Snoozecast

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the third part to our The Magic Cloak series, from the book Queen Zixi of Ix, or The Story of the Magic Cloak, a children's book written by L. Frank Baum and published in 1905. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The Magic Cloak episode one aired on Nov 11, 2019. If you’d like to listen to the last episode again, Part 2 aired March 30th, 2020. The events of the book alternate between Noland and Ix, two neighboring regions to the Land of Oz. 

Baum, who also wrote the Wizard of Oz, commented this was the best book he had written. This episode will start at the opening of Chapter Four. In the last episode, the kingdom of Noland’s high counselors are trying to decide how to choose a successor to the dead king. It turns out that there is an obscure law that the forty-seventh person to pass through the gates would be declared ruler. Meanwhile, orphaned children Meg, AKA Fluff, and Timothy, AKA Bud, along with their stern Aunt Rivette, are headed for town when Meg is gifted a magic cloak by a fairy. The magic cloak brings her a magical happiness.

-- read by 'V' --

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we'll read pt. 6 from Johanna Spyri's "Heidi" first published in 1881. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

-- read by 'V' -- 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the second part to the fairy tale called "The White Cat", credited to Madame d’Aulnoy. In part 1, the old king devises to distract his sons from taking over the throne with a sort of fool’s errand to find him the perfect beautiful lap dog. Whoever won would also take over the kingdom. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The youngest son stumbles upon a magical castle with a lovely talking cat, known as the White Cat. She gives him an acorn that she says carries the tiniest, most perfect dog, to bring to his father. 

As an aside, the story mentions that the prince brings with him a “turnspit dog”. This was a lowly breed of dog that is now extinct. It was kept in kitchens and ran on a wheel to turn the spit, or rotisserie that meat cooked on. The turnspit may have been an ancestor to either a modern Corgi, or the Glen terrier. 

In order not to overexert a dog with this hot and unpleasant work they were often kept in pairs, so that they could be worked in shifts. It is believed that this is the origin of the proverb 'every dog has his day.’The Turnspit dog was also used as foot warmers at church, and it is said that Queen Victoria kept retired turspits as pets. 

-- read by 'V' -- 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read a fairy tale called The White Cat, credited to Madame Comtesse d’Aulnoy. Madame d’Aulnoy’s tales were designed to entertain literary salon attendees for hours so they tended to be long, complicated and political. She could not openly criticize the regime of Louis the Fourteenth, or the way aristocratic women were entrapped within it, but she could tell her fairy tales, as in this one. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

— read by 'V' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read “If On a Summer’s Night a Traveler...”, a Snoozecast original. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The story is an homage to Julio Cortazar’s “The Continuity of Parks” and Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler”. This meta-fiction follows a group around the campfire deciding what story to tell, while eventually settling on one that seems to converge — with their own reality. 

— read by 'M' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read part 4 to, "The Princess and the Goblin", a children’s fantasy novel, published in 1872. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

One of the most successful and beloved of Victorian fairy tales, George Macdonald’s "The Princess and the Goblin" tells the story of young Princess Irene and her friend Curdie, who must outwit the threatening goblins who live in caves beneath her mountain home. 

When we left off, the princess and her nurse Lootie go for a walk and get lost. As they try to make their way back, the day gets later and the shadows longer. Lootie is afraid of breaking the most important rule- to never let the princess be out in the dark, due to goblin issues. Luckily, they meet a mining boy named Curdie who helps them back to safety. 

 — read by 'V' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read the opening to "The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices", written in collaboration by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

The book reads as an autobiographical tour taken by the two of them in the north of Britain. The Lazy Tour takes place in the year 1857 and provides insight into the friendship and adventures of the pair of titans of Victorian literature. 

— read by 'M' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we’ll read excerpts from the book "Fresh Fields" by John Burroughs, published in 1896. The main section we will read is titled At Sea. To unlock full episodes, ad-free listening, and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

John Burroughs was an American nature essayist, active in the U.S.conservation movement. Burroughs accompanied many personalities of the time in his later years, including Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford (who gave him an automobile), and Thomas Edison.

— read by 'V' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Also known as "The Arabian Nights", "One Thousand and One Nights" is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, which ran from the 8th to the 14th centuries. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

In the first part of the story, we meet the Persian emperor Kosrouschah. We also meet 3 sisters- one who becomes the emperor’s queen, and the other two become wives of the emperor’s baker and his royal chef. These two become jealous of the queen so when she gives birth to two sons and a daughter, the sisters secretly steal and abandon each baby. The royal babies are all found by the emperor’s gardener and raised as his own.

— read by 'V' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hope you enjoy this preview of an episode from our back catalog available to our premium subscribers. Tonight, we are offering the first part of the story “The Talking Bird, The Singing Tree and the Golden Water” from One Thousand and One Nights. This episode is remastered and rebroadcast - the original air date was on January 11th, 2019. Our next episode will feature part two of this story. To unlock full episodes and ad-free listening of this series and more, please go to snoozecast.com/plus.

Also known as "The Arabian Nights", "One Thousand and One Nights" is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age, which ran from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Some tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Greek, Indian, Jewish and Turkish folklore and literature. 

What is common throughout all the editions of the "Nights" is the initial frame story of the ruler and his wife and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more.

— read by 'V' — 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices