The Official Blurb

In this collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, the great detective continues doing what he does best: averting political scandals, tracking down murderers, dragging Dr. Watson into unpleasant situations. As always, it’s adventurous fun for the rest of us. This book was published in 1917, after The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

My Review

What we have here is the standard fare for a collection of short Sherlock Holmes stories from Conan Doyle. I love Sherlock Holmes and so was really looking forward to this audio book. I was not disapointed by the story content. Holmes as always shows a facinating insight into the ordinary and deducts his way to success in a varied and interesting set of cases.

The final story brings Sherlock into wartime or very nearly wartime, and because of this I can now finally forgive Basil Rathbone for starring in those old wartime Holmes stories.

This recording was made by various volunteers at Librivox and all of the readers were pretty good. Unfortunately the “Production” on this book has suffered. In particular the first story covered in the first two files had an awful levels issue. The reader herself sounded fine but the fact that the sound levels were washing up and down like a manic tide meant that I could not listen to the first story.

This book is still worth downloading, even if you miss the first story due to the sound levels.

Reading 2/3
Production 1/3
Story 3/3

Total Score 6/9

A collection of classic Christian hymns spanning the centuries. Some LibriVox volunteers read the hymns; others sung them.

(Summary by Leon Mire)

• Bartleby e-text
• LibriVox’s Hymns of the Christian Church Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book (41.6MB)

Buccaneers and Pirates of our Coasts is a non-fiction, rolicking story of the origins of piracy and of the famous pirates of the coasts of the United States. The stories don’t cast pirates in the glowing light of modern day renditions – in Stockton’s stories, pirates are bad guys! – but the dramatic style makes them good fun to read, anyway! (Summary by Sibella Denton)

• Gutenberg e-text
• Wikipedia – Frank R. Stockton
• LibriVox’s Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book (213.7M)

The Didache is the common name of a brief early Christian treatise (dated by most scholars to the late first or early second century), containing instructions for Christian communities. The text, parts of which may have constituted the first written catechism, has three main sections dealing with Christian lessons, rituals such as baptism and eucharist, and Church organization. It was considered by some of the Church Fathers as part of the New Testament but rejected as spurious or non-canonical by others, eventually not accepted into the New Testament canon with the exception of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church ‘broader canon.’ The Roman Catholic Church has accepted it as part of the collection of Apostolic Fathers. The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is an early Christian text. Scholars knew of the Didache through references in other texts, but the text itself had been lost. It was rediscovered in 1873 by Philotheos Bryennios. (Summary by Wikipedia, modified by Sam Stinson)

• E-text
• Wikipedia – Didache
• LibriVox’s The Didache Internet Archive page
• Zip file of the entire book 9.6MB