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Loading... Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (original 1891; edition 2017)by Oscar Wilde (Author)Derek Jacobi has such a wonderful voice! I would give his narration an extra star but I had some issues with this audiobook. This collection of short stories has somewhat different contents than the Kindle public domain edition (which as I mentioned in my review of the Kindle book) so I will comment on the contents here briefly. I got this audiobook from my library via Hoopla & that has 2 major disadvantages. Firstly, I can only access Hoopla by streaming so I can't listen to the audiobook on the go (annoying but I just switched temporarily to the Librivox edition for those times). Second, Hoopla audiobooks have no chapter markings or divisions of any kind. Thus it is extremely important to use the "bookmark" feature! Also, it is quite difficult to skip ahead to a different story. Because this audiobook had different contents than my Kindle, that was particularly annoying for this book as I was trying to listen to specific stories. Regarding the stories themselves, I will only comment on those not included in the Kindle edition. Two of them I had read before & didn't listen to this time ("The Happy Prince" & "The Devoted Friend" both of which were in my Kindle edition of The Happy Prince and Other Stories) - I remember them as charming stories for children. Two others were new to me & I discovered them to be part of my Kindle edition of A House of Pomegranates: "The Young King" and "The Fisherman and His Soul". These two stories were both too moralizing for my tastes; both had a very strong religious component which reminded me that Wilde must have been raised Catholic (I don't know if he became "lapsed" as an adult but would suspect so). I preferred "The Young King" but neither held much appeal to me. 3.5* I found this collection a mixed bag. Probably the best story is the only one I have read before: The Canterville Ghost (and my Project Gutenberg edition has illustrations!). I liked the title story, The Sphinx Without a Secret and A Model Millionaire all right but found the last story, The Portrait of Mr. W.H. dull and too long. I started listening to the Librivox recording (and did listen to it for The Sphinx Without a Secret) but discovered I had access to a recording narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi via Hoopla. I love Jacobi & he is a marvelous narrator but the Blackstone Audio edition has different contents! It had all of the stories in this Kindle edition except The Sphinx Without a Secret but also 5 additional stories. I do truly love Oscar Wilde. This lovely little story, made me cringe and laugh, almost in the same moment. It has that Wilde wit scattered all through it, and the idea of self-fulling prophecy, which is probably the most common kind. Were we no better than chessmen, moved by an unseen power, vessels the potter fashions at his fancy, for honour or for shame? His reason revolted against it, and yet he felt that some tragedy was hanging over him, and that he had been suddenly called upon to bear an intolerable burden. Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. Ah, but so often in life it is we, ourselves, who cast us in the wrong part. The wry distanced tone in which these stories are composed and the consistent observations on the characters are mostly at odds with other tonal elements in these stories and the last is largely a frame around shards of Shakespeare's sonnets supporting the argument that they were addressed to a young actor who left Shakespeare's troupe but later returned. This is not rewarding for someone seeking a consistent mood from Oscar Wilde. Delicious fun! This is along the lines of “The Importance of Being Earnest” or “An Ideal Husband,” only in short story format rather than a play. Ridiculous, witty, and charming, this story adds a dire prediction and murder to the mix in the courtship of our frivolous and affectionate young couple. Oddly, it kept reminding me of that old Alec Guinness movie, “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” although that story ends rather differently. This is Number 59 in Penguin's Little Black Classics series, and is certainly one of my favorites in that collection! Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com I started collecting Penguin's Little Black Classics, and my random reading pilot drew this booklet. I was never really crazy about The Picture of Dorian Grey. I read it and it wasn't bad but not as good as I expected it would be (based on raving reviews by friends). However, I was quite curious to this little story I hadn't heard about and since it's very short it can be easily read in a single sitting. And actually I really like it. It had a nice twist at the end, but I won't tell you too much about the story for fear of spoiling the story. However, I would recommend it as a nice quick read! Lord Arthur Savile's Crime is the 59th Penguin Little Black Classic. I found this collection a mixed bag. Probably the best story is the only one I have read before: The Canterville Ghost (and my Project Gutenberg edition has illustrations!). I liked the title story, The Sphinx Without a Secret and A Model Millionaire all right but found the last story, The Portrait of Mr. W.H. dull and too long. I started listening to the Librivox recording (and did listen to it for The Sphinx Without a Secret) but discovered I had access to a recording narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi via Hoopla. I love Jacobi & he is a marvelous narrator but the Blackstone Audio edition has different contents! It had all of the stories in this Kindle edition except The Sphinx Without a Secret but also 5 additional stories. It seems to me that some here are not taking into account the potential for wider echoes, for deeper metaphors, contained within some of these stories, beyond the cute and clever word-play and emotional moral parables. There is, it seems to me for example, a rather blatant hint towards the end of “The Portrait of Mr W.H.” that, as wonderful as the plot's fabrication is, it is itself a particular shadow on a certain cave wall... But perhaps its just my cataracts... Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her. This book contains five short stories from the late 1880s. I read it a long time ago,and recently downloaded it from Project Gutenberg to re-read. My favourite is Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, whose protagonist is unbelievably gullible when he has his fortune read at a society party. The Canterville Ghost is the story of a mediaeval English ghost's encounter with a modern American family who torment him and do not respect him at all. It's fun, but seems more like a children's story than the other stories in the book. The Sphinx Without a Secret was my least favourite, being both dull and and forgettable. The Model Millionaire was enjoyable, but is another story that I had completely forgotten from the previous time I read it. In The Portrait of Mr. W. H., the characters discuss the evidence for Shakespeare's sonnets being dedicated to a young actor called Willie Hughes, and keep changing their minds about whether the theory is true or not. I found it amusing how their minds were swayed, as if it were impossible for more than one of them to believe in the Willie Hughes theory at any one time. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.8Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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