Librivox Audiobooks

This is a volume of short stories by the famous Arthur Conan Doyle. - Summary by Carolin
Genre(s): Single Author Collections
Language: English
Keyword(s): short stories (751), danger (12)

The Dancing Mania
Justus Hecker (1795 - 1850)
Translated by Benjamin G. Babington (1794 - 1866)
Numerous theories have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains unclear whether it was a real illness or a social phenomenon.
One of the most prominent theories is that victims suffered from ergot poisoning, which was known as St Anthony's Fire in the Middle Ages. During floods and damp periods, ergots were able to grow and affect rye and other crops. Ergotism can cause hallucinations, but cannot account for the other strange behaviour most commonly identified with dancing mania.
Many sources discuss how dancing mania, and tarantism, may have simply been the result of stress and tension caused by natural disasters around the time, such as plagues and floods…people may have danced to relieve themselves of the stress and poverty of the day, and in doing so, attempted to become ecstatic and see visions. Sources agree that dancing mania was one of the earliest forms of mass hysteria, and describe it as a "psychic epidemic", with numerous explanations that might account for the behaviour of the dancers.
Another popular theory is that the outbreaks were all staged, and the appearance of strange behaviour was down to its unfamiliarity. Religious cults may have been acting out well-organised dances, in accordance with ancient Greek and Roman rituals. Despite being banned at the time, these rituals could be performed under the guise of uncontrollable dancing mania. (Introduction from Wikipedia, slightly adapted.)
Genre(s): *Non-fiction, History, Psychology
Language: English
Keyword(s): psychology (127), medieval history (10), History of Medicine (4), medieval religion (1), mass hysteria (1)

The Dance of Death
August Strindberg (1849 - 1912)
Translated by Edwin Björkman (1866 - 1951)
The Dance of Death is a play in two parts by the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, written in 1900. It depicts the dissolution of a marriage between Edgar, an artillery captain, and Alice, a former actress. Increasingly isolated in their fort-like house, they manipulate and bait each other, until the unexpected arrival of Curt, Alice's cousin. His presence creates a tense triangular relationship that escalates throughout Part One, and is complicated with the introduction of two of the trio's children, Allan and Judith, in Part Two. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)
Cast
Edgar: Bob Neufeld
Alice: Elizabeth Klett
Curt: Bruce Pirie
Jenny: Availle
Old Woman: Bev J. Stevens
Allan: mb
Judith: Arielle Lipshaw
Lieutenant: Victoria
Narrator: Sean Daley
Audio edited by Elizabeth Klett
Genre(s): Plays
Language: English
Keyword(s): marriage (159), relationships (54)

No matter how enlightened, chances are you've been raised around superstitious lore of one kind or another. Fanny Dickerson Bergen was one of the original researchers of North American oral traditions relating to such key life events and experiences as babyhood and childhood, marriage, wishes and dreams, luck, warts and cures, death omens and mortuary customs, and "such truck," as Huck Finn would say.
You'll be surprised at how many of these old saws you'll know. Here's a quote from Chapter One, Babyhood:
Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is sour and sad,
Thursday’s child is merry and glad,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child must work for a living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.
--Baldwinsville, N. Y.
All of these readings are as short as 5 minutes and no longer than 15 minutes, with plenty of pithy one-liners in the form of proverbs, always given with the locale they came from in Canada or the United States (with clear influences in British tradition). (summary by Denny Sayers)
Genre(s): *Non-fiction, Social Science (Culture & Anthropology)
Language: English
Keyword(s): classic (43), tradition (6)

The Cruise of the Snark (1913) is a memoir of Jack and Charmian London's 1907-1909 voyage across the Pacific. His descriptions of "surf-riding", which he dubbed a "royal sport", helped introduce it to and popularize it with the mainland. London writes:
Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it.
(Excerpted from Wikipedia)
Genre(s): Memoirs
Language: English
Keyword(s): literature (1964), memoir (103), island (23), Pacific (8)