Beth Thomas (1974-2020)
13 books read for LibriVox
- Wilde lets his idle aristocrats trade epigrams for two acts, and Lord Illingworth is horribly quotable, then the play turns serious when Mrs Arbuthnot's old secret surfaces. If you want pure froth you might resist the melodrama, but the wit alone earns the evening.
- Joyce's one play, and it's all talk, three people circling the question of whether love can survive total freedom, with Richard almost daring his partner Bertha toward another man. Slow and cerebral in the Ibsen mold, but if you like watching jealousy dissected honestly, it stings.
- You’ll like these for their blunt, eerie storytelling, where a forest can feel genuinely dangerous and a talking animal may be wiser than the people around it. Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Ashenputtel still have a strange sharpness, though the violence and abrupt endings make this better for a taste of folklore than bedtime comfort.
- You’ll be glad to spend time with Psmith, who can talk his way through Blandings Castle while treating every social crisis as an opportunity for elegant nonsense. The plotting is gloriously tangled, with mistaken identities, a stolen necklace, and Lord Emsworth’s beloved Empress of Blandings quietly stealing scenes.
- You read it for the feverish, maze-like storytelling, as Melmoth turns up in Stanton’s tale and in the strange histories of Immalee and Monçada. It’s long-winded, grim, and often wonderfully excessive, best suited to a patient reader who enjoys gothic dread more than tidy plotting.
- Honestly, you'd read this more for the history than the laughs, but Asa Trenchard, the blunt Vermont Yankee loose among his fussy English relatives, still lands a few. If you like creaky Victorian farce and Lord Dundreary's mangled proverbs, it's a quick, odd curiosity.
- You get a filthy, sharply engineered Restoration comedy, with Horner’s fake impotence setting off Pinchwife’s paranoid jealousy and Margery’s blunt country innocence. The sexual politics are ugly in places, but the wordplay and social hypocrisy stay wonderfully alive if you enjoy comedy with teeth.
- Every character is named for exactly what they are (Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair), which sounds heavy-handed until you're stuck in the Slough of Despond yourself and it lands.
- You'll spend the whole play watching Paula fight for a fresh start she half-knows society won't allow her, and it stings because Pinero refuses to make her a villain or a saint. A short read, quietly brutal, better if you like drawing-room drama with teeth.
- You get an unusual, slightly lopsided Shakespeare play here, with Palamon and Arcite’s fierce friendship turning into rivalry over Emilia, while the Jailer's Daughter brings a surprisingly tender, earthy counterpoint. The verse shifts between Shakespearean weight and Fletcher’s brisker comedy, so its strangeness is part of the appeal.
- You’re glad you read it for the strange intimacy of spending a day inside Leopold Bloom’s mind, where errands, advertisements, hunger, and memory keep turning unexpectedly funny and tender. It’s demanding and occasionally maddening, but the jokes, wordplay, and Molly Bloom’s closing monologue reward patience.