Audio Book Online Review

Hamlet - Act III, Scene I
‘To be or not to be - that is the question….’ In this BBC Sound Archive recording, Michael Redgrave stars as Shakespeare’s troubled Prince of Denmark.

Henry V - Act IV, Scene III
‘This day is called the feast of Crispian….’ In one of the most famous and inspirational of Shakespeare’s speeches, Richard Burton’s rich and resonant voice delivers Henry V’s address to his army on the eve of Agincourt!

King Lear - Act II, Scene IV
‘I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad…’ Alec Guinness’s performance as King Lear stirs the listener in this recording from the BBC Sound Archives.

Macbeth - Act I, Scene VII
‘If it were done when ’tis done…’ From the BBC Sound Archives, one of Shakespeare’s most famous and memorable speeches, with Paul Scofield and Peggy Ashcroft as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, bringing these ominous words vividly to life.

Macbeth - Act II, Scene II
‘Is this a dagger which I see before me…..’ With Denis Quilley as Macbeth, this recording from the BBC Sound Archives brings Shakespeare’s memorable words to life..

Richard III - Act I, Scene I
‘Now is the winter of our discontent….’ Ian Holm delivers King Richard IIIs soliloquy, bringing Shakespeare’s wonderful lines, full of pyschological insight, vividly to life.

The Merchant Of Venice - Act IV, Scene I
‘The quality of mercy is not strained….’ In this recording from the BBC Sound Archives, Hannah Gordon is Shakespeare’s wise Portia.

Includes five additional hours of spoken language practice in ten 30-minute lessons. Contains lessons 21-30 from the Pimsleur Comprehensive Level I program plus an introduction to reading. Also includes a Reading Booklet.

Devised by language educator Dr Paul Pimsleur, Simon and Schuster’s Pimsleur Language courses provide the listener with a comprehensive, self instructional, step-by-step guide on how to learn a new language.

The Pimsleur approach is so effective because it is based on tried and tested techniques and principles that have proved to enable rapid and successful language learning.

The unique audio method allows the listener to learn pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar without repetitive rote learning, in a similar way to how we acquired our native language components.

There are at least two ways of reading this classic children’s tale. One may either regard it as an innocently inventive and diverting piece for readers of all ages - or one may choose to bring to bear on it the full weight of academic analysis, be it literary, mathematical, philosophical or psychoanalytical.

The book was first published in 1865 and 1871, and has been hugely popular ever since. Unlike most Victorian children’s books (including Carroll’s own Sylvie and Bruno), it is refreshingly unmoralistic and brilliantly imaginative. Perhaps one might see it as a pioneering work in the rich tradition of British children’s writing which includes (for example) The Wind in the Willows, the Pooh books and the animal tales of Beatrix Potter. But Alice is in many respects more demanding and disturbing - even children unaware of symbolic interpretation may well be haunted or discomfited by the dream worlds Carroll has created, worlds where it is not quite enough to say that nonsense prevails since there is almost always a kind of perverse or inverted logic at work.

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the child heroine dreams the experiences which constitute the story, and (of course) wakes at the end to tell her sister what has happened. The dream world of Wonderland is peopled largely by creatures which speak, feel and behave much like caricatured human beings: the White Rabbit, for instance, is clearly neurotically obsessed by time and terrified of authority, while the playing-card King and Queen of Hearts bicker like an ill-matched, long-married couple. Anger, violence and the threat of violence are real enough within the dreamworld - the dormouse is scalded and dunked at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party -while irritation and disillusionment seem more common than contentment - witness the doleful narrative of the Mock Turtle. At times, Alice seems to be in real danger, whether from flying saucepans in the Duchess’ kitchen or from the attentions of a gigantic puppy, but at last she is able to break free from the suffocating power of her fantasy by exclaiming, after she has regained her normal size, ‘Why, you’re nothing but a pack of cards!’

Child listeners will surely be delighted by the picaresque variety of the story, but adults may wonder about some possible deeper or unifying interpretation. Freudian readings are legion, but it may be more interesting to see the adventure as a disturbing challenge to our conventional notions of reality Carroll repeatedly asks questions about the nature of time or the meaning of names, poses mathematical paradoxes and semantic quibbles - and the effect of this is to promote an acute unease, a fundamental, perhaps existential, uncertainty about meaning and purpose. Martin Gardner (editor of The Annotated Alice) suggests that ‘the last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by a mathematician.’

He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband.

He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her.

Now, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

But the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information. Unfortunately, before he could finish the letter, he was stabbed to death…

Includes five additional hours of spoken language practice in ten 30-minute lessons. Contains lessons 11-20 from the Pimsleur Comprehensive Level I program.

Devised by language educator Dr Paul Pimsleur, Simon and Schuster’s Pimsleur Language courses provide the listener with a comprehensive, self instructional, step-by-step guide on how to learn a new language.

The Pimsleur approach is so effective because it is based on tried and tested techniques and principles that have proved to enable rapid and successful language learning.

The unique audio method allows the listener to learn pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar without repetitive rote learning, in a similar way to how we acquired our native language components.

Against this delicate imagery, Willa Cather renders the tough inner terrain of a man in mid-life crisis. Bartley
Alexander is a master bridge engineer. At forty-three he is at the height of his power, comfortable with success
and all it brings. Yet he yearns for the lost vibrancy of his youth. He leads a double life, veering between his
beautiful, accomplished wife and his mistress, an actress he knew as a student in Paris. This conflict creates
a crack in the structure of his life which ultimately undermines him.