wendigo, Blackwood actually canoed on the Danube, Marcus Aurelius, the Black Forest, Blackwood attended school in the area, hard guys, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, “the soul chilling fury of Nature’s terrible dethroned gods”, the joke becomes unfunny, Romania, Transylvania, “looks fantastic but no-one lives there!”, evidence of human habitation, we have to keep going farther and farther to find the borderlands, their thoughts are manifested, telepathy, With Morning Comes Mistfall by George R.R. Martin, a review of Bright Messenger by Algernon Blackwood from Fantasy & science Fiction, the “Diva”, nature spirits, sprites, fairies, planetary entities, nature’s policemen, WWI, haunted tree?, occult and paranormal writing, occultist jargon, the chain of being, neo-Platonism, intermediary spirits, what did these two dudes do wrong?, sacred groves, druids, devilish places, The Children Of The Stones, the stolid Swede, red Indians, the noble savage, Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla, the drowned peasant, the conical holes, Chupacabra?, alien sampling?, footprints?, fingerprints?, Jaws, the hidden monster, “having rid himself of the morsel”, empty planet, “the sounds a planet must make driving along through space”, J.R.R. Tolkien, Old Man Willow, the Withywindle, the evil trees, Tolkien was familiar with Blackwood, Tom Bombadil is a nature spirit, Goldberry is a river spirit, “he’s got a bloody song for everything”, the Wikipedia entry for willow, the bronze skinned figures, fairy mischief, fairies fuck with you, what’s with the paddles?, a sacrifice, man where was your editor?, you didn’t really do anything wrong but show up, canoeing ghost stories, Voyageurs, a deal with the devil on Christmas Eve, La Chasse-Galerie (aka “The Bewitched Canoe” aka “The Flying Canoe“), Deliverance, leisure travel vs. work travel, the drones, the last gasp of the Grand Tour, Alien vs. Evil Dead, the punishment of the idle, reckless youth, Cabin In The Woods, The Complete Weird Fiction Of Algernon Blackwood, short stories are best enjoyed in short doses.
The SFFaudio Podcast #208 – Jesse, Jenny, and Eric S. Rabkin talk about Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Talked about on today’s show:
Magic realism, liking this book more, upset with a lot of things, “where’s the fantasy?”, Eric uses this book in his classes, Laura Esquivel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Eric’s Castillian accent, magic realism is just realism, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, locus classicus, a ten pound bag of amniotic fluid salt, Spark Notes, Tita would make some food, externalize her emotions, making matches, soap opera style plot, “this is a girl book”, “the most girly book ever”, birthing, cooking, Chapter 5, the chickens are pecking each other’s eyes out, the chicken tornado, three sisters, “know any other trinities”, Tia means aunt, Jessela, Josephita, “Little Joseph”, Mamma Elena wants to be God, Garza means heron, “malice in her heart”, birds, falcons, capons, an absence of storks, “Alex, the conqueror of the world”, what are we to make of the death of Roberto?, nurse and nourish, lactating non-moms, “such a girly book”, Isabel Allende, women have magic (in the kitchen, bedroom, family), the massive Wikipedia entry on Magic Realism, John Brown, Eric’s 4 cents about magic realism, true Fairy Tales, nobody is surprised by talking animals in fairy tales, Science Fiction, King Kong, Frankenstein, “science fiction provides metaphors whereas magic realism provides conceits”, food becomes the metaphor for the presentation of the self, Erving Goffman, the movie, the insane asylum, Chencha, ghosts, the kilometer long blanket, you may not believe it but you have to accept it, Jenny’s superpower, Ray Bradbury, grand niece, aroma and flavour, impossible flavours, John Brown has the power of his Kickapoo indian grandmother, romance novel, Rosaura, golden rose, the Virgin Mary, Pedro = Peter (the rock upon whom she will build her church), what it means to be selfless, loyal, and reliable, John Brown (the abolitionist), why is mama Elena such a twisted up bitch, Gertrudis (spear of strength), a story of racial prejudice, Harlequin Romance, Tristan And Isolde, love potions, “to the table or to be but you must come when you are bid”, “one time only is one called”, Gertrudis is burning with fire and covered in pink sweat, “in a very sexy manner”, rape?, Pedro’s a stick figure of a person, the ox-tail soup, “that was the way she entered his body”, a feminist book, the sergeant who can’t read, the mother needs to go away, “Surprise, I hate you.”, a haunted kitchen, the tradition of the youngest daughter, a love that bore strong fruit, not just a girly book, racism, black people dance well?, the Mexican Revolution, the revolution is happening within the people, “a brilliant insight”, the individual and the public, the Chinaman, “a well cooked dish”, the etiquette book, the three coloured enchiladas, Zapata, Pershing, Pancho Villa, the Mexican Tourist Board, the food is good, Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus, Tita and Pedro’s final occurrence is apotheosis, Jesus gets the revive?, a tunnel of light, onions as a metaphor, the translation, visits to Mexico, Diego Rivera, civic nationality, “as if”, puns, conveying the general tone of craftsmanship, the two audiobooks, the metaphorical title, “hot and bothered”, alchemical food chemistry magic, recipe, science with its reproduceable results, eight different ways to perfectly hard-boil an eggs,
I quite like this one. It makes a fit companion to The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Red Room by H.G. Wells.
The Ghosts begins as straightforward haunted house story, one coming out of the Gothic tradition. Our hero, a skeptic, is staying with his brother at an ancient baronial estate. There, he argues with his brother about the existence of ghosts, and what sorts of evidence for their existence would be acceptable. Then, in order to make his point, he proceeds to induce in himself a ghostly experience by means darkness, drugs, and deprivation.
Are the ghosts he sees real and if so, is his point proved?
The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by Miette
1 |MP3| – Approx. 15 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast
Podcast: March 21, 2006
First published in 1908.
The Ghosts
By Lord Dunsany; Read by William Coon
1 |MP3| – Approx. 12 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: 2006
First published in 1908.
Here’s an illustrated |PDF| made from the publication in The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories.
The Hedgehog
Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)
