Phil Benson

5 books read for LibriVox

filter sort genre era audiobooks

If I Had a Father George MacDonald
Songs of a Sourdough Robert W. Service
You get jaunty Yukon ballads, tall tales, and hard-edged frontier characters, with “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” showing Service’s knack for a beat that sticks. It’s broad and melodramatic, but the rhymes make the cold, loneliness, and reckless bravado feel wonderfully immediate.
Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed non-fiction
Reed was actually there, dashing between Smolny and the Winter Palace in November 1917, and it reads like dispatches scribbled on the run, crowds, speeches, rumors flying. Fair warning, he's openly rooting for the Bolsheviks and the flood of committee names takes patience, but the immediacy is real.
The Man in the Queue Josephine Tey
Tey opens with a man knifed dead in a packed theatre queue and nobody saw a thing, then lets Inspector Grant worry at it like a loose tooth, including a lovely detour chasing a suspect through the Scottish Highlands. Grant's doubts are half the pleasure; he's fallible, and Tey knows it.
The Roots of the Mountains William Morris
You settle into its deliberately archaic, saga-like rhythm and find real warmth in Burgdale’s feasts, work, loyalties, and quarrels. Face-of-god and Hall-Sun make a tender center, though Morris lingers over landscape and custom, so it suits you when you want an old tale told slowly.

5 books read for LibriVox

filter sort genre era audiobooks

If I Had a Father George MacDonald
Songs of a Sourdough Robert W. Service
You get jaunty Yukon ballads, tall tales, and hard-edged frontier characters, with “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” showing Service’s knack for a beat that sticks. It’s broad and melodramatic, but the rhymes make the cold, loneliness, and reckless bravado feel wonderfully immediate.
Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed non-fiction
Reed was actually there, dashing between Smolny and the Winter Palace in November 1917, and it reads like dispatches scribbled on the run, crowds, speeches, rumors flying. Fair warning, he's openly rooting for the Bolsheviks and the flood of committee names takes patience, but the immediacy is real.
The Man in the Queue Josephine Tey
Tey opens with a man knifed dead in a packed theatre queue and nobody saw a thing, then lets Inspector Grant worry at it like a loose tooth, including a lovely detour chasing a suspect through the Scottish Highlands. Grant's doubts are half the pleasure; he's fallible, and Tey knows it.
The Roots of the Mountains William Morris
You settle into its deliberately archaic, saga-like rhythm and find real warmth in Burgdale’s feasts, work, loyalties, and quarrels. Face-of-god and Hall-Sun make a tender center, though Morris lingers over landscape and custom, so it suits you when you want an old tale told slowly.