Snoozecast

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. In the last episode, Captain Nemo gives Dr. Aronnax a tour of the Nautilus after a seafood lunch. First they visit the ship's library, an incredible vault of books comparable in size to anything similar on land. The captain offers Dr. Aronnax a cigar...

Tonight, we’ll read another story from our King Arthur series. This one, “Arthur Drives the Saxons from His Realm” comes from a book edited by Rupert S. Holland and published in 1919. The Saxons were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large former country in what is now Germany. In the late Roman Empire, the name was used to refer to Germanic coastal rai...

Tonight, as part of our fourth annual spooky sleep story series, we’ll read the opening to “Carmilla”, an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu. Our series will run every Monday of October. This is one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula by 26 years Le Fanu presents the story as part of the casebook of Dr. Hesselius, whose departures from medical o...

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “The Secret Garden”, a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett published in 1911.  In the last episode, the children are confronted by the cantankerous gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, who is angry to find them in the garden he has kept shut up for so long. He had never seen Colin in person, but had only heard fanciful tales about the boy. They have a reckoning, and Ben is...

Tonight, we’ll read about cooking alternatives to wheat, from the 1918 pamphlet “Foods That Will Win the War”. Although the United States did not have food rationing in World War I as it did in World War II, it did rely heavily on propaganda campaigns at the time to persuade people to curb their food consumption. Through slogans such as "Food Will Win the War", "Meatless Meals", and "Wheatless Wed...

Tonight, to kick off our fourth annual Spooky Sleep Stories series, we’ll read the opening to the novella “The Willows” written by Algernon Blackwood and first published in 1907. This year’s series of classic horror stories will air every Monday this October. In this story, two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the River Danube. The natural environment, for example the river, sun and wind— i...

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Winnie-the-Pooh” a children’s story written by A.A. Milne and published in 1926. This collection of short stories features an anthropomorphic teddy bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, along with his friends Christopher Robin, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, Kanga, and Roo. In the previous episode, we read chapters two and three, in which Pooh west visited and got into a tight...

Tonight, we’ll read the second half to "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The first half aired last week. In the opening to this story, we learn that Holmes has an older brother named Mycroft. This brother sometimes has even more uncanny deductive skills, and yet does not pursue detective work because he doesn’t...

Tonight, we’ll read the second half of “The Story of the Herons,” from a collection titled “Moonshine and Clover” written by Laurence Housman and published in 1922. The first half aired last week. In the previous episode, a princess was cursed to fall in love at first sight to whatever creature she saw. She was kept safely away, blind to the world, except for occasional walks in the forest with a...

Tonight, we shall read the next part to “Pride and Prejudice”, written by Jane Austen. Our Friday rotation is capped at four series now, so that each episode will only be one month out from the next of a particular story. If you’d like to listen to this series or any of our others in order, please go to snoozecast.com/series. In the last episode, Elizabeth bids her friends at the parsonage at Rosi...

Tonight, we’ll read the first half to "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes”. Out of all 56 Sherlock stories, Doyle ranked "The Greek Interpreter" seventeenth in a list of his nineteen favorites. — read by N — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to ...

Tonight, we’ll read “The Story of the Herons,” from a collection titled “Moonshine and Clover” written by Laurence Housman and published in 1922. Housman was an openly gay man during the Victorian era when homosexuality was severely stigmatized. He was an activist for both the women's right to vote and for the acceptance of gay people in society. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to listen to “Th...

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. In the last episode, Professor Arronax panics about the oxygen levels in the cell, which must be diminishing. To his relief, he realizes that there is a novel system of ventilation on the vessel. Painfully hungry, the men await their next meal impati...

Tonight, we’ll read from “Elements of Arithmetic” written by Augustus De Morgan and published in 1846. De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He was also known as a brilliant and witty writer. Personally, he was an atheist at a time when his expression of belief limited his academic career early. The prejudice didn’t last forever and because of his mathematical legacy, there is a crat...

Tonight, we’ll read “M. Swann” the next part in our series from French writer Marcel Proust’s monumental “In Search of Lost Time” which is seven volumes long, and first published in 1913. “In Search of Lost Time” follows the narrator's recollections and experiences in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century high-society France, while reflecting on the loss of time and lack of meaning in the w...

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “The Secret Garden”, a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett published in 1911. If you’d like to listen to this story’s episodes in order, go to snoozecast.com/series. In the last episode, the children spend an absolutely glorious spring day together in the secret garden. Mary and Dickon learn that Colin always uses a wheelchair simply because he feels so tired and...

Tonight, we’ll rebroadcast Terra Nova, a Snoozecast original, which originally aired on May 15, 2020. In this short story, a young man meets a trio of travellers who provide a new perspective on the isolated village he wants to leave. Set in Canada’s Gros Morne National Park, a World Heritage Site, this tale draws inspiration from The Tablelands. The striking, desert-esque landscape is notable for...

Tonight, we’ll rebroadcast the story of "Sleeping Beauty", which originally aired in 2019. It is a classic fairy tale about a princess who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years by an evil fairy, where she would be awakened by a handsome prince. The earliest known version of the story is found in the narrative “Perceforest”, composed in the 14th century. "Perceforest" provides an original Genesis...

Tonight, we shall rebroadcast "A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains", a travel book, by Isabella Bird, describing her 1873 trip to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This episode originally aired in 2020. The book is a compilation of letters, that Isabella Bird wrote to her sister, Henrietta. Women were scarce enough in the Western United States of the late nineteenth century, and a middle-aged Engl...

Tonight, we’ll rebroadcast an episode about the basics of bread making, which originally aired in 2020. The text is from 1925’s Woman’s Institute Library of Cookery, written by The Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences. This institute was founded by Mary Brooks Picken in Scranton, PA. An expert on fashion, Picken also wrote the first dictionary to be published by a woman in the English l...

Tonight, we’ll rebroadcast a Snoozecast original titled “Maggie’s Start Date” which originally aired in 2020. Maggie is the Green family’s loyal dog, however she may have ambitions beyond being household pet.. — read by V — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to  snoozecast.com/plus ! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at...

Tonight, we shall read the next part of “Pride and Prejudice”, written by Jane Austen. Our Friday rotation is capped at four series now, so that each episode will only be one month out from the next of a particular story. If you’d like to listen to this series or any of our others in order, please go to snoozecast.com/series. In the last episode, Elizabeth has finished reading Darcy’s letter, and...

Tonight, we’ll read the opening fairy tale from “The Descent of the Sun: A Cycle of Birth” published in 1903. This book was purportedly translated from unidentified Sanskrit manuscripts by F. W. Bain. More likely, the stories were only inspired by ancient Hindu myths. While the stories may have been a literary hoax, they are still charming fantasy tales in their own right. They help us to consider...

Tonight, we’ll read a story from “Just So Stories” by British author Rudyard Kipling published in 1902 titled “The Crab That Played with the Sea”. The book is a collection of origin stories. Kipling began working on the book by telling the first three chapters as bedtime stories to his daughter Josephine. These had to be told "just so" (exactly in the words she was used to) or she would complain....

Tonight, we’ll read the next part to “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. In the last episode, professor Aronnax, his devoted servant Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land are cast overboard and lost at sea after their confrontation with the giant mechanical narwhal. They find themselves on a floating metal island that turns...