"The Life You Gave Me," Bette Howland's 1983 story from her collection Things to Come and Go published by Knopf and edited by Gordon Lish. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Host Rick Whitaker's selection of aphorisms. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host, Rick Whitaker, reads Raymond Carver's 1964 story "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" With music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Season Three of Read Me To Sleep, Ricky features the short story, beginning with two by Katherine Mansfield (1880-1923) read by your host, Rick Whitaker. Both are from her 1922 collection The Garden Party: "Life of Ma Parker" and "The Singing Lesson" with music from The Fairy Queen (1692) by Henry Purcell. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

"School Days" is from Richard Howard's 2008 collection of poetry Without Saying. A distinguished poet, critic and translator, Richard Howard held a unique place in contemporary American letters. Howard was credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard’s critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003, and his collection of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) was praised as one of the first comprehensive overviews of American poetry from the latter half of the 20th century. First and foremost a poet, Howard’s many volumes of verse also received widespread acclaim; he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection Untitled Subjects. His other honors included the American Book Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the PEN Translation Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Ordre National du Mérite from the French government. For many years, Howard was the poetry editor of the Paris Review.Known for his erudition and interest in the nature of artistic expression, Howard’s poems are often dramatic monologues in which figures from history and literature speak directly to the reader. From Howard’s first book, Quantities (1962), his approach to the dramatic monologue set him apart as a unique practitioner of contemporary poetry. Using voices from characters as disparate as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, Henry James, and Orpheus among others, Howard’s narrative monologues are darkly comic, laced with irony and sadness, and distinctly learned. Early books such as The Damages (1967) and Untitled Subjects (1969) saw Howard honing his skill with a wide range of subjects and voices. Frequently addressing the incommensurability of word and world, Barbara Fischer asserted in her review of Talking Cures (2003) that “in [Howard’s] work’s insistent writtenness and its collages of polyvocal quotation he reminds us that the immediacy of contact—vocal, erotic, somatic, sensory contact—is out of reach as soon as we write about it.”Howard’s work in the 1970s and ’80s continued to explore the use of monologue, dialogue, and other forms of the speaking voice in his poetry. In Two-Part Inventions (1974) and Fellow Feelings (1976), he creates imaginary conversations between historical persons, uncovering shared assumptions and emotions between himself and such writers as Walt Whitman and Charles Baudelaire. The poems of Misgivings (1979) are all addressed to the subjects of 19th-century photographic portraits, while those of Lining Up (1984) are the voices of artists and musicians. Speaking to Allen Wiggins of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Howard explained that in his poems he tries to get “out of the way of voices, letting the voices speak through me and for me, and I have discovered that my own experience can be represented much better than it can be presented.” With his 10th book of poetry, Like Most Revelations (1994), Howard inhabits the voices of Edith Wharton and Walt Whitman, but he also offers elegies for friends who have dSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host Rick Whitaker reads his own selection of aphorisms by Americans: Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Jane Jacobs, Mencken, Santayana, and Aaron Haspel.Music: Frederic Rzewski's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" VariationsSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

In tonight's episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, host Rick Whitaker reads a classic love story by the Russian master Anton Chekhov. Published in 1899, translated by Constance Garnett. Music: Tchaikovsky's "Souvenir de Florence," second movement Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Poet and translator par excellence Richard Howard, who was a dear friend, died March 31, 2022 at 92. His 1982 translation of Baudelaire's masterpiece, Les Fleurs du Mal, won the National Book Award.Read here by Rick WhitakerWith affectionate thanks to David AlexanderSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host, Rick Whitaker, reads his selection of Blaise Pascal's Pensees interposed with J.S. Bach's Little Preludes and Italian Concerto. Pianist: Glenn GouldSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Lojong (Tib. བློ་སྦྱོང་,Wylie: blo sbyong) is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes.The fifty-nine or so slogans that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. They contain both methods to expand one's viewpoint towards absolute bodhicitta, such as "Find the consciousness you had before you were born" and "Treat everything you perceive as a dream", and methods for relating to the world in a more constructive way with relative bodhicitta, such as "Be grateful to everyone" and "When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up."Chanting: The Gyuto Monks of Tibet (Yamantaka)Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky's host Rick Whitaker reads John Gardner's 1971 monster novel GRENDEL (in lower-than-usual monster voice). Music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel: Alessandro, Brian, Carroll, Michael, White, Edmund, Karash, Igor: 9781603095082: Amazon.com: BooksEdmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him Chevalier (and later Officier) de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993. White's books include The Joy of Gay Sex, written with Charles Silverstein (1977); his trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels, A Boy's Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997); and his biography of Jean Genet. Much of his writing is on the theme of same-sex love. White has also written biographies of three French writers: Jean Genet, Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He is the namesake of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, awarded annually by Publishing Triangle. Pianist: Vadim ChaimovichSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

 Read Me to Sleep, Ricky host Rick Whitaker is joined by actress Carmela Marner for a reading of James Joyce's classic story "The Dead." In her 1987 review of John Huston's film based on the James Joyce story, Pauline Kael wrote, 'The announcement that John Huston was making a movie of James Joyce’s “The Dead” raised the question “Why?” What could images do that Joyce’s words hadn’t? And wasn’t Huston pitting himself against a master who, though he was only twenty-five when he wrote the story, had given it full form? (Or nearly full—Joyce’s language gains from being read aloud.)' "The Dead" is the final story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce.  It was well-received by critics and academics and described by T. S. Eliot as "one of the greatest stories ever written".Carmela Marner is best known for her stage performances and her direction of the Franklin Stage Company in upstate New York. She is the reader of several books for Audible and appears in the films Puss In Boots, Beauty and the Beast, Call Red, Mission: Impossible, Casualty, Staying Alive, Quid Pro Quo, and Eyes Wide Shut. She is a professor in the Theater Department at SUNY Oneonta.  Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was the pre-eminent master of the aphorism in the second half of the 19th century. Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was one of the greatest of all pianists and his compositions were mostly for solo piano, and most were shorter than ten minutes. For this episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, your host Rick Whitaker reads his own selection and arrangement of Oscar Wilde's aphorisms including the entire "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young." The recording of Chopin Nocturnes is by Guiomar Novaes (1895 – 1979).We recommend listening with auto-play OFF and the volume fairly low. So get into bed, close your eyes, and listen as you drift off to sleep. Don't bother arguing with Oscar. Though often preposterous, his style never flags. Even on his deathbed, as the story goes, in a cheap Paris hotel,  he managed to be funny: "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do."                   Brazilian pianist Guiomar Novaes (1895-1979) entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1909 at age 14 and instantly caught the attention of Debussy, who had been on her entrance jury. Even by that young age, she had already made fundamental decisions about musical interpretation. Her teacher at the Conservatoire, Isidor Philipp, found it difficult to persuade her to change her interpretations of things such as tempo once she had made up her mind. By 1910, she was already on the concert stage, performing in Paris, London, and on tour in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany and she was only 19 when she made her New York debut at Aeolian Hall. Her final appearance in New York was nearly 60 years later, with a concert in 1972.  She began with a large repertoire and gradually narrowed it, becoming most famous for her Chopin interpretations. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

A reading by host Rick Whitaker of the opening pages of Michel Foucault's 1975 magnum opus Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la prison translated by Alan Sheridan as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison published in 1977 by Pantheon Books. "On 2 March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned 'to make the amende honorable before the main door of the Church of Paris', where he was to be 'taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds'; then, 'in said cart, to the Place de Greve, where, on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers...." Music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

The second installment of Herman Melville's leviathan novel Moby Dick read by host Rick Whitaker with music by Brad Garton. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Read Me to Sleep, Ricky host Rick Whitaker reads "On a Winded Civilization," an essay by the Romanian writer E.M. Cioran (1911-1995) from his 1956 collection  The Temptation to Exist. The introduction to the English-language edition translated (from the French) by Richard Howard is by Susan Sontag, who wrote: "Cioran's subject: on being a mind, a consciousness tuned to the highest pitch of refinement." Read Me to Sleep, Ricky recommends listening at a medium-low volume and with auto-play turned off: the purpose of this podcast is to help its audience get to sleep. Music by Brad GartonSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

The first episode of Read Me to Sleep Ricky's second season is a reading by host Rick Whitaker from his own 2013 novel An Honest Ghost. "Like an Italian micromosaic, whose infinitesimal ceramic tesserae generate an unearthly glow just by being in close proximity to each other, Rick Whitaker's An Honest Ghost is both narrative and objet, a singular work of art whose singularity keeps beckoning to the reader. He has put the force back into tour de force." --John AshberyComposed entirely of discrete, unedited sentences recycled from more than 500 other books, An Honest Ghost is an autobiographical literary feat unlike any other. Music: Brad Garton's Coronavirus Suite (2020)The transcription following contains a list of all the quotes, in order of appearance, that make up An Honest Ghost. Each quote is followed by the author who wrote it; the book in my library from which the sentence was taken; and the page number on which it appears in that edition. RWSupport the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

For the 17th episode of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky, host Rick Whitaker reads excerpts from Elizabeth Hardwick's 1979 novel Sleepless Nights. "A brilliant night in New York City. It is Saturday and people with debts are going to restaurants, jumping in taxi-cabs, careening from West to East by way of the underpass through the Park."--- Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com

Episode 16 of Read Me to Sleep, Ricky features a 1949 story, Camp Cataract, by Jane Bowles (1917-1973) read by your host, Rick Whitaker. Support the showRead Me to Sleep, Ricky is hosted by Rick Whitaker and produced in New York City. Contact: rickawhitaker@gmail.comhttps://readmetosleepricky.com