Fill Your New Kindle, iPad, iPhone, eReader with Free eBooks, Audio Books, Online Courses & More

in Amazon Kindle, Audio Books, Film, Online Courses | December 25th, 2015

ipadgift

San­ta left a new Kin­dle, iPad, Kin­dle Fire or oth­er media play­er under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intel­li­gent media — great books, movies, cours­es, and all of the rest. And if you did­n’t get a new gad­get, fear not. You can access all of these mate­ri­als right on a com­put­er. Here we go:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 800 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Austen, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle – Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books — 700 works in total — includ­ing texts by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gad­gets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 1150 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond.

These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines — his­to­ry, physics, phi­los­o­phy, psy­chol­o­gy, busi­ness, and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates). But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 725 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky and more) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is high on your list of New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 46 lan­guages, includ­ing Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 200 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.

Thank San­ta, maybe thank us, and enjoy that new device.…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Hear Ray Bradbury’s Classic Sci-Fi Story Fahrenheit 451 as a Radio Drama

in Audio Books, Books, Literature, Radio | November 19th, 2015

fahrenheit 451

Last week we fea­tured a list of 100 nov­els all kids should read before grad­u­at­ing from high school. Cho­sen by 500 Eng­lish teach­ers from all over Britain, the list hap­pens to have a lot of over­lap with many oth­ers like it. Invari­ably, these kinds of young adult read­ing lists include Ray Bradbury’s nov­el of dystopi­an cen­sor­ship and anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Fahren­heit 451.  Why, I’ve always won­dered, should this nov­el be pitched almost exclu­sive­ly at teenagers, so much so that it seems like one of those books many of us read in high school, then nev­er read again, even if we are fans of Bradbury’s work?

A strange dis­con­nect emerges when we look at the his­to­ry of Bradbury’s nov­el as a teach­ing tool. Although most high school stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with free­think­ing as an ide­al, and giv­en cau­tion­ary tales of its sup­pres­sion, their own edu­ca­tions are just as often high­ly cir­cum­scribed by adults who fret about the effects of var­i­ous bad influ­ences.

Whether, as a stu­dent, you read the bowd­ler­ized or the “adult” ver­sion of Bradbury’s nov­el, per­haps it’s time to revis­it Fahren­heit 451, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that free­doms of thought, belief, and expres­sion have again come under intense scruti­ny. And in addi­tion to re-read­ing Bradbury’s nov­el, you can lis­ten to the 1971 radio play above. Pro­duced in Van­cou­ver by the CBC (and re-broad­cast in recent years by the Radio Enthu­si­asts of Puget Sound pod­cast), the abridged, one-hour adap­ta­tion by neces­si­ty changes the source mate­r­i­al, though for dra­mat­ic pur­pos­es, not to express­ly soft­en the mes­sage. Ray Brad­bury’s rep­u­ta­tion may have been tamed over the decades. He became late in life an avun­cu­lar sci-fi mas­ter, pri­mar­i­ly known as a writer of books for high school stu­dents. But at one time, his work—and sci­ence fic­tion in general—were so sub­ver­sive that the FBI kept close tabs on them.

If you like the Fahren­heit 451 adap­ta­tion, you can hear many more Brad­bury sto­ries adapt­ed into clas­sic radio plays at our pre­vi­ous post.

Also note: Tim Rob­bins has nar­rat­ed a new, unabridged audio ver­sion of Fahren­heit 451. It’s avail­able via Audible.com. You can get it for free with Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

via SFF

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

Sci-Fi Leg­end Ray Brad­bury Cre­ates a Vision­ary Plan to Redesign Los Ange­les

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature, Religion | November 2nd, 2015

NarniaMap-e1324285473899

I have not seen the sec­ond two of a promised sev­en films based on the nov­els in C.S. Lewis’ The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia series. But I tend to agree with sev­er­al crit­ics of the first filmed adap­ta­tion, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “The PG-rat­ed movie feels safe and con­strict­ed,” Peter Tra­vers observed, “in a way the sto­ry nev­er does on the page.” Although Lewis “did noth­ing to hide his devout Chris­tian­i­ty” in his alle­gor­i­cal Nar­nia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fan­ta­sy series, The Space Tril­o­gy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rig­or­ous writer first and a Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist sec­ond. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explic­it­ly pop­ulist, and rather facile, apolo­get­ics, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty (orig­i­nal­ly a series of radio lec­tures), his fic­tion and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with chal­leng­ing, inven­tive, wit­ty, and mov­ing ways to think about the human con­di­tion.

Lewis’ immer­sion in Euro­pean Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecu­meni­cal, almost Jun­gian, approach to lit­er­a­ture generally—gives his fic­tion a seri­ous arche­typ­al depth that most mod­ern reli­gious nov­el­ists lack, mak­ing him, along with fel­low “Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, some­thing of a lit­er­ary saint in mod­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. Though it may offend the ortho­dox to say so, Lewis’ nov­els cap­ture a “deep mag­ic” at the heart of all mytho­log­i­cal and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. And they do so in a way that makes explor­ing heavy, grown-up themes excit­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Though I’ve per­son­al­ly left behind the beliefs that ani­mat­ed my first read­ings of his books, I can still return to The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia and find in them deep mag­ic and mys­tery.

There’s no deny­ing the enor­mous influ­ence these books have had on children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture, from Har­ry Pot­ter to Lewis’ athe­ist antag­o­nist Philip Pull­man. I look for­ward to shar­ing his books with my daugh­ter, what­ev­er she ends up mak­ing of their reli­gios­i­ty. I’ve still got my tat­tered paper­back copies, and I’ll glad­ly read them to her before she can tack­le them her­self, but I’m also grate­ful for the com­plete audio record­ings of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, avail­able free online and read by Eng­lish child psy­chol­o­gist and author Chris­si Hart. In install­ments of two chap­ters at a time, Hart reads all sev­en of the Nar­nia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspi­an, The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er, The Sil­ver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Bat­tle.

You can hear the first two chap­ters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or down­load the remain­ing chap­ters, and the remain­ing six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her read­ings clear­ly approach the nov­els from an explic­it­ly Ortho­dox per­spec­tive, I don’t think read­ers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appre­ci­ate the sto­ry­telling mag­ic of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia.

And it should be not­ed that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. grant­ed per­mis­sion to put these record­ings online, accord­ing to the Ancient Faith web site. The record­ings are there­fore list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Watch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. Lewis

The Only Known Record­ings of C.S. Lewis (1944–1948)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Compelling Poems

in Audio Books, Poetry | October 27th, 2015

No mat­ter how casu­al a rela­tion­ship you’ve had with 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can poet­ry, you’ve heard the name Sylvia Plath. Maybe you’ve already dared to expe­ri­ence her dark but com­pelling lit­er­ary world, or maybe you just know a few of the basic ele­ments of her life and career: her auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el The Bell Jar, her famous­ly har­row­ing poet­ry col­lec­tion Ariel, her stormy mar­riage to British poet lau­re­ate Ted Hugh­es, her death by her own hand at the age of thir­ty. But what bet­ter day than today, the 83rd anniver­sary of Plath’s birth, to get bet­ter acquaint­ed with her work?

And what bet­ter way than to hear that work read in Plath’s own voice? Sure, you could just pick up one of the many yel­lowed mass-mar­ket paper­back copies of Ariel you see on book­shelves all across Amer­i­ca and plunge in, but you might first con­sid­er turn­ing to our archives, which con­tain a 2013 post in which we fea­tured Plath read­ing fif­teen poems that would appear in the Ariel col­lec­tion that, pub­lished two years after her death (“left sit­ting on the kitchen table to be found along with her body,” not­ed Josh Jones), would raise her poet­ic rep­u­ta­tion to new heights. You can hear the first part of these read­ings, record­ed in 1962, at the top of this post, and the rest at this orig­i­nal post.

We might feel lucky that, in her short life, she left even those per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty, but there’s more: last year, we fea­tured Sylvia Plath read­ing her poet­ry, the 1977 record released by pio­neer­ing pre-audio­book label Caed­mon which con­tains 23 poems Plath com­mit­ted to tape as ear­ly as 1959. Find all of the read­ings here.

If these two audio col­lec­tions give you a taste for the poet biog­ra­ph­er Carl Rollyson called “the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe of mod­ern lit­er­a­ture,” have a lis­ten to Cre­do Records’ album Sylvia Plath, which offers some mate­r­i­al you’ll have heard along­side some you won’t have. Hav­ing lis­tened to all this, you’ll hard­ly asso­ciate the adjec­tive “cel­e­bra­to­ry” with Plath’s work — but that does­n’t mean that, on what would have been her 83rd birth­day, poet­ry-lovers can’t cel­e­brate it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revis­it Her Sketch­es, Self-Por­traits, Draw­ings & Illus­trat­ed Let­ters

Sylvia Plath Reads Her Poet­ry: 23 Poems from the Last 6 Years of Her Life

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch All 18,225 Lines of The Iliad Read by 66 Actors in a Marathon Event For an Audience of 50,000

in Audio Books, Literature | October 19th, 2015

Despite its ancient ori­gins, The Odyssey is an epic for moder­ni­ty. The Greek poem gives us the hero as a home­sick wan­der­er and uproot­ed seek­er, an exile or a refugee, sus­tained by his cun­ning; he even comes across, writes schol­ar Deirdre McClosky, as “a crafty mer­chant type,” while also rep­re­sent­ing “three pagan virtues—temperance, jus­tice, and pru­dence.” He’s a com­pli­cat­ed hero, that is to say—most unlike Achilles, his antithe­sis in the pri­or epic The Ili­ad, the “foun­da­tion­al text,” says Simon Gold­hill, “of West­ern cul­ture.”

Gold­hill, a Cam­bridge clas­sics pro­fes­sor, intro­duces an under­tak­ing itself admirably epic: a read­ing of The Ili­ad fea­tur­ing “six­ty-six artists, 18,225 lines of text” and—on the day it took place, August 14th of this year—an “audi­ence of more than 50,000 peo­ple across the world, watch­ing online or in per­son at the Almei­da and the British Muse­um.” Now you can watch all 68 sec­tions of the marathon event at the Almeida’s web­site until Sep­tem­ber 21, 2016. (Access the videos on pages One, Two, and Three.) Just above, see a short video that doc­u­ments the mak­ing of this his­toric read­ing.

Gold­hill goes on to say that the epic poem, “puts in place most of the great themes of West­ern lit­er­a­ture, from pow­er to adul­tery.” In a way, it’s fit­ting that it be a huge com­mu­nal event: If The Odyssey is nov­el­is­tic in many ways, as James Joyce’s Ulysses seems to have defin­i­tive­ly shown, The Ili­ad is like a block­buster com­ic book film. Achilles, writes McClosky, “is what the Vikings called a berserker”—his motive force, over and above com­pan­ion­ship or love—is kleos: fame and glo­ry. The one ques­tion that dri­ves the “whole of The Ili­ad,” says Gold­smith, is “the ques­tion of what is worth dying for. For Achilles, the answer is sim­ple.”

Undoubt­ed­ly we admire Achilles even as we cringe at his fury, and we cel­e­brate all sorts of peo­ple who run head­long into what seems like cer­tain death. But we also find fig­ures who embody his vio­lence and cer­tain­ty dis­turb­ing, to say the least, both on and off the bat­tle­field. Though crafty Odysseus tem­porar­i­ly stays Achilles’ rage, the war­rior even­tu­al­ly kills so many Tro­jans that a riv­er turns against him, and his abuse of Hector’s body makes for stom­ach-turn­ing reading—or lis­ten­ing as the case may be. Prag­mat­ic Odysseus may have giv­en us the mod­ern hero, and anti-hero, but pow­er and glo­ry-mad strong­men like Agamem­non and Achilles may be even more with us these days, and The Ili­ad is still an essen­tial part of the archi­tec­ture of West­ern grand nar­ra­tive tra­di­tions.

After Goldhill’s intro­duc­tion, see “great­est stage actor of his gen­er­a­tion” Simon Rus­sell Beale pick up the text, then younger actors Pip­pa Ben­nett-Warn­er and Mari­ah Gale, fol­lowed by gruff Bri­an Cox. (Find the read­ings on this page.) Few of the read­ers are as famous as Scot­tish film and stage star Cox, but near­ly all are British the­ater-trained actors who deliv­er stir­ring, often thrilling, read­ings of the Robert Fagles trans­la­tion. See the remain­ing 63 read­ings at the Almei­da Theatre’s web­site here.

h/t @EWyres

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Homer’s Ili­ad and Odyssey: Free Audio­Books & eBooks

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Seminal Sci-Fi Novel The War of the Worlds

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | October 7th, 2015

As you know if you saw our pre­vi­ous posts fea­tur­ing Leonard Nimoy’s read­ings of sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury and Isaac Asi­mov, the late Star Trek icon could — unsur­pris­ing­ly, per­haps — tell a sci­ence-fic­tion tale with the best of them. It turns out that he could also give mas­ter­ful read­ings of sci­ence fic­tion from oth­er eras too, as far back as the ear­li­est works to define the genre, which we’ve dis­cov­ered after hear­ing his per­for­mance of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, an out-of-print edi­tion recent­ly dig­i­tized from cas­sette tape and post­ed to Youtube in two parts.

With this sto­ry of Earth invad­ed from “across the gulf of space” by aliens with “minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that per­ish, intel­lects vast and cool and unsym­pa­thet­ic,” Wells did much to help give sci­ence fic­tion the form we rec­og­nize today. The War of the Worlds came out in book form in 1898, pre­ced­ed by such sim­i­lar­ly spec­u­la­tive and inno­v­a­tive works as The Time Machine and The Invis­i­ble Man, and then fol­lowed by the likes of The First Men in the Moon and The Shape of Things to Come. (Find most of these works neat­ly pack­aged in the HG Wells Clas­sic Col­lec­tion.) This Leonard Nimoy record­ing orig­i­nal­ly came out in 1976, pub­lished by the record label Caed­mon, known for doing plen­ty of inno­va­tion of their own in the then-yet-unnamed field of audio­books.

Caed­mon put out not just this album and the one with Nimoy read­ing Brad­bury, but oth­ers fea­tur­ing Kurt Von­negut, Vin­cent Price, Ten­nessee Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hem­ing­way, and Sylvia Plath. As much as sci­ence-fic­tion die-hards will enjoy hear­ing this pair­ing of Nimoy and Wells here, some will cer­tain­ly want to track down the actu­al LP — not just for the col­lec­tors’ val­ue, but because it fea­tures lin­er notes by none oth­er than that oth­er vast­ly influ­en­tial cre­ator of sci-fi as we know it, Isaac Asi­mov. It looks like there’s one used copy on Ama­zon. The read­ing, we should note, is an abridged ver­sion of the orig­i­nal text.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Read by Sir John Gielgud

in Audio Books, K-12, Literature, Poetry, Theatre | September 14th, 2015

gielgud reads alice

I nev­er thought I could love an audio record­ing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land (tech­ni­cal­ly Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land and its sequel, Through the Look­ing-Glass) more than I love the unabridged ver­sion nar­rat­ed by Christo­pher Plum­mer. His won­der­ful­ly ham­my char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and its six hour run­ning time made it the per­fect sound­track for pick­ing nits from the foot long tress­es of a first-grad­er who’d been sent home with lice.

By the time she got the all clear, both of us had large por­tions of it com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry.

Christo­pher, I trea­sure the mem­o­ries of those long hours spent togeth­er on cas­sette, but I’m afraid I’ll be spend­ing the 150th anniver­sary of Alice with Sir John Giel­gud, below.

All in the gold­en after­noon

Full leisure­ly we glide;

For both our oars, with lit­tle skill,

By lit­tle arms are plied,

While lit­tle hands make vain pre­tense

Our wan­der­ings to guide.

He makes Lewis Car­roll sound like Shake­speare!

The cel­e­brat­ed dry wit that served him so well through­out his illus­tri­ous career keeps this 1989 Alice very easy on the ears. He takes the oppo­site approach from Plum­mer, under­play­ing the char­ac­ter voic­es. It’s rare to find a gen­tle­man of 85 who can play a 7‑year-old girl so con­vinc­ing­ly, and with so lit­tle fuss.

In an extreme­ly civ­i­lized bit of audio engi­neer­ing, Giel­gud record­ed the tracks in the ball­room of Wya­s­tone Leys, the Vic­to­ri­an coun­try estate that is home to the audiobook’s label. Also? The Eng­lish String Orches­tra ush­ers lis­ten­ers from scene to scene with excerpts from Mendelssohn’s String Sym­phonies. Ah…

Giel­gud’s read­ing of Alice has been made avail­able on Spo­ti­fy. Find it here. Or embed­ded here. You can also find it on Youtube as well. Com­pletists might also enjoy Gielgud’s turn as the Mock Tur­tle in Jonathan Miller’s superbly dark, black & white adap­ta­tion from 1966, here. (Giel­gud makes his entrance at the 13:55 mark.)

To lis­ten to Giel­gud on Spo­ti­fy, you will of course need Spotify’s soft­ware and account, both easy to come by: you just down­load and reg­is­ter.

Oth­er read­ings of Alice can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Free Audio: Alice In Won­der­land Read by Cory Doc­torow

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will be appear­ing at the Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val in New York City next week­end.. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Classics Stories by Edgar Allan Poe Narrated by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nominated Animation & 1958 Decca Album

in Animation, Audio Books, Literature | September 9th, 2015

Some enthu­si­asts of 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror mas­ter (or, in a very real sense, 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror inven­tor) Edgar Allan Poe find his work best read aloud. Thus we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Poe deliv­ered in the grav­i­tas-filled voic­es of such not­ed thes­pi­ans as Vin­cent Price, Basil Rath­bone, Christo­pher Walken, Christo­pher Lee, and James Mason. Mason did the read­ing (above) as a nar­ra­tion for a 1953 ani­mat­ed short The Tell-Tale Heart, adapt­ing Poe’s 1843 sto­ry of the same name, which drew both an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film and — per­haps more in line with the Poe sen­si­bil­i­ty — a rat­ing of “X” from the British Board of Film Cen­sors.

James Mason Poe

WFMU man­aged to dig up even more Poe as read by Mason, three tracks of which they post­ed to their blog one Hal­loween, all with “creepy and dra­mat­ic organ stylings by Bud­dy Cole, who no doubt wore an Inver­ness cape for the occa­sion.” They come from a 1958 release from Dec­ca Records, fea­tur­ing Mason’s read­ings of not just “The Tell-Tale Heart” [MP3] but Poe’s cryp­tic fable “Silence” [MP3—below] and haunt­ing final poem “Annabel Lee” [MP3—bot­tom]. (The flip side of the album offers some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, in the form of Agnes Moore­head “and a sup­port­ing cast” per­form­ing Lucille Fletcher’s radio play “Sor­ry, Wrong Num­ber.”)

Opin­ions on who reads Poe most effec­tive­ly will dif­fer from lis­ten­er to lis­ten­er, but if you’d like to make a par­tial but direct com­par­i­son for your­self, sim­ply line up Mason’s ren­di­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” on a playlist with the ones we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed by Christo­pher Lee, Basil Rath­bone — and of course, Iggy Pop. It may have become Poe’s best-known sto­ry in the first place by hav­ing retained its impact over all these 172 years, but hav­ing such a range of per­for­ma­tive per­son­al­i­ties inter­pret it can’t hurt in keep­ing it as eerie as ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price, and Christo­pher Lee

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe on His Birth­day

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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