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Summer reading "once and future king" too long any online audio?

yea i have to read that book and itys like 650+ pages and i cant read it cause im goin to FL for a religious program and i cant bring any entertainmaing and i only have a month left...so does anyone kno any websites with the audio version? thx!


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: The Once and Future King is an Arthurian fantasy novel written by T.H. White. It was first published in 1958 and is mostly a composite of earlier works.

The title comes from the supposed inscription of the marker over King Arthur's grave: HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS — "Here lies Arthur, the once and future king."

Plot introduction
T.H. White uses The Once and Future King as his own personal view of the ideal society. The book, most of which "takes place on the isle of Gramarye," chronicles the raising and education of King Arthur, his rule as a king, and the romance between his best knight Sir Lancelot and his Queen Guinevere (which he spells Guenever). It ends immediately prior to King Arthur's final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. Though White admits his book's source material is loosely derived from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), he creates a personal reinterpretation of the epic events, filling them with renewed meaning for a world enduring the Second World War.

The book is divided into four parts:

The Sword in the Stone (1938)
The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939) (published separately in somewhat different form as The Witch in the Wood)
The Ill-Made Knight (1940)
The Candle in the Wind (First published in the composite edition, 1958)
A final part called The Book of Merlyn was published separately (ISBN 0-292-70769-X) following White's death. It chronicles Arthur's final lessons from Merlyn before his death, although some parts of it were incorporated into the final editions of the previous books.

One often quoted passage from the book is the story which the badger calls his "dissertation," a retelling of the Creation story from Genesis.

Plot summary
The trilogy starts in the last years of the rule of king Uther Pendragon. The Sword in the Stone chronicles Arthur's raising by his foster father Sir Ector, his rivalry and friendship with his foster brother Kay, and his initial training by Merlyn, a wizard who lives through time backwards. Merlyn, knowing the boy's destiny, teaches Wart (which is Kay's nick-name for Arthur) what it means to be a good king by turning him into various kinds of animals: fish, hawk, ant, goose, and badger. These transformations show Arthur the different types of life and even "political" situations in different animal worlds. Most importantly, before he takes the throne, Wart learns to challenge the concept that "might makes right."

In fact, Merlyn instills in Arthur the concept that the only justifiable reason for war is to prevent another from going to war then, and that contemporary human governments and powerful people exemplify the worst aspects of the rule of Might.

In The Queen of Air and Darkness, White sets the stage for Arthur's demise by introducing the Orkney clan and detailing Arthur's seduction by their mother, his half-sister Morgause. While the young king suppresses initial rebellions, Merlyn leads him to envision a means of harnessing potentially destructive Might for the cause of Right: the Round Table.

The third part, The Ill-Made Knight, shifts focus from King Arthur to the story of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever's forbidden love and its effect on the mother of Lancelot's son, Elaine, and the King.

The Candle in the Wind unites these narrative threads by telling how Mordred's hatred of his father and Agravaine's hatred of Sir Lancelot caused the eventual downfall of King Arthur, Queen Guenever, Sir Lancelot, and the entire ideal kingdom of Camelot.

The book begins as a quite light-hearted account of the young Arthur's adventures, Merlyn's incompetence at magic, and King Pellinore's interminable search for the Questing Beast. In parts, it reads almost as a parody of the traditional Arthurian legend by virtue of White's prose style, which relies heavily on anachronisms. However, the tale gradually becomes darker until Ill-Made Knight loses much of the original humor and The Candle in the Wind is mirthless.

THERE IS MORE INFORMATION AT ''WIKIPEDIA''