The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes
Not a work that I am familiar with. I'll have to spend a weekend or so with it.
E-Book/E-Text Announcements: September 2005 Archives
Science Fiction Studies:Full Texts of Sold-Out Back Issues
For those who take their Science Fiction somewhat more seriously.
Page images of the 1861 Edition of the Collected Works of Washington Irving. Includes his biography of George Washington, his study of the Alhambra and of Islam, and the Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, etc.
Nice place to start thinking about the season--"Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is always a nice seasonal treat.
It's not the definitive ICS, and it is from the 1922 redaction known to have been modified for the sake of the living by her sister. Nevertheless, if you need something quick, easy, on-line, and in public domain, here's your text. The words that remain are those of St. Therese. Much of her sister Pauline's editing was merely deletion of personal references and remarks she thought inappropriate. (Thus leading those who have not read the definitive version to think of St. Therese as a little saccharine and a little over-pious. Her sister Pauline was a great fan and a tremendous spin-doctor in the short run, but may have done her damage in the long-run.
Against a dictatorship of relativism
Look at the supercool array of Podcasts found by Mr. Thakur. Thank you sir.
Browse Top Level > Audio > Open Source Audio > Spoken Word
At Open Source Audio--A number of readily available books--and thanks to the efforts and contributions of volunteers such as Maria Lectrix noted below, this will only increase. This is the greatest find (for me) since Distributed Proofreaders.
I honestly don't even know how to describe and typify this work. It isn't Japanese because it is by Lafacadio Hearn, a would-be Japanese from ?San Francisco.
Kokoro means "heart" and it includes a number of glimpses into Japanese culture at the time. (read more about Hearn here).
Suffice it to say that this is a major work in the genre. Gutenberg has had some pretty hot properties of recent date.
Some fairly important mysteries have already made it to Gutenberg, but this is the first I've heard of R. Austin Freeman's The Red Thumb Mark. Part of the "Impossible Crime" Movement and featuring Dr.Thorndyke, this is a critical publication for those interested in the development of the mystery.
With this publication there were three other Thorndyke mysteries--The Uttermost Farthing, John Thorndyke's Cases, and The Mystery of 31 New Inn. I must confess ignorance as the the first and last of these--so more new good reading.
Probably the single most famous Japanese story of all time. Made into one of the most copied Japanese films of the great master Akira Kurasawa. And relentlessly copied in literature. If you read only one piece of Japanese literature, you owe it to yourself to become acquainted with this strange, haunting, frightening little tale.
later I see I originally neglected to mention that this story is by Akutagawa, often nicknamed "the Japanese Poe." But perhaps a much more important figure in Japan than Poe was in the U.S.
Finally an e-edition of the famous complementary volume to Dream of the Red Chamber. Like Red Chamber The Scholars is an 18th century novel in the realist tradition.
A sample from the very beginning:
from The Scholars
Wu Ching-tzu
The idea expressed in this poem is the commonplace one that in human life riches, rank, success and fame are external things. Men will risk their lives in the search for them; yet once they have them within their grasp, the taste is no better than chewed tallow. But from ancient times till now, how many have accepted this?However, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty 1 a really remarkable man was born. His name was Wang Mien, and he lived in a village in Chuchi County in Chekiang. When he was seven his father died, but his mother took in sewing so that he could study at the village school. Soon three years had passed and Wang Mien was ten. His mother called him to her and said, “Son, it's not that I want to stand in your way. But since your father died and left me a widow, I have had nothing coming in. Times are hard, and fuel and rice are expensive. Our old clothes and our few sticks of furniture have been pawned or sold. We have nothing to live on but what I make by my sewing. How can I pay for your schooling? There's nothing for it but to set you to work looking after our neighbour's buffalo. You'll be making a little money every month, and you'll get your meals there too. You start tomorrow.”
“Yes, mother,” said Wang Mien. “I find sitting in school boring anyway. I'd rather look after buffaloes. If I want to study, I can take a few books along to read.” So that very night the matter was decided.
The next morning his mother took him to the Chin family next door. Old Chin gave them some breakfast, and when they had finished he led out a water buffalo and made it over to Wang Mien.
“Two bow shots from my gate is the lake,” he said, pointing outside. “And by the lake is a belt of green where all the buffaloes of the village browse. There are a few dozen big willows there too, so that it is quiet, shady and cool; and if the buffalo is thirsty it can drink at the water's edge. You can play there, son; but don't wander off. I shall see that you get rice and vegetables twice a day; and each morning I shall give you a few coppers to buy a snack to eat while you're out. Only you must work well. I hope you'll find this satisfactory.”
Wang Mien's mother thanked Old Chin and turned to go home. Her son saw her to the gate, and there she straightened his clothes for him.
“Mind now, don't give them any reason to find fault with you,” she charged him. “Go out early and come back at dusk. I don't want to have to worry about you.”
Wang Mien nodded assent. Then, with tears in her eyes, she left him.
From this time onwards, Wang Mien looked after Old Chin's buffalo; and every evening he went home to sleep. Whenever the Chin family gave him salted fish or meat, he would wrap it up in a lotus leaf and take it to his mother. He also saved the coppers he was given each day to buy a snack with, and every month or so would seize an opportunity to go to the village school to buy some old books from the book-vendor making his rounds. Every day, when he had tethered the buffalo, he would sit down beneath the willows and read.
So three or four years quickly passed. Wang Mien studied and began to see things clearly. One sultry day in early summer, tired after leading the buffalo to graze, he sat down on the grass. Suddenly dense clouds gathered, and there was a heavy shower of rain. Then the black storm clouds fringed with fleecy white drifted apart, and the sun shone through, bathing the whole lake in crimson light. The hills by the lake were blue, violet and emerald. The trees, freshly washed by the rain, were a lovelier green than ever. Crystal drops were dripping from a dozen lotus buds in the lake, while beads of water rolled about the leaves.
As Wang Mien watched, he thought, “The ancients said, 'In a beautiful scene a man feels he is part of a picture.' How true! What a pity there is no painter here to paint these sprays of lotus. That would be good.” Then he reflected, “There's nothing a man can't learn. Why shouldn't I paint them myself?”
Soseki Natsume's Botchan on-line. One of the great Japanese Novelists, one of his great novels.
Okay, I'll admit it. I include this one merely for one of the more bizarre titles I've seen in a long time:
"The Death-Wake or Lunacy; A Necromaunt in Three Chimeras"
Very, very odd indeed. With an intro by Andrew Lang.
A novel by Maurice Baring, the third member of the "PreInklings" consisting of Chesterton, Belloc, and their associates. You don't often find Baring's stuff on the web or elsewhere, so I thought I'd alert you.
It's on days like these that you can tell I run this blog for me. I collect all these bits and pieces and put them into posts so that when I've forgotten where they are in my bookmarks, etc., I'll have a repository. Sorry.
But this site features a large number of e-texts--some by John W. Cample, Alan E. Nourse, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Andre Norton. All are claimed to be copyright cleared.
An interesting text against birth control. I do not know its vintage, though it strikes me that much of the advise is incorrect and some of the physiology odd--so it may be turn of the century. (GSB is quoted--another clue.) It has this striking paragraph toward the end:
from Birth Control
Halliday G. Sutherland M.D.There are thousands who know little of the Catholic or of any other faith, and thousands who believe the Catholic Church to be everything except what it is. These people have no infallible rule of faith and morals, and when confronted, as they now are, by a dangerous, insidious campaign in favour of birth control, they do not react consistently or at all. It was therefore thought advisable to issue this statement in defence of the position of the Catholic Church; but the reader should remember that the teaching of the Church on this matter is held by her members to be true, not merely because it agrees with the notions of all right-thinking men and women, not because it is in harmony with economic, statistical, social, and biological truth, but principally because they know this teaching to be an authoritative declaration of the law of God. The Ten Commandments have their pragmatic justification; they make for the good of the race; but the Christian obeys them as expressions of the Divine Will.
I found this yesterday and didn't quite know what to make of it. Was this an evangelical Matthew Fox? What exactly is Christian Hedonism?
But rather than continue to withhold, I thought you all might like to go and make your own evaluation. Given that it is evangelical, it could be anywhere in the spectrum from strongly anti-Catholic to nearly Catholic in sensibility. My sense of what I've seen is that the focus is "ecumenical."
So without further ado, I give you the library of the Desiring God foundation
A small sample from a book on fasting:
from A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer John PiperBeware of books on fasting. The Bible is very careful to warn us
about people who “advocate abstaining from foods, which God
created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know
the truth” (1 Timothy 4:1-3). The apostle Paul asks with dismay,
“Why . . . do you submit yourself to decrees, such as ‘Do not handle,
do not taste, do not touch’?” (Colossians 2:20-21). He is
jealous for the full enjoyment of Christian liberty. Like a great
declaration of freedom over every book on fasting flies the banner,
“Food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse
if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat” (1 Corinthians 8:8).
There once were two men. One said, “I fast twice a week”; the
other said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Only one went
down to his house justified (Luke 18:12-14).The discipline of self-denial is fraught with dangers—
perhaps only surpassed by the dangers of indulgence. These also
we are warned about: “All things are lawful for me, but I will not
be mastered by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).
For the Antiquarians--the online works of William Morris. Arguably a better poet and designer than prose artist. Nevertheless, once you slip into the oddities of style, there is something wonderful about William Morris's work. Definitely for the medievalists and pseudo-medievalists amongst us. Waters of the Wondrous Isles, translations of Old French Romances and Icelandic sagas, and some very, very, very fine poetry.
And for those more modern, a relatively early work by Andre Norton.
I'm not certain what all the titles here have to do with one another, but there's sure a lot of them.
Dracula's Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood" Weird study of Dracula.
Sample:
from Dracula's Crypt:"The Metrocolonial Vampire"
Joseph ValenteA founding insight of the Irish Dracula school of criticism has been that Harker's observations in Transylvania refer in whole or in part to the features of life in Ireland in the nineteenth century.3 I think it would be more accurate to say that Harker's observations in Transylvania seem intended to echo or recall prominent treatises, received wisdom, and well-worn remarks, not to mention canards about Ireland. His comment on the immodesty of a peasant woman's native dress, for example, rehearses Edmund Spenser's strictures on Irish women's attire in A View of the Present State of Ireland.4 Harker's complaint about dilatory trains and his comments on the "idolatrous" peasants kneeling by a roadside shrine in a "self-surrender of devotion" (11), like figures "in old missals" (15), would have been familiar enough from Anglocentric travel narratives about Ireland. So too would have been his sense of the general depopulation of the countryside.
He has his own Site. Seems to include complete text of many books and some Quick Time videos, maps, etc. Cool!
A list of what's available via Gutenberg. There's even more in Australia Gutenberg.
Another Sort of Learning. Includes links to a wide variety of essays and studies by this erudite commentator on literature, society, and learning.
Subjects include: Belloc, Chesterton, Sense and Nonsense, Augustinian Political Philosophy, Teaching and Learning, Christian Political Philosophy, Thomas Aquinas--each subject having a plethora of resources associated with it. Truly a treasure trove.
They can be found here. It's nice that Gutenberg is doing something other than plain vanilla .txt files.
