Simon Winder has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 9 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 356 ratings. The most-rated is Trick Mirror.
Trick Mirror
Summary
New York Times Best Seller "From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television." (Esquire) Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times "A whip-smart, challenging book." (Zadie Smith) “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time." (Vulture) Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for Best First Book Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Public Library and one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review • Time • The Washington Post • NPR • Variety • Esquire • Vox • Elle • Glamour • Good Housekeeping • The Paris Review • Paste • Town & Country • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • BookRiot Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the listener with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. Finalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay "Jia Tolentino is the best young essayist at work in the United States, one I’ve consistently admired and learned from, and I was exhilarated to get a whole lot of her at once in Trick Mirror. In these nine essays, she rethinks troubling ingredients of modern life, from the internet to mind-altering drugs to wedding culture. All through the book, single sentences flash like lightning to show something familiar in a startling way, but she also builds extended arguments with her usual, unusual blend of lyricism and skepticism. In the end, we have a picture of America that was as missing as it was needed." (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me)
©2019 Jia Tolentino (P)2019 Random House Audio
Memento
Summary
From New York Times best-selling authors Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff comes an Illuminae prequel novella that gives listeners a hair-raising glimpse into the calamity that befell the invincible AI system known as AIDAN - and the daring young programmer who would risk her life to keep it from crashing. AIDAN is the AI you'll love to hate. The advanced AI system was supposed to protect a fleet of survivors who'd escaped the deadly attack on Kerenza IV. AIDAN was supposed to be infallible. But in the chaotic weeks and months that followed, it became clear that something was terribly, terribly wrong with AIDAN.... Narrators: "Olivia Klein", read by India Dupré "Ethan Wolf", read by James Fouhey "AIDAN", read by Lincoln Hoppe "Stephanie LeFevre", read by Emma Bering "Ezra Mason", read by Johnathan McClain Narrator, read by Ryan Gesell Featuring additional performances by Danny Campbell, Frankie Corzo, Chris Cuilla, Deepti Gupta, John Lee, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Donabella Mortel, Austin Rising, Erin Spencer, and Nancy Wu.
©2020 Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (P)2020 Listening Library
Germania
Summary
Sitting on a bench at a communal table in a restaurant in Regensburg, his plate loaded with disturbing amounts of bratwurst and sauerkraut made golden by candlelight shining through a massive glass of beer, Simon Winder was happily swinging his legs when a couple from Rottweil politely but awkwardly asked, "So, why are you here"? This audiobook is an attempt to answer that question. Why spend time wandering around a country that remains a sort of dead zone for many foreigners, surrounded as it is by a force field of historical, linguistic, climatic, and gastronomic barriers? Winder's audiobook is propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild. Germania is a very funny audiobook on serious topics: how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It is a audiobook full of curiosities, odd food, castles, mad princes, fairy tales, and horse-mating videos. It is about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.
©2010 Simon Winder (P)2018 Tantor
Danubia
Summary
From the end of the Middle Ages to the First World War, Europe was dominated by one family: the Habsburgs. Their unprecedented rule is the focus of Simon Winder's vivid third book, Danubia. Winder's approach is friendly, witty, personal; this is a narrative that, while erudite and well researched, prefers to be discursive and anecdotal. In his survey of the centuries of often incompetent Habsburg rule which have continued to shape the fate of Central Europe, Winder does not shy away from the horrors, railing against the effects of nationalism, recounting the violence that was often part of life. But this is a history dominated above all by Winder's energy and curiosity. Thrillingly informative, Danubia is a treat that listeners will be eager to dip into.
©2013 Simon Winder (P)2018 Tantor