Three more librivox's
Once again, I listened to more Public Domain works during my two-week rotation at work on the North Slope.
This time, I finished listening to the original Hardy Boys' Tower Treasure, which I had started during my previous rotation. I had originally read the Tower Treasure as a kid, but I remembered almost nothing about it. It wasn't until a few years back that I learned that the version I had read wasn't the original, but a completely revised version of it from the 1950s, made to make it more politically correct for the time, and far more streamlined. I don't remember that version well, but in this one, the Hardy Boys felt much more fleshed out as characters than they do in later books that I've read more recently, and it's also kind of amusing how big of pranksters they were back in the day: [The Tower Treasure | LibriVox](https://librivox.org/the-tower-treasure-by-franklin-w-dixon/).
Next was The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I mostly know of this from the Arthur Song where Brain checks out the book and dreams of himself turning into Jekyll Hyde, and the VeggieTales parody, but what brought this to recent attention was the reference to it in Season 1 of Wednesday, and I was like, "I got to hear the original." I am going to be honest, this wasn't as much as a favorite as I thought it would be, maybe had to do with already knowing of the Plot Twist in advance, but mostly, I just don't feel we get to know much about Dr. Jekyll as a character until further in the story where the plot twist isn't as impactful. Also, listening to it, seeing all the earlier chapters being so short, and then suddenly a super long chapter at the end, it's like, "Wait, I'm already on chapter 7 out of 10 and it doesn't feel like this story has picked up at all." I think it was a little bit of a disadvantage to listening to it, seeing how fast you're moving through the earlier chapters make you feel like it's all happening too fast to reach a satisfactory conclusion within the time constraints of the story, but if you were actually reading it, you'd see that you might not even yet be halfway through. All the best stuff happens during the last chapter, and I think it ultimately does turn into a satisfactory conclusion, but listening to it, seeing the other nine chapters practically slipping by far too quick for comfort, you really don't understand the scope of the last chapter until you're on the last chapter, and by then you've spent the entire book fearing for the pacing of the book rather than actually appreciating the pacing for what it is. But then again, that's just my own psyche playing tricks on me like it often does. Still, I'm glad to have given it a listen: [The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Version 2) | LibriVox](https://librivox.org/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2)
And then The Tale of Betsy Butterfly, continuing the trend of Arthur Scott Bailey that begun with Henrietta Hen, just a quick listen to as my rotation drew to a close. Because of the short length of the chapters, I decided to listen to the Librivox version on Archive, because they play chapters back to back by default, and I didn't want to have to keep changing gloves. Honestly though, one of the readers was a bit too much, and they had three chapters in a row, and there was one kid who was reading just a bit too fast, but otherwise, another fun listen: [The Tale of Betsy Butterfly : Arthur Scott Bailey : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/thetaleofbetsybutterfly_2201_librivox/taleofbetsybutterfly_03_bailey_128kb.mp3)
Anyway, that's what I listened to from the Public Domain these past two weeks.
This time, I finished listening to the original Hardy Boys' Tower Treasure, which I had started during my previous rotation. I had originally read the Tower Treasure as a kid, but I remembered almost nothing about it. It wasn't until a few years back that I learned that the version I had read wasn't the original, but a completely revised version of it from the 1950s, made to make it more politically correct for the time, and far more streamlined. I don't remember that version well, but in this one, the Hardy Boys felt much more fleshed out as characters than they do in later books that I've read more recently, and it's also kind of amusing how big of pranksters they were back in the day: [The Tower Treasure | LibriVox](https://librivox.org/the-tower-treasure-by-franklin-w-dixon/).
Next was The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I mostly know of this from the Arthur Song where Brain checks out the book and dreams of himself turning into Jekyll Hyde, and the VeggieTales parody, but what brought this to recent attention was the reference to it in Season 1 of Wednesday, and I was like, "I got to hear the original." I am going to be honest, this wasn't as much as a favorite as I thought it would be, maybe had to do with already knowing of the Plot Twist in advance, but mostly, I just don't feel we get to know much about Dr. Jekyll as a character until further in the story where the plot twist isn't as impactful. Also, listening to it, seeing all the earlier chapters being so short, and then suddenly a super long chapter at the end, it's like, "Wait, I'm already on chapter 7 out of 10 and it doesn't feel like this story has picked up at all." I think it was a little bit of a disadvantage to listening to it, seeing how fast you're moving through the earlier chapters make you feel like it's all happening too fast to reach a satisfactory conclusion within the time constraints of the story, but if you were actually reading it, you'd see that you might not even yet be halfway through. All the best stuff happens during the last chapter, and I think it ultimately does turn into a satisfactory conclusion, but listening to it, seeing the other nine chapters practically slipping by far too quick for comfort, you really don't understand the scope of the last chapter until you're on the last chapter, and by then you've spent the entire book fearing for the pacing of the book rather than actually appreciating the pacing for what it is. But then again, that's just my own psyche playing tricks on me like it often does. Still, I'm glad to have given it a listen: [The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Version 2) | LibriVox](https://librivox.org/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2)
And then The Tale of Betsy Butterfly, continuing the trend of Arthur Scott Bailey that begun with Henrietta Hen, just a quick listen to as my rotation drew to a close. Because of the short length of the chapters, I decided to listen to the Librivox version on Archive, because they play chapters back to back by default, and I didn't want to have to keep changing gloves. Honestly though, one of the readers was a bit too much, and they had three chapters in a row, and there was one kid who was reading just a bit too fast, but otherwise, another fun listen: [The Tale of Betsy Butterfly : Arthur Scott Bailey : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/thetaleofbetsybutterfly_2201_librivox/taleofbetsybutterfly_03_bailey_128kb.mp3)
Anyway, that's what I listened to from the Public Domain these past two weeks.
