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The Golden Ass
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
"In this hapless state I looked myself over and saw that I was now no bird, but an ass...."
In this ancient picaresque adventure, Lucius, an insatiably curious young man, finds himself transformed into a donkey after his fascination with black magic and witchcraft goes awry. While trapped in his new body, he becomes the property of thieves, farmers, cooks, soldiers, and priests, and observes the hypocrisy and ineptitude of Imperial Roman society. The Golden Ass is considered the only novel to survive the Roman period, and the earliest novel to survive complete in the Western literary tradition. It is brimming with slapstick humor and sexual escapades, and foreshadows later works by Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, and Chaucer, upon whom it was a direct influence.
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Plagued by spiritual anguish, devout everyman Christian fears his fate in the sinful City of Destruction. He’s told that only by embarking for the Celestial City can he achieve personal salvation. After his wife and children refuse to join him, he sets forth alone into the unknown. Mocked for his faith, tempted at every turn, and heartened by fellow pilgrims, Christian’s winding journey toward grace unfolds. But as he reaches Mount Zion, his family chooses to follow the same treacherous path, hoping to join Christian in the shining light.
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Best version I have heard
- By Julie Rae Loving on 11-09-19
By: John Bunyan
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Falstaff
- Give Me Life
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Falstaff is both a comic and tragic central protagonist in Shakespeare's three Henry plays. He is companion to Prince Hal (the future Henry V), who loves him, goads him, teases him, indulges his vast appetites, and commits all sorts of mischief with him. Award-winning author and esteemed professor Harold Bloom examines Falstaff with the deepest compassion and sympathy and also with unerring wisdom. He uses the relationship between Falstaff and Hal to explore the devastation of severed bonds and the heartbreak of betrayal.
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Falstaff brooks no rebuttal.
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-20
By: Harold Bloom
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Lear
- The Great Image of Authority
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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King Lear is perhaps the most poignant character in literature. The aged, abused monarch is at once the consummate figure of authority and the classic example of the fall from majesty. He is widely agreed to be William Shakespeare's most moving, tragic hero. Award-winning writer and beloved professor Harold Bloom writes about Lear with wisdom, joy, exuberance, and compassion. He also explores his own personal relationship to the character.
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Bloom being Bloom
- By C. Yuen on 10-05-23
By: Harold Bloom
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Samson Agonistes
- By: John Milton
- Narrated by: David de Keyser, Philip Madoc, Matthew Morgan, and others
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Original Recording
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Samson Agonistes, the 'dramatic poem' by John Milton, was published in 1671, three years before the poet's death. Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, it follows the biblical story of the blind Samson as he wreaks his revenge on the Philistines who have imprisoned him. A powerful subject, with a personal resonance for the blind Milton, it is a perfect work for the medium of audiobook where poetry and drama can be balanced equally.
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Unbelievable
- By Anonymous User on 11-06-20
By: John Milton
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The Canterbury Tales: A Retelling
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Keith Moore, Toby Leonard Moore, Colin McPhillamy, and others
- Length: 16 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.
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WOW
- By Mitchell Drimmer on 02-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
- By: Howard Pyle
- Narrated by: David Thorn
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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American author Howard Pyle (who also wrote The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood) weaves the tales of chivalrous knights, the magic sword of Excalibur, the magician Merlin the Wise, and the legendary Arthur, later to become King of Britain. Pyle describes bouts of jousting and knightly jealousies played out in grand style.
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An Entertaining Account of Arthur’s Early Days
- By Jefferson on 12-03-11
By: Howard Pyle
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Medea
- By: Euripides
- Narrated by: Jonathan Waters
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the "barbarian" kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by murdering Jason's new wife as well as her own children, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.
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Great Narrator makes this story work
- By cosmitron on 08-02-18
By: Euripides
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Don Quixote
- By: Miguel de Cervantes, Gerald J. Davis - translator
- Narrated by: John Hanks
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, a hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels that he decides to set out to revive chivalry, under the name Don Quixote. This is the story that a Nobel Prize Committee survey of one hundred of the world's best writers named "the greatest book of all time."
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A wonderful, magical listen
- By K on 12-01-13
By: Miguel de Cervantes, and others
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- By: J. R. R. Tolkien
- Narrated by: Terry Jones
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
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An absolute delight!
- By Shannon Slee on 07-15-18
By: J. R. R. Tolkien
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
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The Satyricon
- By: Petronius
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Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from ancient Rome. It tells the ribald story of Encolpius, a man of active and varied appetites (powered notably by his passion for his favourite lover, the handsome Giton), who plunges without inhibition into the life of Roman pleasures: orgies of food, feasting, abundant sex and escapades. The kind of hedonism found occasionally in Roman mosaics is here brought to life.
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An impactful historical work of art.
- By Josh.28 on 03-17-19
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The Canterbury Tales
- Penguin Classics
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill (Translation)
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In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.
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Modern language retained rhyme structure.
- By Craig L. Seasholes on 11-01-24
By: Geoffrey Chaucer, and others
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The Complete Essays of Montaigne
- By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Donald M. Frame - translator
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
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“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)
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Stands next to the Bible and M.A.'s Meditations
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, and others
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Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays
- By: Michel de Montaigne
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 53 hrs and 12 mins
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In 1572, Montaigne - nobleman, humanist, and thoroughly Renaissance man - retired to the seclusion of his estate in the Dordogne and started to write. From his pen poured a stream of "essays" - attempts to capture the observations that came to him on an idiosyncratic range of subjects, from ancient customs, cannibals, and books to thumbs, war-horses, and the wearing of clothes. He made the study of himself the starting point for investigations into how to live, and wrote with a startlingly modern candor about love, grief, friendship, sex, and death.
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The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses
- By: Apuleius
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This tale of a man who, when tinkering with magic, becomes changed into an ass is one of the most entertaining and remarkable stories from classic Latin literature. It is funny, bawdy and completely approachable - but also shows life from the point of view of a beast of burden in the Roman Empire of the second century CE.
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Bawdy Tales from Roman Times
- By TiffanyD on 06-16-17
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The Decameron
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The Decameron is one of the greatest literary works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio's answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante's Divine Comedy.
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Not Up to the Usual Naxos Standard
- By John on 11-15-17
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The Satyricon
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Libidinous, licentious, salacious and very, very funny, The Satyricon is one of the most remarkable documents from ancient Rome. It tells the ribald story of Encolpius, a man of active and varied appetites (powered notably by his passion for his favourite lover, the handsome Giton), who plunges without inhibition into the life of Roman pleasures: orgies of food, feasting, abundant sex and escapades. The kind of hedonism found occasionally in Roman mosaics is here brought to life.
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An impactful historical work of art.
- By Josh.28 on 03-17-19
By: Petronius
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The Canterbury Tales
- Penguin Classics
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill (Translation)
- Narrated by: Lesley Manville, Daniel Weyman, Derek Jacobi, and others
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In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight's account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath's Arthurian legend, to the ribald anecdotes of the Miller and the Cook.
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Modern language retained rhyme structure.
- By Craig L. Seasholes on 11-01-24
By: Geoffrey Chaucer, and others
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The Complete Essays of Montaigne
- By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Donald M. Frame - translator
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 49 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)
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Stands next to the Bible and M.A.'s Meditations
- By Darwin8u on 05-21-12
By: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, and others
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Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays
- By: Michel de Montaigne
- Narrated by: Peter Wickham
- Length: 53 hrs and 12 mins
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In 1572, Montaigne - nobleman, humanist, and thoroughly Renaissance man - retired to the seclusion of his estate in the Dordogne and started to write. From his pen poured a stream of "essays" - attempts to capture the observations that came to him on an idiosyncratic range of subjects, from ancient customs, cannibals, and books to thumbs, war-horses, and the wearing of clothes. He made the study of himself the starting point for investigations into how to live, and wrote with a startlingly modern candor about love, grief, friendship, sex, and death.
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The Commentaries
- By: Julius Caesar
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Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches ever written. As literature, they are representative of the finest expressions of Latin prose in its "golden" age, a benchmark of elegant style and masculine brevity imitated by young schoolboys for centuries.
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My favourite audiobook
- By David Cormier on 08-17-11
By: Julius Caesar
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Metamorphoses
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The Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C. - A.D. 17) has, over the centuries, been the most popular and influential work from our classical tradition. This extraordinary collection of some 250 Greek and Roman myths and folk tales has always been a popular favorite, and has decisively shaped western art and literature from the moment it was completed in A.D. 8. The stories are particularly vivid when read by David Horovitch, in this new lively verse translation by Ian Johnston.
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Fantastic!
- By Tad Davis on 10-31-12
By: Ovid
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Decameron
- A BBC Radio Drama Adaptation of the Renaissance Classic
- By: Giovanni Boccaccio
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Composed in the early 1350s, in the wake of the Black Death, The Decameron comprises 100 short stories from all over the world, reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes of Renaissance Italy. Their universal themes—love, sex, religion, fate, morality—resonate with us to this day, and their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern. Monty Python star and medieval historian Terry Jones presents ten BBC Radio dramatisations of tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece
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Histories
- By: Herodotus
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 27 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus describes the growth of the Persian Empire with force, authority, and style. Perhaps most famously, the book tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, king of Persia. Here are not only the great battles - Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis - but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.
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Best of Audible's "The Histories" by Herodotus
- By Emily on 07-19-16
By: Herodotus
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The Argonautica
- Jason and the Golden Fleece
- By: Apollonius of Rhodes
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
The Argonautica, also known as Jason and the Golden Fleece or Jason and the Argonauts, is the only surviving epic poem from Hellenistic Greece. It is a masterpiece whose story was well known to the audiences of the time. Virgil and other later poets were greatly influenced by it. Its author, Apollonius, was a well-known third century BC scholar living in Alexandria during the great age of Ptolomaic scholarship, and his bold attempt at writing a Homeric epic about Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece faced a daunting audience of knowledgeable contemporaries.
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No Homer, translation a bit archaic
- By Jacob Quinn on 05-19-18
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The Canterbury Tales
- A New Unabridged Translation by Burton Raffel
- By: Geoffrey Chaucer
- Narrated by: uncredited
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- Unabridged
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Lively, absorbing, often outrageously funny, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a work of genius, an undisputed classic that has held a special appeal for each generation of readers. The Tales gathers 29 of literature's most enduring (and endearing) characters in a vivid group portrait that captures the full spectrum of medieval society, from the exalted Knight to the humble Plowman. This unabridged work is based on the new translation.
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Lack of coherant "chapters"
- By Jensophie on 02-24-10
By: Geoffrey Chaucer
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Kim
- By: Rudyard Kipling
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Kipling's masterpiece Kim is his final and most famous work and one of the first and greatest espionage stories ever written. It explores the life of Kimball O'Hara, an Irish orphan who spends his childhood as a vagrant in Lahore. When he befriends an aged Tibetan lama his life is transformed as he is requested to accompany him on a mysterious quest to find the legendary River of the Arrow and achieve Enlightenment.
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A Stunning Experience
- By Jeanie on 09-19-12
By: Rudyard Kipling
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The Aeneid
- By: Virgil
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The publication of a new translation by Fagles is a literary event. His translations of both the Iliad and Odyssey have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and have become the standard translations of our era. Now, with this stunning modern verse translation, Fagles has reintroduced Virgil's Aeneid to a whole new generation, and completed the classical triptych at the heart of Western civilization.
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Good but the chapters aren't IN ORDER
- By Maggie on 10-18-17
By: Virgil
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Le Morte D'Arthur
- By: Sir Thomas Malory
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 37 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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To the modern eye, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table have many similarities to our own contemporary super-heroes. Equipped with magical powers, enchanted swords, super-strength, and countless villains to take on, they protect the weak and innocent and adhere to their own code of honor. Comparing Batman, Superman, and Captain America to Sir Launcelot, Sir Tristram, and Sir Galahad isn't a huge leap of the imagination.
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This is my go-to audio version of Malory
- By Arthurian Tapestry on 03-16-19
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Collected Fictions
- By: Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley - translator
- Narrated by: Castulo Guerra
- Length: 27 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself.
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Borges Collected Fictions Trans Hurley
- By 0 on 09-08-23
By: Jorge Luis Borges, and others
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The Faerie Queene
- By: Edmund Spenser
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 33 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This remarkable poem, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, was Spenser's finest achievement. The first epic poem in modern English, The Faerie Queene combines dramatic narratives of chivalrous adventure with exquisite and picturesque episodes of pageantry. At the same time, Spenser is expounding a deeply-felt allegory of the eternal struggle between Truth and Error....
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High Fantasy from the Renaissance
- By Jabba on 10-03-15
By: Edmund Spenser
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The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
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Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
What listeners say about The Golden Ass
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Drewjd2
- 08-01-21
2nd listen…still awesome.
Magical tale from Ancient Roman Empire. The theme of this book is don’t play with forces, you don’t understand.
Rich Kid fascinated with occult forces, gets more than he bargains for. They don’t make stories like this anymore. Wonderfully entertaining narrator.
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- Alednam A Uonopk
- 08-29-23
Wasn't what I expected....
It was beyond what I expected. So many laughs. So many esoterica sprinkled throughout. When the Donkey was making love to the lady, I was laughing... And the Bear costume getting the knife.... Glad this beat my expectations, by a long shot... every chapter had me laughing.... RIP apuleius
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- Star Goddess
- 10-01-20
Excellent!
This is a superb translation and performance of this ancient classic. Any fan of Mythology will gain a new understanding of a favorite myths.
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- markcallahan
- 04-14-19
relatable
if you're looking for something to entertain and excite you, will also having some of the best phrases in all of literary history you should really look at the golden ass. the stories are still very close to hitting and surprisingly they deal with a lot of the same things that modern people are worried about.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Hermitage
- 10-09-24
Hugely enjoyable
Hugely enjoyable reading of a madcap Latin classic. David Timson was born to read this novel.
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- John
- 10-03-17
Not Wiser…But Very Well Informed
That’s how Lucius, our hero, describes himself near the end of his odyssey in an ass’ shape. And the same can be said of anyone who has tagged along with him. In the course of this picaresque pastiche, we encounter all levels of humanity in the Greco-Roman world. Starting with the likeable rogue who serves as our narrator, we meet concupiscent wives, corrupt priests, malevolent witches, rapacious landlords, seduce-able servants, tight-fisted millionaires, profligate millionaires, even a legionary unable to defend himself from the fists of a poor old gardener. In his ass’ guise Lucius discovers that animals can be just as bad. C. S. Lewis wrote of, “…the peculiar quality of the [Golden Ass], that strange compound of picaresque novel, horror-comic mystagogue’s tract, pornography and stylistic experiment”, and he was about right.
In fact, it was Lewis who prompted me to listen to Apuleius. Last February I picked up his final novel, Till We Have Faces (1956), as a Daily Deal. Having learned that the book was written out of Lewis’ near-lifelong dissatisfaction with aspects of the story of Cupid and Psyche as told in The Golden Ass, I thought it would be a good idea to know that book first. Having just finished Till We Have Faces, it’s a course of action I can’t recommend too highly.
David Timson is, as always, spectacular. He doesn’t just read, he performs—and he has plenty to work with here. His Lucius is a charming, susceptible, morally obtuse young man who may—or may not—be a reformed character by the end; the final book has perplexed more adroit readers than me for the past 1,800 years.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Nancy C.
- 08-09-23
Nicely read
A long lead up to the transformation of Lucius in Chapter 11. Funny tales leading to his conversion into the cult of Isis and Osiris in the end.
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- Octabat
- 02-14-24
Very well read! Such expressive character voices!
Fascinating listen!! Definitely got lost in this one- there were quite a few scenes however, that many would consider extremely triggering to a modern ear. Strong story and message.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-29-24
Magnificent!
A true masterpiece! Excellent story especially when you consider it's almost 2000 years old. David Timson's delivery is spectacular.
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- William
- 05-13-22
Awful translation
It gets to be a bit tedious hearing classics, over and over again, being translated into smug Edwardian, British English. Must that aesthetic paint be smeared across the classics?
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1 person found this helpful