KacheliTV

KacheliTV — the world's stories, read aloud.

Looking for a story to fall asleep to, to ride with on a long drive, or to share at bedtime? Start here.

We read the folk tales and classics of every culture on Earth — complete and unabridged, never excerpts — in fresh English translations, performed by our cast of voices. The fairy tales of Ireland and Japan. The legends of India and Nigeria. Jamaica, the Netherlands, the Cherokee, the Norse — and the Russia of Pushkin and Krylov. The stories your grandmother knew, and stories from shores you've never heard — every culture in the spotlight, no one missed.

New tales arrive every week. Pick a shelf, press play, and let the world's grandmothers talk you to sleep.

Free always — here and on every podcast app. Prefer no commercials? Find us on Apple Podcasts.

From The Dog You Chose LLC, Gulfport, Florida. Public-domain sources, told with respect.

Find us:

YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@KacheliTVFlorida

Telegram — https://t.me/kacheliTV

Website — https://dogyouchose.com

The Dog You Chose books — https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FYSTBLQ3

Our cast is a company of AI-generated voices, performing fresh in-house translations of public-domain works from every culture.

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S7 · E14
Today · 45 min
Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry — Part 14 of 25 (The Pudding Bewitched — Part Two · The Legend of O'Donoghue · Rent-Day)
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry — Part 14 of 25 Three tales from Yeats's great collection. In "The Pudding Bewitched — Part Two", the wedding pudding will not stay in its dish: it dances out of the kitchen, leads the whole wedding party a chase down the road, and only Harry Connolly's quick swap brings the feast — and a roomful of dancing clergy — to rights. In "The Legend of O'Donoghue", the old chieftain of Ross Castle walks the waters of Killarney's lake and rides out in splendour on May morning, glimpsed once in a generation. And in "Rent-Day", tenant Bill Doody pays his rent in fairy gold that turns to gingerbread in the agent's hands — yet somehow Bill is never the poorer for it. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 00:35 Introduction 01:59 The Pudding Bewitched — Part Two 29:00 The Legend of O'Donoghue 35:48 Rent-Day Source: "Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry", edited by W. B. Yeats (1888) — public domain; fresh in-house rendering. Narrated by Morgana. Music: opening and closing theme and between-stories excerpts — "Gangster Piano Symphony"; continuous background bed — "Candlelit Manuscripts". KacheliTV — the world's folk tales, told in full.
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S109 · E1
Today · 43 min
Henry Parker — Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Part 1
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Henry Parker — Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Part 1 Tonight KacheliTV opens a new shelf: the folk tales of Ceylon, the island we now call Sri Lanka. In the first years of the twentieth century Henry Parker, an English irrigation engineer working in Ceylon, spent his evenings listening to the storytellers of its villages, and in 1910 he published their tales in London as Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon. The words you will hear are Parker's own published English translation of 1910, read word for word — this shelf's source is that 1910 translation itself, not a new translation made for this programme. We begin where his book begins: with the making of the Great Earth, the Sun and the Moon quarrelling over the first rice, a man ruined by the ill-will of a god and restored, two Yakas outwitted at their own game, a soothsayer who talked his way out of every corner, a horse that learned to speak, and a little quail who would not give up her egg. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 0:35 Introduction 2:15 The Making of the Great Earth 6:34 The Sun, the Moon, and Great Paddy 10:08 The Story of Senasura 15:00 Concerning a Man and Two Yakas 18:03 Kurulu-gama Appu, the Soothsayer 29:17 The Speaking Horse 32:25 The Female Quail A note on this shelf's source: Henry Parker was born in 1849 and his collection was published in 1910, but no record of his death year has been found in any authority file. This shelf was opened on the owner's ruling of 5 November 2026, accepting the evidence of the birth year, the 1910 publication, and the absence of any later trace of the author, in place of a documented death year; the death year itself is not documented and is not claimed here. Seven of the book's seventy-five tales are told in this part, chosen under KacheliTV's standing rule that tales built on killing or cruelty are left out rather than softened; no claim is made that this selection is the complete book. There are many more tales waiting in Parker's pages, and we will return to the island in Part 2. Music: theme and background music — "Gangster Piano Symphony". Source: Henry Parker, Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Vol. 1 (London: Luzac, 1910). Project Gutenberg eBook #56614.
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S190 · E9
Today · 36 min
Instruments of the Orchestra — O: Oboe
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the Orchestra — O: Oboe Ninth in the season: the oboe — the treble voice of the double reeds, the instrument that gives the orchestra its tuning note. Grove's Dictionary defines it in a paragraph and follows it from the museum specimens of Egypt to Barret's elaborate modern mechanism; Galpin musters the English shawms and waits in carving, manuscript, and town record; Engel traces the reed pipes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and Athenaeus preserves what the Greeks believed about their pipes, told here as the tradition it is. In this episode: what the instrument is, the shawm family it evolved from, and the plain statement that no inventor is recorded for it. Bruno narrates. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 00:00 Opening theme 00:35 Chapter 1 — Introduction: The Alphabet at O 04:47 Chapter 2 — The Oboe Itself 12:42 Chapter 3 — The Ancient Pipes: Egypt, Greece, and Rome 18:34 Chapter 4 — The Shawm in England 25:02 Chapter 5 — The Hautboy: A New Name for a Treble Shawm 29:44 Chapter 6 — The Chair: The Oboe in the Orchestra, and the Next Letter Instruments of the Orchestra walks the alphabet of the modern orchestra one letter at a time, each episode grounded in period documentary sources. This telling rests on Grove's Dictionary (article "Oboe", unsigned), F. W. Galpin's Old English Instruments of Music (1910), Carl Engel's Musical Instruments (1875), and Athenaeus in C. D. Yonge's translation (1854), in fresh paraphrase. Where the sources hedge — Grove's "evidence to the effect" for Hoffmann's keys of 1727, Galpin's "perhaps" for the improved treble shawm — the telling hedges with them. No inventor is documented for the oboe in these sources, and none is invented here: it is an evolved instrument of the shawm family. No completeness is claimed for this episode or for the season. Next in the season: P — the Pianoforte. Music: opening and closing themes from "Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs" (house music pool), gate-passed for this episode. A continuous instrumental bed from "Gangster Piano Symphony" (house music pool) plays quietly beneath the narration. Music drawn from the channel's existing house pool of owner-deposited instrumentals. Source: Grove's Dictionary, 1st ed. (1879–1890), article "Oboe" (byline verified at build) — Wikisource. F. W. Galpin, Old English Instruments of Music (1910) — Internet Archive oldenglishinstru00galp. Carl Engel, Musical Instruments (1875) — Project Gutenberg #54537. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, translated by C. D. Yonge (1854) — Project Gutenberg #36921, #65023. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S21 · E20
Today · 35 min
The Gatiloke — Part 20 of 23
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gatiloke — Part 20 of 23 (The Two Otters Who Parted Ways to Find Food · The Man Who Died and Was Reborn as a Golden Hamsa · The Man Who Kept a Hen · The Brahmin Monkey and His Wife · The Wife Who Deceived Her Husband without His Knowing) The Gatiloke's tenth part opens with five tales. Two otters quarrel over a fish, and two judges — a jackal, then a tiger-fish with his scales — divide it until nothing is left but bones. A brahmin reborn as a golden hamsa feeds his poor family feather by feather, until his wife's greed plucks him bare in one summary act and the feathers turn white. A man who wants all his hen's eggs at once squeezes her, and in one summary clause the eggs break and the hen dies. A brahmin monkey's wife takes a lover of her own kind by the false-nephew device, stated in summary only, and runs away with his goods. And a wife who sleeps with a lover at the fence shelter, in summary only, turns her father-in-law's evidence back upon him and is believed. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. The episode opens and closes with "Gangster Piano Symphony" as its theme, heard also briefly between the stories. "Santa Fe Springs" plays as a quiet background bed under the reading. Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse. Chapters: 01:32 — The Two Otters Who Parted Ways to Find Food 09:43 — The Man Who Died and Was Reborn as a Golden Hamsa 15:17 — The Man Who Kept a Hen 18:43 — The Brahmin Monkey Who Got a Female Monkey as His Wife 29:00 — The Wife Who Deceived Her Husband without His Knowing From the Gatiloke by Suttantaprija Ind (1859–1924), Cambodia's treasury of Khmer folk tales, first published in parts in Phnom Penh in 1914–1921 — public domain, and told here in a fresh in-house English rendering made from the Khmer text, in the book's own order. Earlier holds stand as recorded in the collection's written register and in the descriptions of Parts 1–19: the question-chapter of the rascal who should be feared; Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher; the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter; the crocodile and the cart-driver; the hunter and the parrot; the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade; the abbot and his two students; the deer, the crow and the jackal; the jackal and the elephant; the lion and the frog; the rabbit and the tigress; and the goatherd boy — each held under house rule until ruled on by name. One further tale of the sixth part is held: the village cat and the chap-puk bird, a killing and an eating in the open scene, twice over. Two tales at the close of the seventh part are likewise held: the lion who loved a cow, a poisoning plotted and done; and the monkey and the great hermit, a sexual act done by guile on an unwilling other, as the tale's whole engine. Three tales of the eighth part are likewise held: the servant who killed the watch-crowing rooster, a killing plotted in thought and done in secret, as the tale's whole engine; the couple who kept a ska, a child dead by a snake's bite and a faithful creature struck down in anger, as the tale's climax; and the bear and the pongro tree, a killing directed by one and done by another's axe, as the tale's close. Three tales of the tenth part are held: the jackal who knew the mantra and led the animal army to seize Varanasi, whose close is the whole army struck dead by the lion's roar; Nandaka the ogre, killed by Vishnu's discus in the open close; and the shipmaster's wife, a lover stabbed through the throat in the open scene, as the tale's pivot. Three items stand as gaps in the transcription, their collation still owed and passed in their place: the man who knew how to play the gong, in the seventh part; Chao Vaen, who went to buy spectacles, in the eighth; and the animal army's march on Varanasi, in the tenth. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S14 · E12
Today · 42 min
Popular Tales from the Norse — Part 12 of 14
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Popular Tales from the Norse — Part 12 of 14 (Bushy Bride · Boots and His Brothers · The Twelve Wild Ducks) Three tales from Dasent's collection. First, "Bushy Bride": a kind lassie sent to the burn to fetch water washes, brushes and kisses the three heads that rise from the pool, and is blessed — gold drops from her hair when she brushes it, and gold falls from her mouth when she speaks — while her cross stepsister takes the same road in a very different spirit, and comes home with a nose four ells long. Then "Boots and His Brothers": Peter, Paul and Jack set out for the king's palace, where a great oak shades the windows and a well must be dug to hold water the whole year round; on the road Jack alone stops to wonder at an axe, a spade and a walnut. Last, "The Twelve Wild Ducks", the closing tale of Dasent's first edition: a queen wishes for a daughter as white as snow and as red as blood, her twelve sons fly away as wild ducks, and Snow-white and Rosy-red must keep silence through three long years to set them free. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Told from Dasent's text, with two standing passage cuts carried over from the shelf's register: in "Bushy Bride" the closing clause that would throw the stepmother and her daughter into the snake pit is not read — the tale ends with the brother taken out of the pit unharmed and the true wedding; and in "The Twelve Wild Ducks" the old Queen's doom dialogue and the closing execution are not read — the tale ends with the babes found alive and the joyful homecoming. At source weight: in "Bushy Bride", the brother lies in a pit of snakes on the King's order and is taken out unharmed, and the true bride's little finger is cut to draw blood, the spell-breaking moment itself; in "Boots and His Brothers", the King's standing punishment of clipped ears and exile is carried out on Peter and on Paul, each in a single summary clause; in "The Twelve Wild Ducks", one clause reports, in retrospect, that the old Queen cut the sleeping Queen's little finger to frame her. Nothing in these tales is shown being killed in scene. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:07 Bushy Bride 15:40 Boots and His Brothers 26:35 The Twelve Wild Ducks From Popular Tales from the Norse (first edition, 1859), translated by George Webbe Dasent from the tales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe — a fresh in-house modernised rendering. Narrated by Scratch. Music: opening and closing theme, "Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs", with short excerpts between the stories, and "The Friend's Cello 2" as the quiet background bed under the reading. 🎧 Podcast: https://rss.com/podcasts/kachelitv/
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S190 · E8
Today · 40 min
Instruments of the Orchestra — H: Harp
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the Orchestra — H: Harp The letter H belongs to the harp: the orchestra's oldest resident, drawn on the tomb walls of Egypt more than four thousand years ago and seated in the modern orchestra much where it always sat, at the edge, glinting. This episode follows the instrument from the painted harps of Thebes — twenty-one strings and no front pillar — through Assyria and Greece to the machine that remade it: Hochbrucker's pedals, Cousineau's crooks, and Erard's double action of 1810, seven pedals doing the work of a whole key cupboard. Every word is drawn from public-domain sources listed below; where the old books repeat a story rather than a fact, the narration says so. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. 00:35 Introduction: The Alphabet at H 04:39 The Harp Itself 09:18 Egypt: The Oldest Monuments 14:41 Assyria and the Oriental Harp 20:22 The Greek Neighbours, and the Northern Harps 28:44 The Remaking: Crooks, Pedals, and Erard 37:56 Close: The Harp's Chair, and the Next Letter Sources: A. J. Hipkins, "Harp", "Erard (instrument makers)" and "Pedals" in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, first edition (1879-89) — the signed bylines verified for this episode, Hipkins having been the dictionary's authority on instruments; J. Gardner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1837), for the harps of Thebes and Rameses III; Carl Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations (1864), whose chapter on the harp weighs the Assyrian and Egyptian evidence, and Engel's Musical Instruments (1875, Project Gutenberg #54537) for the Egyptian harp-name buni; Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, in C. D. Yonge's translation (1854, Project Gutenberg #36921 and #65023), for the magadis and the Greek harp family; and A. J. Hipkins, Musical Instruments: Historic, Rare and Unique (1888), for Queen Mary's Harp and the three modes of Irish music. The Finnish story of Vainamoinen's harp and the Greek claims for the instrument's invention are told as the tradition they are, and the invention of pedals is given as the period books give it — an attribution, not a document. The gaps at I, J, K, L, M and N are stated honestly in the narration: no surviving public-domain shelf fills them yet, and the next letter the season builds is O, the Oboe. No completeness is claimed for the alphabet, or for the harp. Music: opening and closing theme "Tabla_Horizon"; continuous bed "Gangster_Piano_Symphony" (both from the owner's deposited instrumental pool). The theme and bed claimed first for this episode did not pass the production gates and were replaced under the standing ladder; the credits name the tracks that actually air, as the build report records. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S185 · E3
Today · 57 min
Tales of Music — Part 3: Councillor Krespel
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Tales of Music — Part 3: Councillor Krespel | KacheliTV World Classics Part Three of Tales of Music, the KacheliTV shelf of stories in which music itself does the work, brings a single tale told whole: "Councillor Krespel" by E. T. A. Hoffmann — the tale J. T. Bealby's translation calls "The Cremona Violin". Councillor Krespel, a lawyer in the town of H——, builds his house without any plan at all, makes the finest violins of his age only to take them to pieces, and keeps his daughter Antonia — by every account the most wonderful singer alive — silent under his roof. A young law student who has fallen in love with her voice without ever having heard it resolves to learn the reason why; and the answer, when it comes at last, is the history of a marriage, of a window scarcely five feet from the ground, and of an old master's violin that could only live with her, and in her. A tale in which music does not accompany the plot, but is the plot. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 02:03 The House That Krespel Built 18:36 Antonia 29:06 The Funeral 39:29 The Councillor's Story A note on the telling: the tale is a frame story, and its shadows are told, not shown. Its one rough act — a wife put out of a ground-floor window onto soft grass, "scarcely five feet from the ground" — belongs to the Councillor's own confession of twenty years before the frame, told by him as comedy, with no hurt done and none described; and Antonia's end is a decline, presented as the tale presents it and never enacted. The tale's funeral chorale and church music are its scenery and its craft; nothing is preached. Music: 'Gangster Piano Symphony' (instrumental theme) opens and closes the programme and sounds briefly between the movements, and the same recording plays softly beneath the narration throughout. Source: E. T. A. Hoffmann, "Councillor Krespel" (1818), translated by J. T. Bealby as "The Cremona Violin", in Weird Tales, Vol. I (1885), Project Gutenberg eBook #31377. Public domain. Recorded for KacheliTV. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S187 · E4
Today · 50 min
The Gothic Shelf — Part 4: The Castle of Otranto — The Blood upon the Statue
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gothic Shelf — Part 4: The Castle of Otranto — The Blood upon the Statue The wounded Marquis Frederic lies under his enemy's roof, and tells how a dream, a dying hermit, and a wood near Joppa led him to the gigantic sabre buried beneath the seventh tree — and to the verses written on its blade. Manfred, entering the sick-chamber, starts back from young Theodore in armour as from Alfonso's very spectre, and hears the youth's own story: carried off at five years old, a mother dead of grief in captivity, and a writing bound about his arm. Inside the castle, Matilda and Isabella confess one secret to each other, and Hippolita proposes the union of the rival houses. Manfred carries the offer of a double marriage to Frederic — and it is accepted. Then, in the convent choir, as the bargain is spoken aloud, three drops of blood fall from the nose of Alfonso's statue. Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) continues: the fourth chapter of the first Gothic novel ever written. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 0:00 — Introduction 2:02 — The Castle of Otranto — Part Four Part Four is told whole, exactly as Walpole printed it in the novel's fourth chapter — Frederic's tale of the hermit and the sabre, Theodore's history, the princesses' confession, and the bleeding statue. Nothing in this chapter is cut. Challenges, threats and the language of menace stand as written; they are the chapter's matter, in the heightened language of 1764. The edition's own introduction and the author's period prefaces are apparatus, and are not narrated. Part Five, the novel's last chapter, continues the story in the next part of this season. Music: opening and closing themes from "Gangster Piano Symphony"; the quiet background bed under the reading is "Aqua Elegie". Source: Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764), from Project Gutenberg eBook #696 (Cassell's National Library edition) — public domain. The Gothic Shelf is an ongoing KacheliTV season of classic Gothic tales, told in parts; no completeness is claimed for the season. Retold aloud by KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S183 · E3
Today · 1 hr 5 min
Love Tales of the World — Part 3: More Tales from the Decameron
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Love Tales of the World — Part 3: More Tales from the Decameron. Four more love tales from Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (c. 1353), in John Payne's English translation of 1886, told whole and in the order of Boccaccio's own days. In the first, Girolamo and Salvestra love from childhood, and a mother's well-meant exile to Paris tests what absence cannot cure. In the second, Costanza of Lipari, hearing her lover Martuccio dead, gives herself to the waves — and the waves refuse her. In the third, Messer Gentile of Bologna rides by night to the sepulchre of the lady who never favoured him, and finds in it not death but life. In the fourth, Lisa, an apothecary's daughter, falls in love with King Pedro at his tilting and wastes away for a love she dare not speak. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. A note on the text: the Decameron tells a hundred tales; these are four of them, chosen for love's own engines, and no claim is made that this reading is complete or that these four stand for the hundred. The frame that holds the hundred together — the company of storytellers, the introductions of the days — is not narrated here; each tale is told whole from its first story paragraph to its last sentence. Two period ethnonyms in the second tale are rendered in neutral modern terms ("Barbary ships"; "a very good lady of that country"); no other such terms occur in the four tales. Chapters: 0:35 Introduction 2:12 Girolamo and Salvestra 15:01 Costanza and Martuccio 30:15 The Lady Restored to Life 47:10 Lisa and the King Source: Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (c. 1353), in the English translation of John Payne (1886), public domain (Project Gutenberg #23700). Music: "Gangster Piano Symphony", an instrumental from the KacheliTV music library, heard at the opening, between the tales, and at the close; "January Lament", an instrumental from the same library, plays quietly beneath the reading as a background bed. Narrated by Mischievous River for KacheliTV.
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S189 · E3
Today · 1 hr 33 min
Edgar Allan Poe — Part 3: The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Edgar Allan Poe — Part 3: The Murders in the Rue Morgue | KacheliTV World Classics mitroFun's Poe season continues with the tale that began detective fiction. In Paris, in a house in the Rue Morgue, Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter are found murdered — in a room on the fourth story, locked from the inside, its windows nailed down, its chimney too narrow for escape, and no murderer anywhere to be found. The police have the facts and cannot read them. But the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin — the analyst we met at the end of Part One — treats the case as an exercise of the mind: the voices the witnesses heard and could not place, the hair that is not human hair, the strength no ordinary man possesses. Poe published "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in 1841; every detective who has followed since walks in Dupin's shadow. The tale is told whole. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 02:16 The Murders in the Rue Morgue The tale is told whole and complete, as written. Poe's two bracketed asides within the tale — his note on the word "affaire" in the newspaper report, and the narrator's aside on Dupin's word "amusement" — are read aloud in place, and Poe's own closing footnote (the Rousseau reference) is read in place, announced by the word "Footnote.". The epigraph from Sir Thomas Browne is read as printed. Music: 'Gangster Piano Symphony' (instrumental) opens and closes the programme, and 'Waltz for One Double Bass' (instrumental) runs as a quiet background bed under the reading. Source: Edgar Allan Poe, tale of 1841, from Project Gutenberg eBook #25525 (The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition), public domain. Recorded for KacheliTV. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S192 · E2
Today · 1 hr 42 min
Alexandre Dumas — The Nutcracker, Part 2
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Alexandre Dumas — The Nutcracker, Part 2 The story continues. Marie lies in bed with her arm cut by the glass of the toy cupboard, and no one in the house — not her mother, not the medical counsellor — will believe a word of her story of the midnight battle. Then Godfather Drosselmayer comes to sit by her bed, mending the Nutcracker's jaw as if nothing had happened, and to make his peace with her he tells the tale within the tale: the story of the hard nut Krakatuk and of Princess Pirlipate. A queen's lard is eaten by Dame Souriconne and her seven sons; a curse is laid upon the most beautiful baby in the world; the king's mechanician and his astrologer journey fourteen years through the four parts of the world in search of the hardest nut ever grown — and of the young man, born to crack it, who must never have shaved and never have worn boots. The part ends where Dumas ends it: "It is a hard nut to crack." Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 0:35 — Introduction 1:54 — Chapter Six — The Sickness 11:13 — The Story of the Nut Krakatuk and of Princess Pirlipate — How Princess Pirlipate Was Born 36:16 — How Dame Souriconne Fulfilled Her Threat Against Princess Pirlipate 58:07 — How the Mechanician and the Astrologer Journeyed Through the Four Parts of the World 1:14:18 — How, Having Found the Nut Krakatuk, They Found the Young Man Who Was to Crack It KacheliTV tells Dumas's Nutcracker whole, in four parts, in a translation made fresh from his French for this season. This second part is told whole as Dumas printed it — Chapter Six complete, and the whole history of the nut Krakatuk, nothing cut. One honest note for the listener: the tale within the tale keeps its fairy-tale peril in the old register — Dame Souriconne's seven sons and a great company of her mouse kindred fall to the royal mousetraps in brief summary, and Dame Souriconne herself dies under a careless heel, with a long, comic, rhyming dying speech that ends in a squeak. It is all menace, curse and slapstick at a storyteller's distance; no human being is harmed. Part Three continues with the Nutcracker's own story — the uncle and the nephew, the journey to the capital, and the kingdom of the dolls. Music: opening and closing themes and story separators from "Gangster Piano Symphony"; the quiet background bed under the reading is "Golden Hour Raga 2". Source: Alexandre Dumas, Histoire d'un casse-noisette (1844), French text from Project Gutenberg eBook #5104 — public domain; English translation made fresh in-house for KacheliTV. The Alexandre Dumas season is an ongoing KacheliTV season of Dumas's works, told in parts; no completeness is claimed for the season. Retold aloud by KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S19 · E17
Today · 48 min
Japanese Ghost Tales — Part 17 of 19 — The Romance of the Milky Way
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Japanese Ghost Tales — Part 17 of 19 (The Romance of the Milky Way) Part seventeen of nineteen. A single long tale-study of Lafcadio Hearn's: the Romance of the Milky Way, the Tanabata legend of the Weaving-Lady and the Herdsman, parted by the Celestial River and allowed to meet but once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh month. Hearn tells the legend in its Japanese and Chinese forms, traces the Star-Festival through the Imperial Court and the villages of old Japan, and closes with his own translations of the ancient Man'yōshū poems the legend inspired — the lovers heard across twelve centuries in the voices of the poets who waited with them for a clear sky. Hearn's own notes are spoken where he set them, and the poems are heard in his English renderings. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Gangster Piano Symphony, and Rivers of Gold plays quietly underneath the reading as the background bed. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 0:53 The Romance of the Milky Way From The Romance of the Milky Way (1905) by Lafcadio Hearn, public domain — the ghost tales of Hearn's Japanese collections, told in his own order within each book, in Hearn's own prose, lightly modernized. Narrated by Mischievous River. Theme: Gangster Piano Symphony. Background bed: Rivers of Gold. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S184 · E2
Today · 1 hr 26 min
Ghost Stories for the Dark — Part 2: Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad · The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Ghost Stories for the Dark — Part 2: Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad · The Treasure of Abbot Thomas | KacheliTV World Classics Part Two of Ghost Stories for the Dark returns to M. R. James — Montague Rhodes James, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, the most learned antiquary ever to turn his learning to dread — and to his first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, published in 1904: stories he wrote to be read aloud, by lamplight, to friends at Christmas. Two complete tales are told here. In "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", Professor Parkins — who believes in nothing he cannot prove — takes a golfing holiday on the East Coast, finds an old bronze whistle among the ruins of a Templar church, and, being a man of science, blows it. In "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", another antiquary, Mr Somerton, deciphers a four-hundred-year-old cryptogram pointing to ten thousand pieces of gold hidden in a well at Steinfeld — and to the guardian that Abbot Thomas set over them. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters 01:45 Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad 43:55 The Treasure of Abbot Thomas Both tales are told whole and complete, as written. James's scholarly footnotes are apparatus, not tale: the two notes that merely identify a Dickens chapter and a bibliographic source are not read; his four footnotes that translate the scroll texts and the closing label belong to the story itself and are read in place. The cryptogram strings are a print device; for the ear they are read letter by letter, the letters themselves unchanged and in James's order, and Somerton's own reading of the decoded sentence follows in the text. The Latin of Abbot Thomas's chronicle and of the scrolls is read as printed, with James's own translations following. Nothing else is altered. Music: 'Gangster Piano Symphony' (instrumental) opens and closes the programme and sounds briefly between the tales, and 'Tabla Horizon' runs as a quiet background bed under the reading. Source: M. R. James, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), Project Gutenberg eBook #8486, public domain. Recorded for KacheliTV. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S3 · E19
Today · 50 min
Afanasyev — The Cat and the Fox · Chernushka · The Crystal Mountain
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Afanasyev — The Cat and the Fox · Chernushka · The Crystal Mountain Part Nineteen of the tales of Alexander Afanasyev, in fresh in-house English translations. A market square of small, sly tales: first, The Bubble, the Straw and the Bast Shoe, who set off to chop wood and meet a river — told twice, the second time in a single breath. Then Bukhtan Bukhtanovich, a fool on a stove in the open field, married to a tsar's daughter by a fox with one five-kopeck piece and three borrowed measures. The Careless Word: a hunter sells his dog to a stranger from the hill of the lemboi, and brings a merchant back his stolen son. The Cat and the Fox — the forest's most feared governor, Kotofey Ivanovich, in all four tellings Afanasyev prints. Chernushka: an ash-covered stepdaughter, two doves, three feasts, and a shoe lost on a tarred staircase. The Crane and the Heron, who propose to one another to this very day. The Cross as Surety: a bankrupt merchant borrows fifty thousand roubles on the word of a cross, and repays it by barrel down the Danube. The Crow and the Crayfish, a fable of flattery. And The Crystal Mountain, where Ivan Tsarevich divides a dead horse among the beasts, and melts a mountain for one little seed. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: [00:35] Introduction [01:58] The Bubble, the Straw and the Bast Shoe [03:53] Bukhtan Bukhtanovich [10:22] The Careless Word [12:32] The Cat and the Fox [28:51] Chernushka [33:32] The Crane and the Heron [36:08] The Cross as Surety [41:06] The Crow and the Crayfish [42:25] The Crystal Mountain The tales «Пузырь, соломинка и лапоть» (№№ 87–88), «Бухтан Бухтанович» (№ 163), «Неосторожное слово» (№ 568), «Кот и лиса» (№№ 40–43), «Чернушка» (№ 293), «Журавль и цапля» (№ 72), «Крест-порука» (№ 450), «Ворона и рак» (№ 73) and «Хрустальная гора» (№ 162) — from «Народные русские сказки» (Folk Russian Tales) collected by Alexander Afanasyev (Nauka academic edition, 1984–85), in fresh in-house English translations made for this series; no published translation was used. All the tellings Afanasyev prints of each work are read whole, in his order. One telling (№ 42) is printed unfinished in the edition itself, with the editor's note that its ending matches the tale before it; it is read as printed, and the break is announced in the reading. Music: Gangster_Piano_Symphony (instrumental) opens and closes the programme and sounds briefly between the tales; Palace_of_Glass runs as a quiet instrumental bed under the reading. Set aside by name on this walk of the collection, and not read: «Масенжны дзядок» (№ 126), The Brazen Old Man — excluded, because its hero three times cuts down a whole enemy army as the price of each reward; killing of that kind is not softened here, it is left out. Held for the owner's ruling: «Кот, петух и лиса» (№№ 37–39), The Cat, the Rooster and the Fox, whose tellings turn on the rescuer's killing blows; and «Христов крестник», Christ's Godson, one of the collection's censored tales, whose godson seated on God's throne wills a ship, a house and a monastery to destruction. Also held, as in Part 18: «Медведь, лиса, слепень и мужик» (№ 48), The Bear, the Fox, the Gadfly and the Peasant — its telling turns on cruelty that is the tale's very engine (a bear branded with a red-hot axe, a fox's leg broken, a gadfly tormented), so it is held by name rather than softened or silently dropped. No completeness is claimed for this walk of the collection. Narrated by Bruno. KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.
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S191 · E4
Today · 44 min
Instruments of the World — Part 4: Europe I — The Violin Family and Cremona
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the World — Part 4: Europe I — The Violin Family and Cremona Instruments of the World, Part 4 turns to Europe and to the most famous family in Western music: the violins. There is no inventor to name — the family is an evolution, traced here from the medieval rebec, the Welsh crwth and the fiddles of the old carvings, through the viols in their chest of sizes, to the workshops of Cremona, where the Amati brought the form together and Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù perfected it. The instruments themselves carry the story — named, dated, and still surviving: the Hellier Stradivarius of 1679, the Alard of 1715, the King Joseph Guarnerius — heard here through the nineteenth-century authorities who measured, drew, and described them. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 0:35 Introduction: A Family, Not an Invention 6:36 Before the Violin: Rebec, Crwth, and the Medieval Fiddles 14:02 The Viols: A Chest of Sizes 22:04 Cremona: The Amati Workshop and the Making of a Fiddle 29:29 The Perfecters: Stradivari and His Named Violins 36:23 Guarneri del Gesù and the Family Complete How this episode was made: the story is drawn from A. J. Hipkins's "Musical Instruments: Historic, Rare and Unique" (1888) and Carl Engel's "Musical Instruments" (1875), with supporting reference to the "Violin" article in the first edition of Grove's Dictionary (signed E. J. P. — Edward John Payne). Where the sources give an origin or creation story, it is told as the tradition it is, and attributed to its teller. Engel's "Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family" (1883) was deliberately left out: no lawful open copy could be verified for this build. This episode claims no completeness — for the violin family, for Cremona, or for the season. Next in Instruments of the World: Part 5, the pianoforte. Music: opening and closing themes and chapter separators from "Gangster Piano Symphony"; background bed: "Gangster Piano Symphony", a quiet instrumental under the reading. (The claimed theme, "Recital for One Violin", and the claimed bed, "Waltz for One Double Bass", each failed the production wordless gate; the ladder replacement is what airs, and is what is credited here.) Source: A. J. Hipkins, Musical Instruments: Historic, Rare and Unique (A. & C. Black, 1888). Carl Engel, Musical Instruments (1875) — Project Gutenberg #54537. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S190 · E7
Today · 36 min
Instruments of the Orchestra — G: Glockenspiel
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the Orchestra — G: Glockenspiel Seventh in the season: the glockenspiel — the orchestra's smallest voice and its brightest, a series of bells struck by a single performer, and in its modern form a row of steel bars in the bells' place. Grove's Dictionary defines it in one sentence and follows it to Mozart's Magic Flute and Wagner's fire-music; Galpin musters the English chime-bells in their manuscripts, struck with hammers from the eleventh century forward; Engel traces tuned bell-sets from China to the Netherlands carillon; and Stanley's museum catalogue files the instrument's modern shapes, measured to the millimetre. In this episode: what the instrument is, the bell-playing tradition behind it, and the plain statement that no inventor is recorded for it. Orson narrates. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 00:00 Opening theme 00:35 Chapter 1 — Introduction: The Alphabet at G 04:16 Chapter 2 — The Glockenspiel Itself 09:52 Chapter 3 — Ancestors: Bells in a Row 14:59 Chapter 4 — Chime-Bells and Handbells 22:26 Chapter 5 — The Tower and the Keyboard: The Carillon 32:05 Chapter 6 — From Bells to Bars: The Glockenspiel's Chair Instruments of the Orchestra walks the alphabet of the modern orchestra one letter at a time, each episode grounded in period documentary sources. This telling rests on Grove's Dictionary (articles "Glockenspiel" and "Carillon", both unsigned), F. W. Galpin's Old English Instruments of Music (1910), Carl Engel's Musical Instruments (1875), and Albert A. Stanley's Catalogue of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (1918), in fresh paraphrase. Where the sources hedge — Galpin's Paulinus attribution, Engel's refusal of the Alost invention date of 1481, Grove's antiquity "believed to be" for hand-struck bell tunes — the telling hedges with them. No inventor is documented for the glockenspiel in these sources, and none is invented here: it is an evolved instrument of the bell-playing tradition. No completeness is claimed for this episode or for the season. Next in the season: H — the Harp. Music: opening and closing themes from "Tabla Horizon" (house music pool), gate-passed for this episode. A continuous instrumental bed from "Before the Pines End" (house music pool) plays quietly beneath the narration. Music drawn from the channel's existing house pool of owner-deposited instrumentals. Source: Grove's Dictionary, 1st ed. (1879–1890), articles "Glockenspiel" / "Carillon" (bylines verified at build) — Wikisource. F. W. Galpin, Old English Instruments of Music (1910) — Internet Archive oldenglishinstru00galp. Carl Engel, Musical Instruments (1875) — Project Gutenberg #54537. Albert A. Stanley, Catalogue of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (University of Michigan, 1918) — Internet Archive cataloguestearn00stangoog. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.
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S22 · E12
Today · 33 min
Folk Tales of France — Part 12 (The Houle of Long-Val · The Fairies of Port-Blanc · The Seven Boys and Their Sister · The Pillotous · Little Lamb Martinet)
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Folk Tales of France — Part 12 (The Houle of Long-Val · The Fairies of Port-Blanc · The Seven Boys and Their Sister · The Pillotous · Little Lamb Martinet) Folk Tales of France, Part Twelve — five more tales from Sébillot's Tome II (1881), freshly translated in-house from the French; what the scan kept back is declared below. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. The Houle of Long-Val. The fairies wash by night at the Fairies' Wash, and their sow browses where she pleases; the fairy gives the farmer a loaf that never lessens, and the father shares it out for thirty-five years — until the bidding is forgotten, a piece goes to a neighbour, and the loaf is soon eaten up. The Fairies of Port-Blanc. The Port-Blanc fairies visit the Colombier by night. Marie is taken among them, sees their dancing and the cats at the crosses of Saint-Jacut, and is warned to hold her tongue. She comes home unharmed, with the good ladies' money, and never speaks of what she saw. The Seven Boys and Their Sister. Seven brothers set out to seek their fortune; their little sister, left in the wild man's house, is bled night by night through the crack beneath the door. Told as printed: the eldest brother kills the wild man with a single blow, and the brothers find their mother spinning in the fairies' grotto and carry her home. The Pillotous. The rag-and-bone man Sans-Quartier lodges three nights in an empty château where unseen hands roll him, pinch him and wrap him in the blankets, and a voice threatens him with the roasting spit — the threat is never carried out. By holding his ground he wins the princess's deliverance, and her hand. Little Lamb Martinet. Fanchette's lamb, by her fairy godmother's wand, sets a table where she wishes. Her stepmother spies it out and demands the lamb to eat; he is slaughtered off the page, and his head and feet become a fine château. Told as printed at the close: the prince kills the stepmother in a single clause as she raises a knife at Fanchette, and casts her body to the brambles. Tellers, as printed: Jacquemine Nicolas, of Saint-Cast, about 60 (The Houle of Long-Val; The Seven Boys and Their Sister); Elisa Durand, of Plévenon, seamstress, 32 (The Fairies of Port-Blanc); Marie Huchetz, of Ercé, 13 (The Pillotous); Joseph Macé, of Saint-Cast, ship's boy, from Suzon Loisel, the widow Josset (Little Lamb Martinet) — told in 1879–1880. What stands around these five is accounted for, not hidden. Two tales of this stretch wait on the book itself: La Fée de Créhen lacks its middle and closing leaves (pp. 100–101 and 108–110) in the only lawful scan, and L'Enfant qui entend le langage des bêtes lacks its opening leaves (pp. 132–133); both stand artifact-blocked. The stopped tales of the stretch — La Princesse Félicité, Les Petites Coudées, Le Corps sans âme, Petite Baguette and their fellows — remain held for the owner's ruling, and the second printed telling of The Seven Boys and Their Sister is excluded. No completeness is claimed. Chapters 00:47 The Houle of Long-Val 03:13 The Fairies of Port-Blanc 08:49 The Seven Boys and Their Sister 17:57 The Pillotous 24:46 Little Lamb Martinet From Paul Sébillot, Contes populaires de la Haute-Bretagne, Tome II (Paris: G. Charpentier, 1881), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering from the French. Music: the opening and closing theme and the tale separators are Before the Pines End; a quiet background bed of Palace of Glass runs beneath the narration. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S21 · E19
Today · 31 min
The Gatiloke — Part 19 of 23 (The Man Who Wanted to Die · The Midge and the Lion · The Bangkuy at the Gate · The Hunter and the Myna Bird · The Student Sanjiva Who Revived the Tiger · The Ghost in the Bottle)
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Gatiloke — Part 19 of 23 (The Man Who Wanted to Die · The Midge and the Lion · The Bangkuy at the Gate · The Hunter and the Myna Bird · The Student Sanjiva Who Revived the Tiger · The Ghost in the Bottle) The Gatiloke's ninth part closes with six tales. A sick man cries out for Death — and begs him to go away when he comes; its moral reflects that even those who take their own lives fear Death when he arrives. A midge boasts he will defeat the lion, drives him off, and — careless in triumph — is caught and eaten in a spider's web. A little bangkuy lizard at the palace gate is undone by the small weight of gold tied round his neck. A hunter's myna and peacock perform for the king and are caged for their skill, while the wise egret plays the fool and goes free. A student, against his companions' warning, chants his spell and revives a dead tiger, and the tiger kills and eats him — the tale is told whole, as the book tells it. And a ghost who took a farmer's shape to lie with his wife is trapped by a wise judge's bottle test and thrown into deep water. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. The episode opens and closes with "Before the Pines End 2" as its theme, heard also briefly between the stories. "Noche de Cempasu Chil" plays as a quiet background bed under the reading. Narrated by Seasoned Walnut. Chapters: 01:14 — The Man Who Wanted to Die 06:15 — The Midge and the Lion 08:50 — The Bangkuy at the Gate 14:19 — The Hunter and the Myna Bird 20:15 — The Student Sanjiva Who Revived the Tiger 24:33 — The Ghost in the Bottle From the Gatiloke by Suttantaprija Ind (1859–1924), Cambodia's treasury of Khmer folk tales, first published in parts in Phnom Penh in 1914–1921 — public domain, and told here in a fresh in-house English rendering made from the Khmer text, in the book's own order. Earlier holds stand as recorded in the register and in Parts 1–18: the question-chapter of the rascal who should be feared; Bhikkhu Sok, the Pnong teacher; the Singha-To who wanted the chief's daughter; the crocodile and the cart-driver; the hunter and the parrot; the fable of the old woman whom desire unmade; the abbot and his two students; the deer, the crow and the jackal; the jackal and the elephant; the lion and the frog; the rabbit and the tigress; and the goatherd boy — each held back until ruled on by name. One further tale of the book's sixth part — the tale of the village cat and the chap-puk bird — is likewise held back: a killing and an eating in its open scene, twice over; recorded in the register, in its place. Two tales at the close of the book's seventh part are likewise held back until ruled on by name: the lion who loved a cow (a poisoning plotted and done, upon a tale of desire); and the monkey and the great hermit (a sexual act done by guile on an unwilling other, the tale's whole engine). Three tales of the book's eighth part are likewise held back until ruled on by name: the servant who killed the watch-crowing rooster (a killing plotted in thought and done in secret, the tale's whole engine); the couple who kept a ska (a child dead by a snake's bite and a faithful creature struck down in anger, the tale's climax); and the bear and the pongro tree (a killing directed by one and done by another's axe, the tale's close). Two further items stand as gaps in the transcription, collation still owed: the man who knew how to play the gong, in the book's seventh part, and Chao Vaen, who went to buy spectacles to read broken letters, in its eighth. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S17 · E11
Today · 20 min
Nasreddin Hodja — Part 11 of 20 (The Horse That Outran the Rain) | KacheliTV World Classics
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Nasreddin Hodja — Part 11 of 20: seventeen more anecdotes of the Hodja, among the animals, in the fields and gardens. A miserable nag is praised as the fastest horse alive — because its rider undressed before the rain; an ox is ridden to the jereed game; the Hodja plays the fish in the fishing net and carries his shoes up the tree the boys meant to steal them under. A barber plants cotton on one half of his head; a nightingale sings in the apricot tree; a house full of fleas burns to general rejoicing; the mice resolve to bell the cat; two tents quarrel over a fakir; a man who plays dead for his own funeral collection sits up for the money; and a walnut in its green shell is very nearly mistaken for a plum. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Stories: 01:35 The Horse That Outran the Rain 03:24 The Ox at the Jereed Game 04:21 Playing the Fish 05:03 The Shoes in the Sack 06:09 The Left-Handed Horse 07:29 Cotton and Flax 08:14 The Nightingale in the Apricot Tree 09:15 The Apricot That Bore Eggs 10:21 The Curd Tree 11:21 Rid of the Fleas 12:15 Treasures Under the Pillow 13:00 Pass Slowly, Camels 14:06 The Fakir Between Two Tents 15:57 Four Hundred Aspers 17:14 Who Will Bell the Cat? 18:29 The Turban for a Strap 19:25 The Walnut That Was Not a Plum Eighteen tellings were read in full for this part. Seventeen are performed here; one telling was set aside at the reading gate, so no claim is made that the grouping is complete. A note on length: this episode runs about twenty-one minutes, shorter than the usual thirty-minute minimum for the series. It is released at this length under a named exception granted by the owner for this episode only (ruling of 5 November 2026); nothing was added to pad it out. Sources: Albert Wesselski, Der Hodscha Nasreddin (1911), Project Gutenberg #54690 (public domain); told in a fresh in-house rendering. Music: "Gangster Piano Symphony" is the opening and closing theme and the separator between stories. "Golden Sunsets Over Aragon" plays as a quiet background bed under the reading. All music from the KacheliTV house pool. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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S193 · E1
Today · 35 min
The Nineteenth Century Top 20 — Episode 1: The List
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The Nineteenth Century Top 20 — Episode 1: The List Season 193 opens with the countdown itself. These are the twenty most-reviewed novels of the nineteenth century, ranked by the number of reader ratings each carries on Goodreads — millions of reader ratings as the measure — and read aloud from number twenty up to number one. For each book: what it is, why it endures, where it stands with readers, and, honestly, where it stands in this project. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. The season rule: a novel that would take seven or more episodes to tell earns its own season, named for the novel itself. A shorter work — one that tells in fewer than seven episodes — lives here, inside Season 193, The Nineteenth Century Top 20. About 9,300 words of a book make one episode of about sixty-five minutes. The list, in the readers' order: 1. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen (1813) 2. Little Women — Louisa May Alcott (1868) 3. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë (1847) 4. Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë (1847) 5. Frankenstein — Mary Shelley (1818) 6. The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde (1890) 7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll (1865) 8. Dracula — Bram Stoker (1897) 9. Great Expectations — Charles Dickens (1861) 10. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen (1811) 11. Les Misérables — Victor Hugo (1862) 12. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain (1884) 13. Moby-Dick — Herman Melville (1851) 14. The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850) 15. Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy (1878) 16. Emma — Jane Austen (1815) 17. Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866) 18. The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas (1844) 19. A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens (1859) 20. The Time Machine — H. G. Wells (1895) Where the project stands, honestly: The Time Machine is built — told in Season 188, Voyages to Other Worlds, with Part One live and the rest of the book in production — the telling continues in parts. The Count of Monte Cristo is counted in this project's tally by the owner's explicit instruction, and is at the same time a held title, awaiting its ruling and its screen; Alexandre Dumas is in production on KacheliTV with his Nutcracker season. Five titles stand held, each awaiting its rulings and its screens: Great Expectations, Les Misérables, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and A Tale of Two Cities. Frankenstein is benched, awaiting its per-part screen. The remaining titles stand open, each to be screened and built in its turn; the shorter works will be told here under this umbrella, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland first when its screen lands. Chapters: Introduction Numbers Twenty to Sixteen Numbers Fifteen to Eleven Numbers Ten to Six Numbers Five to One The Season Ahead Music: opening and closing themes from "Before the Pines End"; background bed: "Clarinet at Dawn", a quiet instrumental under the reading.
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