The Book of Halloween
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Narrated by:
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Oliver Vale
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By:
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Ruth Edna Kelley
About this listen
A Vintage medley of spooky fascination and fun for every grown-up who still thrills to the sight of carved pumpkins, straw witches and the eerie promise of a full, golden moon crowning a crisp October night! In Ruth Edna Kelley's The Book of Halloween, you'll discover the roots of our modern Halloween holiday in the religious and cultural traditions of the ancient Celts, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Britons, Germans and other Peoples of Old Europe, while also catching an enticing firsthand glimpse of how the holiday was enjoyed during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, in both Europe and America. Filled with Halloween poems, games and tried and true ancient methods for divining the future, The Book of Halloween opens a captivating window onto the past of one of today's most beloved holidays.
©2010 Better Days Books (P)2016 New Paradigm Press AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Philip Freeman
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Most people have heard of the Celts - the elusive, ancient tribal people who resided in present-day England, Ireland, Scotland and France. Paradoxically characterized as both barbaric and innocent, the Celts appeal to the modern world as a symbol of a bygone era, a world destroyed by the ambition of empire and the spread of Christianity throughout Western Europe. Despite the pervasive cultural and literary influence of the Celts, shockingly little is known of their way of life and beliefs, because very few records of their stories exist.
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Scholarly yet fancifully told
- By Maestro F on 01-04-20
By: Philip Freeman
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Collected Stories
- By: Oscar Wilde
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether it's a 300-year-old ghost who's scared out of his wits, a tenderhearted statue with a mission of mercy, or the suave Lord Savile who cannot commit a crime, the characters in these stories by witty Oscar Wilde make the tales priceless delights. Absurd, ironic, poignant, or scathing, these small gems of the storyteller's art are sure to become favorites. This collection, narrated by Frank Muller, includes "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," "The Model Millionaire," "The Nightingale and the Rose," and more.
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Very Poor Recording
- By Anne in State College on 09-09-07
By: Oscar Wilde
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Spoon River Anthology
- By: Edgar Lee Masters
- Narrated by: Patrick Fraley, Edward Asner
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.
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Magnificent American poetry
- By Admiral Pike on 04-14-05
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The Kalevala
- By: Elias Lönnrot, Keith Bosley - translator
- Narrated by: Keith Bosley
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The Kalevala provides a compelling insight into the myths and folklore of Finland. Compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century, this impressive volume follows a tradition of oral storytelling that goes back some 2000 years, and it is often compared to such epic poems as Homer's Odyssey. However, The Kalevala has little in common with the culture of its Nordic neighbors: It is primarily poetic, it is mythical rather than historic, and its heroes solve their problems with magic more often than violence.
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This was Meant to be Read Aloud
- By FinalFrontier on 06-13-16
By: Elias Lönnrot, and others
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Leaves of Grass
- The Original 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman, American Renaissance Books
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
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A brilliant classic
- By M.Biblioswine on 12-02-18
By: Walt Whitman, and others
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Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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Mythology
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company, in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial best-seller in its various available formats. Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture - the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.
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Good reading of classical myths
- By Kathi on 03-18-13
By: Edith Hamilton
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What listeners say about The Book of Halloween
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Old Man Parker
- 11-14-16
The Mystery History of Halloween
Where does The Book of Halloween rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Top ten
Who was your favorite character and why?
It's full of History, superstition, and strange beliefs that will make you stop and ponder.
Which character – as performed by Oliver Vale – was your favorite?
Witches and little girls telling the future at dinner parties.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
The Mystery History of Halloween ...you never knew about!
Any additional comments?
This is fascinating & Midnight-colored description of the old-world customs that immigrated to North America from Ireland, Scotland, and England sure as a Pointy-Hat-Hag riding a broom-stick. Discover that not only was your grand-mother (and great grand-mother) a practicing WITCH, but that everyone's was! Everyone who has a drop of Irish or English blood in them, or lived in North America at the turn of the last century, or the turn of the century before that. This new-world is covered in superstitious pranks and practices as thick as a glowing-green-ghostly grave-yard fog. Break out your "Bell", "Book" and "Candle" and heat up the black iron cauldron and lets get to cooking up some spooky Feasts fit for King "Sam Hain", Pumpkin lord of the Harvest Festival. A great book if you want to know where all the strange "Tricks R Treats" came from!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Matthew T Shank
- 06-20-18
Interesting, but a little rough.
This is one of the few, if not the only, book I could find on Audible about the history of Halloween or any holiday for that matter. Written in 1919, the book focuses on customs and traditions from the old world with a brief look at how they changed upon arriving in America. I found the content of the book fascinating for the most part, as the author starts with the ancient pagan holidays that inspired Halloween, and then moves through various parts of the Celtic world and discusses how each celebrates differently. Chapters are interspersed with some wonderful poetry.
Unfortunately, the narrator was not for me. I found him a little bland and lifeless and the structure of the book, with the poetry inserted randomly into the chapters, sometimes made it hard to follow along. Rather than draw me into the spooky customs and lore of Halloween, the narrator made it difficult to keep my focus on what he was saying.
Still, I'm giving this book an overall positive rating because I really did enjoy it, and hope to see more books on the subject make their way to audible in the future. If you've ever wondered what Halloween was like before it was heavily commercialized, or where many of our Halloween myths and superstitions originate from, this book is definitely worth a listen.
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- klwdesigns
- 06-30-22
horrible audio, couldn't understand
I couldn't even finish the book cuz I couldn't understand what the reader was saying. bad audio quality.
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