Alisson Veldhuis

4 books read for LibriVox

filter sort genre era audiobooks

Lais Marie de France, translated by Eugene Mason
You get compact Breton romances where desire, loyalty, and magic keep upsetting respectable social rules. In Bisclavret, a werewolf’s wounded trust matters more than the marvel itself; Lanval gives you a lonely outsider and a fairy lover, all told with brisk, haunting economy.
Les Misérables Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
Yes, it's huge, and Hugo will stop everything for fifty pages on the Paris sewers, but Jean Valjean lifting that cart, or the bishop handing over his candlesticks, will sit in your chest for years. Skim the digressions if you must; the mercy at the center holds.
The American Senator Anthony Trollope
You get Trollope’s dry social comedy at its most pointed, with Elias Gotobed delivering blunt American verdicts on English aristocracy and fox-hunting society while Arabella Trefoil treats courtship as strategy. It’s sprawling and occasionally slow, but rewarding if you enjoy watching manners, money, and marriage expose people.
Toilers of the Sea Victor Hugo, translated by William Moy Thomas
You get a stubborn, solitary hero in Gilliatt, a sea salvage ordeal, and Hugo’s wonderfully strange attention to rocks, weather, machinery, and an octopus. It’s long-winded and occasionally theatrical, but if you enjoy endurance tested against a whole landscape, its roughness becomes part of the pleasure.

4 books read for LibriVox

filter sort genre era audiobooks

Lais Marie de France, translated by Eugene Mason
You get compact Breton romances where desire, loyalty, and magic keep upsetting respectable social rules. In Bisclavret, a werewolf’s wounded trust matters more than the marvel itself; Lanval gives you a lonely outsider and a fairy lover, all told with brisk, haunting economy.
Les Misérables Victor Hugo, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
Yes, it's huge, and Hugo will stop everything for fifty pages on the Paris sewers, but Jean Valjean lifting that cart, or the bishop handing over his candlesticks, will sit in your chest for years. Skim the digressions if you must; the mercy at the center holds.
The American Senator Anthony Trollope
You get Trollope’s dry social comedy at its most pointed, with Elias Gotobed delivering blunt American verdicts on English aristocracy and fox-hunting society while Arabella Trefoil treats courtship as strategy. It’s sprawling and occasionally slow, but rewarding if you enjoy watching manners, money, and marriage expose people.
Toilers of the Sea Victor Hugo, translated by William Moy Thomas
You get a stubborn, solitary hero in Gilliatt, a sea salvage ordeal, and Hugo’s wonderfully strange attention to rocks, weather, machinery, and an octopus. It’s long-winded and occasionally theatrical, but if you enjoy endurance tested against a whole landscape, its roughness becomes part of the pleasure.