LibriVox Forum

The staff has picked for April - thanks for your many and multiligualed suggestions! Please have a look at this page for the current pickings. You can also check out our wiki page for a plain vanilla list that now contains all the staff picks for this year plus the readers (I finally got to it, yay!)

Next month is May - Mother's Day! So, let's celebrate

Moms

I'd like to showcase recordings with a strong motherly figure, grandmothers and aunts, as well as adoptive moms count too! How about nurses, spiritual leaders... anything you can think of! Hold the guys though - we'll give a shout out to them on Father's Day.

Especially welcome are suggestions of plays and poetry!
And, as always: All languages welcome!

Suggest away!

Suggestion in Portuguese? We have the recently cataloged Memórias de Martha: https://librivox.org/memorias-de-martha-by-julia-lopes-de-almeida/ A poor mother who gives all her time, blood, sweat and tears to raise and educate her little girl. Quite sad.

that's what mothers do... *sniff*

Here are a couple of plays about Mothers.

https://librivox.org/the-birth-of-merlin-the-childe-hath-found-his-father-by-william-shakespeare/

Merlin. King Arthur. War betwixt British and Saxons. Uther Pendragon. Collapsing castle foundations, Magicians and spirits, and fighting dragons and a blazing comet. Good entertaining stuff. (And no longer believed to be by Shakespeare, but by Rowley.) The plot device that drives the play is an expectant Mother's search for the father of her unusual child Merlin - with an unexpected answer.


https://librivox.org/britannicus-by-jean-racine/

Agrippina is widow of Domitus Ahenbarbus, the Father of Nero, and widow by her second marriage of the emperor Claudius, the Father of Brittanicus. Can she get her son and step-son to play nice? Umm, not likely.


https://librivox.org/the-weaker-sex-by-arthur-wing-pinero/

Lady Vivash is dedicated to the cause of The Advancement of Women. But then her daughter returns from time abroad in love, and followed by her older lover. What is a mother to do?


https://librivox.org/madame-pepita-by-gregorio-martinez-sierra/

Madame Pepita is a dressmaker in Madrid with an inherited fortune and a secret. So naturally she worries about the motivations of the suitors for her daughter's hand. But perhaps she should pay attention to other concerns as well.


https://librivox.org/sweet-lavender-by-arthur-wing-pinero/

Ruth Rolt is Housekeeper and Laundress at No. 3, Brain Court, Temple. Her daughter Lavender is coming of age amidst the quirky characters of the house, with secrets likely to reveal themselves. A delightful story of maternal love.


https://librivox.org/the-thebaid-or-the-brothers-at-war-by-jean-racine/

Jocasta is mother of two princes, Eteocles, King of Thebes, and Polynices, his brother, as well as her daughter Antigone. The story describes the battle between the brothers, and being a proper tragedy, despite Jocasta's best attempts it does not end well for anyone.

Thanks, Todd

Hi!,

Not a play and not about a mother, but about a heroic nurse, Edith Cavell, in I WW: "A Noble Woman, The Life-Story of Edith Cavell"

https://librivox.org/a-noble-woman-the-life-story-of-edith-cavell-by-ernest-protheroe/

(didn't want to use the word heroine)

Cheers,

Basquetteur

Definitely an interesting one, thank you!

the single suggestion i can really post, is:
https://librivox.org/teufelsmauer-by-hans-hoffmann/
and of this book, a single short story, which i have read.

(we shouldn't recommend single stories of collections, should we? but this book can be summarized in several ways.
the topics vary, but the stories describe "the love-life" of a woman in steps.
the last two short stories of four get into our topic of the month, culminating in the last story:)

a god? holds judgement about an endless amount of souls - the people died in the oceans. one soul will be given the opportunity to fullfill a life-wish.
after some others tried to claim their last wish, and got declined by the god (great mystical wisdoms here...chosen gets a mother, who (when her ship sank) carried a doll with her, to give it to her daughter. this daughter is dead for sure, now, but... all other souls, warlords, scientists, all laugh and mock about this wish and...
the last wish gets granted - a mothers soul gets the chance to find peace.

this story is...
so impressing, so aweful, so bringing tears for me...
and it is a story of the topic of the month.

--

now, i made some covers for books which could suit..

https://librivox.org/life-and-sayings-of-mrs-partington-and-others-of-the-family-by-b-p-shillaber/
"Mrs. Partington, not unlike Mrs. Malaprop, is prone to using the wrong words when expressing her sentiments. However, the "inappropriate" word choices often cause one to look at a situation in a new way."

https://librivox.org/violet-osborne-trilogy-by-emily-ponsonby/
"This book tells us about her life as a girl, and takes us through her marriage and motherhood."


other suggestions:

https://librivox.org/die-verkaufte-grossmutter-by-hanns-heinz-ewers/
ein kinderbuch auf deutsch!
"Der brave kleine Otto aus gutem Hause freundet sich mit dem Arbeiterkind Jupp an, weil der eine ganz besondere Großmutter hat - eine Großmutter, die Märchen erzählen kann"
da geht es aber eher um die kinder...

i have read an eulogy for maria theresia, nicknamed the mother of the nation in austria. but it is in one of the prose collections...
https://librivox.org/sammlung-kurzer-deutscher-prosa-054
the overall topic is "our mother and queen" is dead - and ends with: now long live the king! (the evangelic priest titulates her as a mother and mother of the nation several times)


maybe we will catalogue lay down your arms in english this month. in the end, it is a fictional biography of a youung mother and widow, who developes into being a pacifist.

As I read what you're looking for, Grandmither, Think Not I Forget comes to mind
https://librivox.org/april-twilights-and-other-poems-by-willa-sibert-cather/
The grandmother is a strong motherly figure who continues to comfort the narrator

The many Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and Little Women come to mind.

And section 100-something To Children At The Hearth
https://librivox.org/boys-and-girls-by-j-w-foley/
is a mother speaking to her children so dearly

I think of many kinds of inspiring mothers. In addition to grandmothers and aunts: older sisters, young mothers, distant mothers who keep in touch. In the upcoming years, we'll have honorable mothers in the PD who are professionals and public figures as well.

I recall many stories of kids who grew up with lousy surrogate mothers because their mothers died during childbirth, or were overwhelmed by too many kids. I'm looking forward to seeing what you collect.

I hope you will consider adding the link https://librivox.org/category/monthly-picks/
to the first post in this thread and to the main menu. Am I the only one who has wandered several trails in search of the blog? The home page is a perfect place for it, but I never remember to look there.

thank you both!

However, I do not choose individual pieces from a collection of stories or poetry if I can avoid it. It's a bit of a hassle with the links and I don't want people to hunt through a whole (potentially lengthy) collection for a single piece.

As for the link - the staff picks are on the LV homepage on the right hand side under "News". They are pretty much the only posts in there, so I'm not sure what you mean with "main menu"?

Availle wrote: ↑April 12th, 2021, 3:49 pm I'm not sure what you mean with "main menu"?

On my phone, it's the 3 horizontal bars in the upper left corner, aka "hamburger".

GraceBuchanan wrote: ↑April 12th, 2021, 5:02 pm

Availle wrote: ↑April 12th, 2021, 3:49 pm I'm not sure what you mean with "main menu"?

On my phone, it's the 3 horizontal bars in the upper left corner, aka "hamburger".

The staff picks are in blog posts. On my phone, they're on the home page right below the new releases.

The hamburger menu has:
About
Contact
Forum
Help
Twitter

Which is a menu we cannot change just for a phone/tablet display.

Thank you both! Yeah, we can't do anything about that menu at this point, and I'm not even sure it makes sense to have an extra menu point to something that's on the front page anyway? Thinking about the KISS principle here...

However, I'll put the link onto the main Staff Picks page in the wiki. It's nice to have all the posts for the picks at one's fingertips.

The staff has picked for April - thanks for your many and multiligualed suggestions! Please have a look at this page for the current pickings. You can also check out our wiki page for a plain vanilla list that now contains all the staff picks for this year plus the readers (I finally got to it, yay!)

Next month is June - Father's Day! So, let's celebrate

Dads

I'd like to showcase recordings with a strong father figure, grandfathers, uncles, as well as adoptive fathers count too! How about nurses, spiritual leaders, teachers... anything you can think of! The ladies had their chance this month, now it's about the guys.

Especially welcome are suggestions of plays and poetry!
And, as always: All languages welcome!

Suggest away!

For June-Dads I nominate Hugh Walpole's The Wooden Horse, about the return home of a Cornish father after an absence of twenty years in Australia. It is a story about how a father comes to know his (alienated) son and how that son comes to appreciate his father. Fatherhood is central to the core of the story.

https://librivox.org/the-wooden-horse-by-hugh-walpole/

Walpole’s first novel (1909), The Wooden Horse is the story of the Trojans, a family which accepted tranquilly the belief that they were the people for whom the world was created. But when Harry Trojan came home after twenty years in New Zealand, with the democracy learned by working his hands, he was the "wooden horse" who boldly carried into the Trojan walls a whole army of alien ideals, which made of that egotistic family a group of human beings content to be human.

And thank you for all your work on our behalf !!!