Melvin Lee

3 books read for LibriVox

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A General View of Positivism Auguste Comte, translated by J. H. Bridges
You get a clear, strange introduction to Comte’s attempt to turn science into a moral and social order, complete with a “religion of Humanity” and a calendar of scientific heroes. It’s earnest, systematic, and sometimes maddening, but rewarding if you like ideas pushed far past ordinary common sense.
Household Tales Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Margaret Hunt
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.
The Laughing Cavalier Baroness Orczy
If you liked the Scarlet Pimpernel, this is Orczy imagining his ancestor: Diogenes, a broke soldier of fortune in frozen 1620s Holland who takes a shady job abducting a girl and can't stop grinning about it. Pure swagger and snow, happily unserious, slow in patches.

3 books read for LibriVox

filter sort genre era

A General View of Positivism Auguste Comte, translated by J. H. Bridges
You get a clear, strange introduction to Comte’s attempt to turn science into a moral and social order, complete with a “religion of Humanity” and a calendar of scientific heroes. It’s earnest, systematic, and sometimes maddening, but rewarding if you like ideas pushed far past ordinary common sense.
Household Tales Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, translated by Margaret Hunt
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.
The Laughing Cavalier Baroness Orczy
If you liked the Scarlet Pimpernel, this is Orczy imagining his ancestor: Diogenes, a broke soldier of fortune in frozen 1620s Holland who takes a shady job abducting a girl and can't stop grinning about it. Pure swagger and snow, happily unserious, slow in patches.