Stand and Deliver

I purchased a microphone stand last night, to aid my recordings for cookiecast.org. I’d been told before to stand up when recording, and was reminded again when I read the same advice on Podcast Pedant:

Want a fast, cheap, probably obvious trick for noticeably improving your podcast voice? Stand up when you talk. It’s well known that standing straightens the air passages and gives you a lot more power.

So now that I have (what I think is) a decent setup for recording, I feel like I ought to do more of them! I'm not yet ready for anything long, as I'm still learning, but I'd like to try something of moderate length for the challenge and experience. I keep eyeing Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad -- it's long been one of my favorite stories; though I now note with dismay that it already exists at LibriVox.

So what short works do you suggest? Public domain or CreativeCommons licensed works only, please.