Showing results by narrator "Mike Vendetti" in All Categories

"A Visit from St. Nicholas", more commonly known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837. 

Possibly one of the most dissected poems ever, Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures. 

His power came from some great reservoirof spiritual life, else it could not have been so universal and so potent.... 

The Practice of the Presence of God is a book of collected teachings of Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite friar, compiled by Father Joseph de Beaufort. The compilation includes letters, as well as records of his conversations kept by Brother Lawrence's interlocutors. 

Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years in prison, part of which he spent in Reading Gaol. About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his common-law wife (and promptly presenting himself and confessing to a policeman) on 29 March 1896; on 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896 - the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. The poem is dedicated to him.

The Christmas Banquet mentioned in the title is an annual feast, funded by an old misanthrope, in which the 10 most miserable people who can be found are gathered together for the holiday. Each year the guests chosen are different, but Gervaise Hastings, a man unafflicted by any obvious misfortune, is included year after year.

Temptation looms large in love poetry and religious poetry, but over the centuries, poets have described and explored the topic of temptation from a variety of different perspectives, choosing some very unusual metaphors to illustrate the dangers - or the delights - of temptation. Here are six all-time favorites. 

Thought by many to be the greatest Christmas story ever written. Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti takes us to a shabby apartment where love rules. This is a Christmas story but worth a listen any time of the year. 

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Edgar Alan Poe's classic The Pit and the Pendulum, taking us back to the Spanish Inquisition. Vendetti's performance takes us into the dungeon where we can all but feel the sharp edge of the deadly pendulum brushing across our body, hear the ravenous rats scurrying about the cell, and worst of all, the final terror. The panic of Poe's narrator becomes palpable as you listen to this classic tale so well-narrated.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, a tale of unspeakable devilry - of blatant, bacchanalian Satanism - that probes and prods the soul of America, whispering, "What is truth?" through the demonic cacophony of a Witch's Sabbath. 

Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti. "Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Comes from this poem. 

The "meat" of The Mueller Report is contained in his summaries of the report. Did the Russians interfere in our 2016 election? Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians? Did Trump attempt to obstruct the investigation? Mueller presents the evidence but does not make judgments.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads "Cinderella or The Little Glass Slipper", a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression and triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune. A very "feel good" story.

"Jack and the Beanstalk" is an English fairy tale that appeared as "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" in 1734 and as Benjamin Tabart's moralized "The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk" in 1807. Henry Cole, publishing under pen name Felix Summerly, popularized the tale in The Home Treasury (1845), and Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in English Fairy Tales (1890). Jacobs' version is most commonly reprinted today, and is believed to be closer to the oral versions than Tabart's because it lacks the moralizing.  

Perhaps one of the most famous fairy tales of all time is the tale of the three little pigs. This adaptation of the story is from Joseph Jacob's 1890 collection English Fairy Tales.  

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti recites this timeless nursery rhyme.

Join award winning narrator Mike Vendetti and Chicken Little, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey. The birds must let everyone know that the sky is falling. 

"Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die". A lament of airman, soldier, sailor, and marine throughout history from Lord Tennyson's 1854 poem based upon a charge of British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. 

Proverbs is not merely an anthology but a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life that lasted for more than a millennium. It is an example of the Biblical wisdom tradition and raises questions of values, moral behavior, the meaning of human life, and right conduct.  

Throughout history generations of young men have fought in wars started by old men. There is no experience other than combat that makes a more lasting or life changing impression on a man or woman. The majority who have seen the battlefield saw combat before their 25th birthday, and many who did never got to celebrate that anniversary. Those who do come back are forever changed. Krebs in Hemmingway's "Soldier's Home" for instance.