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Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format from the University of South Florida. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF.

All the books are available for free download or listen to online. Over 200 selections include everything from adventure to tragedy, Jules Verne to Sherlock Holmes. You will find the readers of the content to be excellent compared to other similar sites of classic literature.

Also available is a link for the books to open in iTunes. Here is a sample of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne

Chapter 1

I added the link in the tab bar under audiobooks Lit2Go

With ample doses of talent, spirit, and charisma, Flatt and Scruggs rose to the popular peak of the bluegrass heap during their 17-year association with Columbia. With Lester Flatt's casual vocal style and Earl Scruggs's groundbreaking banjo technique, the Foggy Mountain Boys brought bluegrass into the country mainstream more so than either Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers.

Earl Scruggs is the great innovator and master of the 5-string banjo; but many do not know that he was also excellent on the guitar. This song, Jimmy Brown the Newsboy, features Earl on lead guitar.

Earl said that he learned a lot about guitar from his friend and neighbor, Mama Maybelle Carter. His style is very similar, except for finger movement.

It is a sad fact of life that the Golden Age of Hollywood was not a Golden Age for African Americans. Particularly in the Thirties, African American characters were often outright stereotypes. It was the era of Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best, actors whose speciality was playing characters who were stereotypically lazy, dim witted, and illiterate. Even in an era when offensive stereotypes permeated everything from big budget feature films to Warner Brothers cartoons, however, there were African American actors whose work would change the image of blacks on film for the positive. Among these actors was comedian Eddie Anderson, best known for playing Jack Benny's valet Rochester on the long running Jack Benny Programme.

Possessing an immediately recognisable, gravelly voice that was something like a foghorn, there can be no denying that Eddie "Rochester" Anderson was one of the most popular radio and television stars of the 20th Century regardless of race. In the course of his career he became the highest paid African American actor for a time and one of the highest paid stars in radio. And while Eddie Anderson is best known as Rochester, he also had a highly successful career as a character actor in motion pictures. Indeed, Paramount considered Eddie Anderson such a box office draw that they once wanted him for one of their Bob Hope movies. Jack Benny, who had Mr. Anderson under contract, turned Paramount down with the words, ""It's bad enough having him steal my pictures." Jack Benny may have had little success in motion pictures, but his comedy partner Eddie Anderson was a bona fide movie star, one who could have easily stolen a..........  (read full article)

Storage ... Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, in the company warehouse in California. Photo: The New York Times

 

Inspired by a pillar of antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, Brewster Kahle has a grand vision for the Internet Archive, the giant aggregator and digitiser of data, which he founded and leads.

"We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans," Kahle said.

"We want to collect all the books, music and video that has ever been produced by humans."

Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive

As of Tuesday, the archive's online collection will include every morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs devoted to news.

Archived ... Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

The latest ambitious effort by the archive, which has already digitized millions of books and tried to collect everything published on every web page for....... read more

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1894, by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Adventure 1: “Silver Blaze”

Sherlock Holmes investigates the disappearance of a race horse and the murder of its trainer.

Adventure 2: “The Yellow Face”

A man asks Holmes to investigate the strange behavior of his wife.

Adventure 3: “The Stockbroker’s Clerk”

Sherlock Holmes is faced with a case involving a man that is lured away from his place of business and is caught up in strange activity.

Adventure 4: “The Gloria Scott”

While in college, Holmes visits a friend and strikes a tender spot when talking to his friend’s father. This leads him into his investigation of a mystery involving blackmail.

Adventure 5: “The Musgrave Ritual”

Two of Musgrave’s domestic servants disappear after he catches the butler looking at the Musgrave ritual. He asks for Holmes’s assistance in finding them.

Adventure 6: “The Reigate Puzzle”

Holmes becomes involved with a case that involves a robbery of an invaluable assortment of things and then the murder of a coachman of a nearby estate.

Adventure 7: “The Crooked Man”

Holmes calls Watson to witness his last move in a case about the murder of a colonel. His wife is the prime suspect because they were having an argument when he died.

Adventure 8: “The Resident Patient”

A man is found in an unusual business agreement and entreats Holmes for his help.

Adventure 9: “The Greek Interpreter”

A man comes to Mycroft Holmes and tells him of his strange encounter. Sherlock Holmes then becomes involved because of his brother’s laziness.

Adventure 10: “The Naval Treaty, Part 1”

Dr. Watson receives a letter from an old friend that tells about a treaty that was stolen from his office. Watson refers the letter to Holmes to investigate.

Adventure 10: “The Naval Treaty, Part 2”

A conitnuation of part 1 in which Dr. Watson receives a letter from an old friend that tells about a treaty that was stolen from his office. Watson refers the letter to Holmes to investigate.

Adventure 11: “The Final Problem”

Holmes arrives at Watson’s home after escaping three murder attempts and a threat from his nemesis Moriarty. Holmes is determined to bring Moriarty to terms in order to uphold justice and make his career.

by Trevor Dann

Trevor Dann and his first tape recorder

Do you remember all those warnings about home taping? Did you ignore them and furtively record some of your favourite radio shows anyway? Do you have an attic or a garage or even an old cardboard box under the spare bed full of tapes or cassettes of Pick of the Pops, Saturday Club, Easy Beat, Top Gear or Housewives’ Choice?

Well the good news is you got away with it!

Not only that, but the BBC would love to recover some of the great shows it broadcast and didn’t archive. And as part of the Corporation’s brilliant 90th anniversary celebrations, it’s declaring a radio amnesty, and asking you to help.

That’s me above with my first tape recorder. My Dad bought it for me as a present for passing the 11 Plus (it was like Year 6 SATs kids!) and it set me on the road to a lifetime in radio including spells as head of music at Radio 1 and chief exec of the Radio Academy.

These days I work as an independent producer and it was while my colleague Heather Davies and I were working on our mammoth 50-part series, Sounds of the 20th Century for Radio 2, that we realised the need for a project like this.

The BBC’s sound archive is a terrific resource for (more...)

Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album Tempest reveals that he has lost none of his fire.

What should we expect from Bob Dylan in 2012? After 50 years on the road, it is surely remarkable that rock’s greatest and most revered lyricist is still going at all, let alone fiercely engaged with music, still performing hundreds of gigs a year, still writing and recording. Tempest, released by Columbia Records next week, will be Dylan’s 35th studio album. What is even more remarkable is that it is among his best ever.

If there has been a criticism of Dylan’s later work, it is that the lyricism only rarely touches the poetic heights of his classic Sixties and Seventies songs. He has had a tendency to write in simple, bluesy rhyming couplets with phrases liberally borrowed from traditional songs. There is a sense of patchwork in which tension often derives from collision and contrast, the friction of ideas, characters and images rubbing up against each other in places where you are not quite sure they really belong. While Tempest maintains some of this jackdaw sensibility, Dylan sounds genuinely fired up by the possibilities of language. The whole album resounds with snappy jokes and dark ruminations, vivid sketches and philosophical asides. (The TELEGRAPH) read more...

The full album is streaming for a limited time directly on iTunes by following this link.

High-Tech Activities for Grandkids

It's a good question when you take into account the terrifying traffic zooming past this duck family on a Toronto highway.

A Fox News chopper caught the heart-stopping adventure on video. Watch it below:

 

What we have here is a moon — a small one (slightly wider than the state of Arizona) — circling Saturn.

If you look closely, you will see a small splay of light at its top, looking like a circular fountain.

That's because it is a fountain — of sorts. A bunch of volcano-like jets are sending fantastically high geysers of water vapor up into the sky, so high that you can see them in this remarkable print by Michael Benson, back lit by light bouncing off of Saturn.

It turns out this moon, read more...