David Leeson
5 books read for LibriVox
- You get a brisk, old-fashioned adventure as Michael Strogoff crosses Siberia under an assumed identity, with Nadia Fedor and the bickering journalists Blount and Jolivet adding warmth and humor. It’s more melodramatic than Verne’s science fiction, but the journey has real momentum and nerve.
- Nero's Rome, but the reason to stay is Petronius, the exhausted aesthete who mocks everyone (including himself) right up to the edge of disaster. It's a big, old-fashioned love story with real dread underneath, and yes, the burning city scenes still land.
- The comedy bits are light (Portia testing suitors with riddle caskets), but Shylock's "hath not a Jew eyes" speech will sit with you for days. It's uncomfortable, deliberately or not, and that tension is exactly why it's worth arguing about afterward.
- Tozer writes like a man impatient with secondhand faith, and the chapter on Abraham letting go of Isaac (the blessedness of possessing nothing) will sit with you for days. It's a short, fervent devotional, best read slowly and prayerfully, not skimmed like an argument.
- You get a sprawling, old-fashioned adventure through the Cossack uprising, with the stern Skrzetuski, fierce Bohun, and wonderfully shameless Zagłoba carrying a romance, battles, and siege scenes. It can be digressive and unabashedly Polish in its loyalties, but the vivid campfire humor and rough, crowded world make the long journey worthwhile.