Bayley’s Bookshelf - Great Audiobooks

"2 + 2 = 5. "They can't get inside you," she had said. But they could get inside you. "What happens to you here is forever," O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could not recover. Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out." The final chapter of George Orwell's dystopian nightmare masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"You asked me once," said O'Brien, "what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world." The penultimate chapter of the increasingly non-fiction 1984. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst." Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old despotisms was 'Thou shalt not.' The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt.' Our command is 'Thou art.'" Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"Sometimes with a fading hope he thought of O'Brien and the razor blade. It was thinkable that the razor blade might arrive concealed in his food, if he were ever fed. More dimly he thought of Julia. Somewhere or other she was suffering, perhaps far worse than he. She might be screaming with pain at this moment." You know it's grimdark when your clinging onto the hope of being snuck a razorblade. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but who were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. If there was hope, it lay in the proles!" Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations—not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive." Sincere apologies for the lateness of this. This is a beast of a chapter (that I love to be fair) and I was really burned out from finished another audiobook for a publisher along with juggling an influx of writing work and trying to sell my house! Thank you for bearing with me, normal service shall now resume. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"You are prepared to give your lives?" "Yes." "You are prepared to commit murder?" "Yes." "To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?" "Yes." "To betray your country to foreign powers?" "Yes." "You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases—to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?" "Yes." "If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child's face—are you prepared to do that?" "Yes." "You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or a dock worker?" "Yes." "You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?" "Yes." "You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again?" Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"When once they get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot you, and if I refuse to confess they'll shoot you just the same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us will even know whether the other is alive or dead." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Also attached is the high quality audio file for your player of preference. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life, it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to happen." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"Often they gave themselves up to daydreams of escape. Their luck would hold indefinitely, and they would carry on their intrigue, just like this, for the remainder of their natural lives. Or Katharine would die, and by subtle maneuverings Winston and Julia would succeed in getting married. Or they would commit suicide together. Or they would disappear, alter themselves out of recognition, learn to speak with proletarian accents, get jobs in a factory, and live out their lives undetected in a back street. It was all nonsense, as they both knew. In reality there was no escape. Even the one plan that was practicable, suicide, they had no intention of carrying out. To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"Rats!" murmured Winston. "In this room!" "They're all over the place," said Julia indifferently as she lay down again. "We've even got them in the kitchen at the hostel. Some parts of London are swarming with them. Did you know they attack children? Yes, they do. In some of these streets a woman daren't leave a baby alone for two minutes. It's the great huge brown ones that do it. And the nasty thing is that the brutes always—" "Don't go on!" said Winston, with his eyes tightly shut. "Dearest! You've gone quite pale. What's the matter? Do they make you feel sick?" "Of all horrors in the world—a rat!" Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"The family could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"I hated the sight of you," he said. "I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. If you really want to know, I imagined that you had something to do with the Thought Police." The girl laughed delightedly..." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"He did not know why the Thought Police should choose to deliver their messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons. The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description. But there was another, wilder possibility that kept raising its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it. This was, that the message did not come from the Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground organization. Perhaps the Brotherhood existed after all!" Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough; but precisely because of the extremity of his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body." Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances." The Bit is in this chapter. You know. The Bit. You see it on all the memes created by both sides of the debate because they both think the other side wants the Orwellian future. Can you blame me for giving it some welly? Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

I love it when main characters have unlikable aspects to them. Not every lead character needs to a best mate you want to go to the pub with. Travis Bickle isn't. They just need to be compelling. Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon I love it when main characters have unlikable aspects to them. Not every lead character needs to a best mate you want to go to the pub with. Travis Bickle isn't. They just need to be compelling. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon This is happening now, we're just running a few decades late. Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via: https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social https://rjbayley.com/contact/ https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/ This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws. This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.