Phil Chenevert
49 books read for LibriVox
- This is where Buck Rogers actually started: Anthony Rogers wakes from a gas-induced sleep into a conquered 25th-century America, all jumping belts, rocket guns, and scrappy guerrilla bands. Pure 1928 pulp, brisk and inventive, though the Yellow Peril politics have aged very badly.
- Shaw pops every balloon here, war, honor, grand romance, and somehow it stays fun instead of cynical. You get a soldier who carries chocolates instead of ammunition, and Raina slowly realizing her heroic ideals are theater.
- It's a quick, talky play where a smug preacher and an awkward eighteen-year-old poet both think they know what Candida needs, and she quietly runs circles around them. If you like Shaw's trick of arguments that flip your sympathies mid-scene, this is a tidy little dose of it.
- Commentaries on the Gallic War non-fictionYou’d enjoy this for its cool, self-serving voice: Caesar describes ambushes, bridge-building, sieges, and negotiations in the third person, making political propaganda sound like a practical field report. It can feel repetitive, but the precise logistics and sudden glimpses of fear, confusion, and stubbornness keep it surprisingly alive.
- Doctor Dolittle founds the Swallow Mail, a postal service run entirely by birds, and the letters carry adventures back to his houseboat office. Episodic and warm, with a birds' weather bureau among its inventions; among the gentlest Dolittles.
- You get Dorothy at her most resourceful here, stranded after a California earthquake and making her way through bizarre underground countries with the Wizard, who is brave in bursts but still a nervous showman. It’s a stranger, more episodic Oz book, best if you enjoy Baum’s odd landscapes more than a tightly shaped adventure.
- You get Dorothy and Ozma traveling with Glinda into the strange country of the Flatheads, where Baum’s imagination turns geography into play. It’s a gentle, episodic late Oz book, more curious than suspenseful, and especially good when you want the familiar characters in a slightly dreamier, less polished adventure.
- You get a wonderfully odd Oz adventure led by Grampa, a boastful old sailor whose sea stories and stubbornness make him as entertaining as the magical trouble around him. The book has Thompson’s brisk, punny energy, though its strange transformations and episodic wandering suit you better than a tightly plotted quest.
- You get Heidi’s openhearted stubbornness, her grandfather’s guarded tenderness, and the clean, lively feel of life in the Alps. It’s openly sentimental and sometimes moralizing, but the friendship with Clara and Heidi’s homesickness give it more emotional weight than its sunny reputation suggests.
- You get a wonderfully odd Oz adventure here, with Prince Pompadore and Kabumpo, an elephant so grandly fussy he comments on everyone’s manners. It’s episodic and old-fashioned, but the jokes, strange transformations, and Kabumpo’s splendidly irritable dignity make it worth the detour.
- You can read it in an evening, and half the fun is watching Wilde hand every character a line too clever to waste. But Mrs. Erlynne sneaks up on you; under all the epigrams about cynics and gutters there's a real ache about who gets forgiven.
- If you want to see detective fiction before Sherlock Holmes existed, here's Lecoq crawling around a snowy murder scene reading footprints, matching wits with a prisoner who won't crack. Fair warning: halfway through it swerves into a long family backstory, so patience helps.
- You'll want to argue with everyone in it, especially Mrs. Warren herself, whose defense of her business in act two is uncomfortably persuasive. Vivie, her brisk and unsentimental daughter, gives nothing away for free.
- You get Chesterton thinking his way from youthful skepticism to Christian belief, with paradoxes about fairy tales, humility, and the “suicide of thought.” It’s witty, generous, and occasionally maddeningly digressive, but rewarding if you enjoy ideas served with jokes rather than tidy philosophical arguments.
- You’ll enjoy Dorothy’s return to Oz, where a prickly hen named Billina and the wind-up Tik-Tok make wonderfully odd companions. The Nome King’s underground kingdom gives the book a stranger, slightly darker texture than the earlier Oz adventures, while Dorothy remains practical, brave, and refreshingly unimpressed by nonsense.
- You follow Trygaeus, an Athenian who rides a giant dung beetle into heaven to bring Peace back from a pit where War has buried her. It’s earthy, ridiculous, and politically sharp, especially when farmers celebrate the return of ordinary work, though its broad jokes can feel very much of its time.
- Brion Brandd wins a planet-wide contest of body and mind, and his prize is being dragged to a desert world where fanatics are about to get everyone nuked. It's fast, pulpy sixties Harrison, a puzzle dressed as an adventure, and the empathy angle gives it a nice odd streak.
- Fair warning, these are hard poems, gas attacks and boys dying in the mud, but Owen writes them with such tenderness that you come out feeling more human, not less. Strange Meeting alone, two soldiers talking in some underworld, will sit with you for weeks.
- You’ll probably enjoy Pollyanna if you can tolerate unabashed sweetness: Polly’s “glad game” slowly unsettles stern Aunt Polly and an entire town, while the story keeps asking what kindness can do without pretending hardship is imaginary. It’s sentimental, sometimes creaky, but genuinely warm-hearted.
- You get a funny, slightly odd adventure led by the blustering King Rinkitink, the resourceful Prince Inga, and Bilbil, a famously bad-tempered goat. It spends more time on island kingdoms and captivity than on Oz itself, but the magic pearls and loyal friendships make the detour worthwhile.
- You have to settle into its dense Renaissance Florence, but Romola rewards you with a woman growing beyond her sheltered life while Tito Melema’s charm curdles and Savonarola’s certainty presses in. It’s morally serious, richly observed, and best when you want a slow, thoughtful read.
- If you like your space travel with a smirk, this delivers: Ross hops between colony worlds and each one's gone wrong in a different absurd way, one run entirely by cranky old men, another where he's suddenly the inferior sex. Pulpy 1950s satire, fast and cheerfully mean.
- Struggles and Triumphs non-fictionYou read this for Barnum’s shameless, fascinating account of turning hoaxes, curiosities, and publicity into a career, with the Jenny Lind tour and American Museum at its center. He is boastful and slippery about his own virtue, but that self-promotion is half the entertainment, especially if you enjoy watching a showman build his legend in real time.
- Forget the movie, this Pinocchio is stranger and meaner in the best way: he squashes the talking cricket in chapter four and things only escalate from there. If you like fairy tales with real teeth and dark comedy, this moves fast and never gets sweet.
- 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.
- You spend time with the Cowardly Lion beyond his usual supporting role, watching his bluster, appetite, and genuine decency carry him through Thompson’s oddball kingdoms. It wanders more than Baum and takes some patience, but if you like Oz at its stranger, joke-filled edges, you’ll have a good time.
- You get Shaw’s particular pleasure from watching Dr. Ridgeon argue about who deserves saving, while the charming, unscrupulous artist Louis Dubedat exposes how quickly medical ethics become vanity and self-interest. It’s talky and deliberately provocative, best if you enjoy ideas sparring onstage more than tidy drama.
- You get a gentler, more domestic Oz here, with Dorothy bringing Aunt Em and Uncle Henry to meet Ozma and settle into an almost utopian life. It’s episodic rather than quest-driven, but the contrast between Oz’s kindness and the Nome King’s threatened invasion gives the book a surprisingly uneasy edge.
- You get Ruggedo, the old Nome King, in full blustering, quarrelsome form, and Ruth Plumly Thompson surrounds him with the oddball wordplay and perilous nonsense she does so well. Peter Brown’s bewildered journey through Oz feels rougher and stranger than Baum, but pleasingly so.
- You’re in good company with Betsy Bobbin and the Hungry Tiger, whose enormous appetite is forever checked by his conscience. The story wanders through wonderfully odd corners of Oz, with Thompson’s brisk wordplay and comic creatures, though its episodic, slightly chaotic feel suits you better than a tightly plotted adventure.
- Forget the singing bear; the real Baloo teaches Law, and the jungle here has actual menace, with Shere Khan circling Mowgli's village like a debt coming due. Between the Mowgli chapters you also get Rikki-tikki fighting cobras, which is somehow tenser than most thrillers.
- You’d enjoy this if you like Oz a little stranger and more comic than Baum’s version: Dorothy’s search for Ozma’s long-lost father, Pastoria, takes her through a parade of eccentric kingdoms and creatures. Thompson keeps the journey brisk and gloriously odd, though her wordplay and busy detours can feel like an acquired taste.
- You get the gentler, dreamier side of Oz here, with Dorothy following a trail of missing objects through strange landscapes and meeting the wonderfully odd Button-Bright and Ojo. It’s episodic and a little slight, but the playful details and affectionate friendships make it easy to settle into.
- You’ll enjoy this if you like Oz at its most eccentric: Ozma’s birthday brings talking animals, a missing magic dishpan, and Kiki Aru’s dangerously useful transformation spells. It’s a slight, episodic read, but the parade of odd ideas and Baum’s cheerful nonsense still has real charm.
- No Dorothy this time, and it hardly matters: you get Tip running away from a witch with Jack Pumpkinhead wobbling beside him, a wooden sawhorse brought clattering to life, and Jinjur's girl army storming the Emerald City. Sillier than the first book, and stranger, in a good way.
- You get a wonderfully odd Oz adventure here, with Ojo’s anxious earnestness balanced by Scraps, a patchwork girl who treats every danger as an excuse for mischief. The journey wanders through Baum’s usual bright strangeness, though its episodic shape suits you better if you enjoy fairy-tale detours over a tightly driven plot.
- Fair warning, there's barely a plot: Dorothy and the Shaggy Man just wander strange roads picking up strays like Polychrome, the rainbow's daughter, until everyone lands at Ozma's birthday party. If you want stakes, skip it; if you want gentle, dreamy company, it's lovely.
- You get an especially good Scarecrow here, fussy, resourceful, and more emotionally exposed than usual, alongside Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. It’s a busier, stranger Oz book than Baum’s, full of odd kingdoms and sudden detours, but that unruliness gives it a pleasing storybook energy.
- You follow Trot and the one-legged Cap’n Bill through a wonderfully odd chain of islands and kingdoms, with Button-Bright making trouble and the Scarecrow appearing in a surprisingly central role. It’s episodic and dreamlike rather than tightly plotted, but the inventions keep rewarding your curiosity.
- You get a wonderfully pulpy blend of laboratory tinkering and interplanetary adventure, with Richard Seaton’s inventive optimism set against DuQuesne’s cold ambition. The science can be gloriously hand-wavy and the prose dated, but the sheer momentum makes it easy to see why space-opera writers kept returning to it.
- You get Baum’s odd blend of silliness and melancholy here, especially in the Tin Woodman’s tender concern for Nimmie Amee and his meeting with Captain Fyter. The journey wanders through inventive Oz country, so you’ll enjoy it most when you’re happy to follow whim rather than urgency.
- The plot is a tangle (everyone agrees, don't fight it), but you read this for Mirabell and Millamant bargaining over marriage like two lawyers who happen to be in love. If you like your romance conducted entirely through wit, this is the good stuff.
- You probably think you know this from the movie, but the book is stranger and drier, with a Tin Woodman who's oddly tender and a wizard who's basically a nervous con man. It reads fast and light, good for a rainy afternoon or reading aloud.
- You get Tik-Tok’s wonderfully literal voice, Betsy Bobbin’s practical courage, and a journey that moves from cheerful Oz nonsense into the eerie underground kingdom of the Nome King. It’s more episodic than some Oz books, but the oddness keeps accumulating in a lovely way.
- You get unapologetic early space opera: Conway Costigan and Clio Marsden hurtle through interplanetary intrigue while civilizations become pieces in a much larger struggle. The science is gloriously dated and the prose can be blunt, but the scale keeps expanding until ordinary adventure feels cosmically important.
- 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.
- Four kids recite a bit of Milton at a rock pool and end up rescuing a rather snooty mermaid from a seaside sideshow, then follow her underwater. It's looser and sillier than Five Children and It, but Nesbit's dry humor about squabbling siblings is all here.