The Talking Handkerchief, and Other Stories
Thomas Wallace Knox
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
This is a collection of 22 stories of action and adventure. We follow the narrators as they escape pirates and cannibals, overcome natural disasters, and are attacked by wild animals. Cunning plans are executed and daring escapes are accomplished, all in the particular style of the 19th century adventure story.
Thomas Knox was an author who had travelled around the world by the time he wrote the stories in this volume, and who was no stranger to any of the geographic areas in which he set his stories. - Summary by Carolin (6 hr 4 min)
Chapters
The Talking Handkerchief | 37:54 | Read by Michael F. Plueger Sr. |
Frozen to an Ice-Floe | 15:06 | Read by Michael F. Plueger Sr. |
Captured by Cannibals | 19:30 | Read by Michael F. Plueger Sr. |
In a Shark's Mouth | 13:01 | Read by DannyHauger |
Beset by Chinese Pirates | 16:10 | Read by Mike Pelton |
Jugglers of the Orient | 21:02 | Read by Mike Pelton |
The Serf's Revenge | 17:15 | Read by Mike Pelton |
The Head-Hunters of Borneo | 14:56 | Read by Mike Pelton |
A Fight with a Tiger | 9:44 | Read by DannyHauger |
Caught in a Typhoon | 10:48 | Read by Paezra |
Chased by Wolves | 19:46 | Read by Matthew Thompson |
Betrayed by a Mirage | 12:20 | Read by Anthony Castellani |
To the Great Wall of China | 14:38 | Read by ToddHW |
A Corroboree in Australia | 15:26 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
Treed by an Elephant | 12:34 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
Stopped by Russian Robbers | 18:46 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
A Battle with a Kangaroo | 15:06 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
A Russian Elopement | 14:28 | Read by Kalynda |
Chased by Malay Pirates | 10:30 | Read by NathanTroyer |
An Exile's Escape from Siberia | 15:38 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
Oriental Thieves | 14:16 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
A Chemical Detective | 25:18 | Read by Lynda Marie Neilson |
Reviews
Great book with various narrators of mixed quality
A LibriVox Listener
This book has some excellent stories of adventure in Asia, the Pacific and Russia during the Nineteenth Century. The author’s writing is exciting. However, some of the narrators are not particularly good and although the first narrator is quite good, the flagship story (‘The Talking Handkerchief’) suffers from poor audio equipment. It is certainly worth a listen though. The book’s format as an anthology means that readers can skip any narrators or stories that aren’t to the reader’s liking with ease.
mafinokc
Librivox is a great and noble concept, but the reality of its execution is often a letdown. Allowing pretty much anybody to read these works makes for extremely variable results. Many of these stories are exciting and are of the type not often found in contemporary memoirs. But the quality of the reading varies from pretty decent to atrocious. Lynda Marie Nelson is particularly bad: Her tone is monotonous, she frequently halts and stumbles over words as if she were reading them for the first time, and she absolutely mangles foreign words and place names to the point of their being barely recognizable. If you're going to read for Librivox, the least you can do is read the text first before you record it, and take the trouble to learn the correct pronunciation of unfamiliar words and place names. Lynda appears to have done neither. The sound quality of her recordings is also terrible. If it were up to me I'd reject her readings out of hand, but perhaps Librivox operates on the beggars-can't-be-choosers principle.