The Art & Literature category has 653 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 1,594 ratings. The most-rated is Inheritance.
Louise Penny
Summary
Louise Penny visits the Audible Studios to discuss her latest novel Glass, the latest in the Inspector Gamache series. She talks about the setting, the importance of her characters and storyline over the murder itself, and much more. The previous in the series A Great Reckoning debuted at number one in both the US and Canada on the hardcover list, the ebooks and audio lists - making it the top book in North America.
©2017 Audible Ltd (P)2017 Audible Ltd
Jonathan Van Ness
Summary
Joining us at Audible Studios is Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness, an American hairdresser, television personality and podcaster. Van Ness was born in Quincy, Illinois, and has been openly gay throughout his life. In 2013, Van Ness was dressing the hair of a friend, Erin Gibson, who asked him to recap his webcast, Gay of Thrones, on her show, Funny or Die. From this, his Gay of Thrones series garnered more attention, and in 2018, it was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series. Since 2015 Van Ness has hosted a weekly podcast, Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, and he currently stars as the grooming expert on the Netflix revival of Queer Eye. Jonathan Van Ness has released his memoir, Over The Top, which we spoke to him about in this interview, as well as self-care, cats, nonbinary identity, back-flipping in public, The Great British Bake Off and more!
©2019 Audible Ltd (P)2019 Audible Ltd
Emma Thompson
Summary
In this interview, Emma Thompson shares her considerable insight into Britain's most influential female novelist, the great Jane Austen. Having played the narrator in an all-star-cast adaptation of Northanger Abbey, Emma discusses her favourite passages, characters and themes. She praises Austen for her unique ability to engage the reader with universal stories of human desires, hopes and foibles, and describes her own long-standing love affair with the author, having first picked up Austen's books at the age of thirteen. Having won a BAFTA, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her screenplay adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson has already brought Austen to the 21st Century and introduced her to a new generation. She does the same with Northanger Abbey, referring to the heroine as a 'sweet girl', her love interest as a 'witty friend' and the villain of the piece as 'an absolute knob-head'. In contrast to Sense and Sensibility, Emma describes Northanger Abbey as a straightforward text; the perfect introduction to Austen for those new to her writing.
©2017 Audible Ltd (P)2017 Audible Ltd
Mom & Me & Mom
Summary
The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple best-selling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence - a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call "Lady", revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.
©2013 Maya Angelou (P)2013 Random House Audio
World Mental Health Day - And That's Okay
Summary
In this World Mental Health Day Audible Sessions Special, nine celebrities discuss their experiences with mental health. We hear what their mental health problems feel like to them; their experiences of speaking to friends, family, professionals and the public; and the things that can help them feel better. In these conversations, we cover topics from social media to suicidal thoughts, and we say that whether you sometimes find it difficult to leave the house; you have anxiety, depression, or OCD; or you need to airplane your phone every now and then to stop it becoming addictive - that’s okay. Featuring Susan Calman, Clarke Carlisle, Marverine Cole, Bryony Gordon, Matt Haig, Matt Johnson, Katie Piper, Vicky Vox and Simon Webbe. This episode was created in partnership with Mind, the mental health charity. If anything in this programme has affected you or you would like to speak to someone about your mental health, please call the Mind Infoline on 0300 123 3393 or visit the Mind website, mind.org.uk.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
Stories I Tell Myself
Summary
Hunter S. Thompson, "smart hillbilly"; boy of the South; born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky; son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom; public school-educated; jailed at 17 on a bogus petty robbery charge; member of the US Air Force (airman second class); copy boy for Time; writer for The National Observer; et cetera. From the outset, he was the wild man of American journalism, with a journalistic appetite that touched on subjects that drove his sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs. He lived larger than life and pulled it up around him in a mad effort to make it as electric, anger-ridden, and drug-fueled as possible. Now Juan Thompson tells the story of his father and of their getting to know each other during their 41 fraught years together. He writes of the many dark times, of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and of how they found their way back before it was too late. He writes of growing up in an old farmhouse in a narrow mountain valley outside of Aspen (Woody Creek, Colorado, a ranching community with Hereford cattle and clover fields)...of the presence of guns in the house, the boxes of ammo on the kitchen shelves behind the glass doors of the country cabinets, where others might have placed china and knickknacks...of climbing on the back of Hunter's Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle as a young boy, and father and son roaring up the dirt road, trailing a cloud of dust...of being taken to bars in town as a small boy, Hunter holding court while Juan crawled around under the barstools, picking up change and taking his found loot to Carl's Pharmacy to buy Archie comic books...of going with his parents as a baby to a Ken Kesey/Hells Angels party with dozens of people wandering around the forest in various stages of undress, stoned on pot, tripping on LSD.... He writes of his growing fear of his father; of the arguments between his parents reaching frightening levels; and of his finally fighting back, trying to protect his mother as the state troopers are called in to separate father and son. And of the inevitable - of mother and son driving west in their Datsun to make a new home, a new life, away from Hunter; of Juan's first taste of what "normal" could feel like.... We see Juan going to Concord Academy, a stranger in a strange land, coming from a school that was a log cabin in the middle of hay fields, Juan without manners or socialization.... Going on to college at Tufts; spending a crucial week with his father; Hunter asking for Juan's opinion of his writing. And he writes of their dirt biking on a hilltop overlooking Woody Creek Valley, acting as if all the horrible things that had happened between them had never taken place, and of being there, together, side by side.... And, finally, movingly, he writes of their long, slow pull toward reconciliation....
©2015 Juan Thompson (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Daily Rituals
Summary
Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, "time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers." Kafka is one of 161 inspired - and inspiring - minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his "male configurations..." Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day... Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced "every pleasure imaginable." Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books...Karl Marx...Woody Allen...Agatha Christie...George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing...Leo Tolstoy...Charles Dickens...Pablo Picasso...George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers... Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to "clear the brain"). Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, Daily Rituals is irresistible, addictive, and magically inspiring.
©2013 Mason Currey (P)2013 Timothy Ferriss
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Summary
Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage takes us into the very real world of Ann Patchett's life. Stretching from her childhood to the present day, from a disastrous early marriage to a later happy one, it covers a multitude of topics, including relationships with family and friends, and charts the hard work and joy of writing, and the unexpected thrill of opening a bookstore. As she shares stories of the people, places, ideals, and art to which she has remained indelibly committed, Ann Patchett brings into focus the large experiences and small moments that have shaped her as a daughter, wife, and writer.
©2013 Ann Patchett (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers
Working
Summary
"One of the great reporters of our time and probably the greatest biographer." (The Sunday Times, London) From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker and the Years of Lyndon Johnson series: an unprecedented gathering of vivid, candid, deeply revealing recollections about his experiences researching and writing his acclaimed books. For the first time in audiobook form, Robert Caro gives us a glimpse into his own life and work in these evocatively written, personal pieces. He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ's mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers' community at the New York Public Library and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books. Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power, but about the people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences - some previously published, some written expressly for this book - bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work.
©2019 Robert A. Caro (P)2019 Random House Audio
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
Summary
One of the most anticipated books of 2017 - Entertainment Weekly and Bustle A searing, deeply moving memoir about family, love, and loss from a critically acclaimed, best-selling National Book Award winner. When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: He wrote. The result is this stunning memoir. Featuring 78 poems and 78 essays, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine - growing up dirt poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated woman. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is a powerful account of a complicated relationship, an unflinching and unforgettable remembrance.
©2017 Sherman Alexie (P)2017 Hachette Audio
Reporter
Summary
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018. A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. "Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. This book is essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over." (John le Carre) From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author and preeminent investigative journalist of our time - a heartfelt, hugely revealing memoir of a decades-long career breaking some of the most impactful stories of the last half century, from Washington to Vietnam to the Middle East. Seymour Hersh's fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every major newspaper in the free world, honors galore, and no small amount of controversy. Now in this memoir he describes what drove him and how he worked as an independent outsider, even at the nation's most prestigious publications. He tells the stories behind the stories - riveting in their own right - as he chases leads, cultivates sources, and grapples with the weight of what he uncovers, daring to challenge official narratives handed down from the powers that be. In telling these stories, Hersh divulges previously unreported information about some of his biggest scoops, including the My Lai massacre and the horrors at Abu Ghraib. There are also illuminating recollections of some of the giants of American politics and journalism: Ben Bradlee, A. M. Rosenthal, David Remnick, and Henry Kissinger among them. This is essential listening on the power of the printed word at a time when good journalism is under fire as never before.
©2018 Seymour M. Hersh (P)2018 Random House Audio
Tibetan Peach Pie
Summary
Internationally best-selling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins delivers the long-awaited tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe. Tom Robbins’ warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels - including Still Life With Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless fans to natural born hitchhiking cowgirls, born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads. In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventures - told in his unique voice that combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become over the course of half a century a poet-interruptus, an air force weatherman, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counter-culture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters. Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the '60s psychedelic revolution, international roving before homeland security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees. Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which he is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend.
©2014 Thomas E. Robbins (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers
Julie Andrews
Summary
Joining us at a riverside London hotel is Dame Julie Andrews, DBE, an English actress, singer and author. She has now released her second memoir, Home Work. Born in Surrey in 1935, Andrews' parents divorced and she originally lived with her father, then moved back to live with her mother and stepfather. Her stepfather was turbulent, but he sponsored her voice lessons, and from 1945 Andrews began performing with her mother and stepfather unbilled. Andrews made her professional solo debut at the London Hippodrome singing the difficult aria 'Je suis Titania' from Mignon in 1947. She then became the youngest solo performer ever to be seen in a Royal Command Variety Performance before King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the London Palladium aged 13. On 30th September 1954, on the eve of her 19th birthday, Andrews made her Broadway debut portraying Polly Browne in The Boy Friend. Walt Disney, who had seen Andrews on Broadway, asked her to play Mary Poppins. She won multiple awards for her performance. Andrews also played Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), for which she received a Tony Award nomination. She earned her third Oscar nomination for Victor/Victoria (1982). Andrews was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Screen Actors Guild awards in 2007. She published Home: A Memoir of My Early Years in 2008 and has since been writing children's fiction with her daughter, Emma, as well as collaborating on Andrews' newest memoir Home Work. We spoke to Julie Andrews about working with Walt Disney, what revisiting her diaries for Home Work revealed to her and what she hopes people will remember her for.
©2019 Audible Ltd (P)2019 Audible Ltd
Sally Field
Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about her autobiography, In Pieces, is two-time Academy Award and three-time Emmy Award-winning actress Sally Field. One of the most enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has portrayed a variety of iconic roles on both the large and small screen. From her early roles in sitcoms and films such as Sybil and Gidget to her award-winning performances in Lincoln, Hello, My Name Is Doris and ER, Field has remained a celebrated figure and activist. Her new memoir, In Pieces, was published in September 2018. In this interview, Sally Field shares her reflections on the parts that made me her famous, talks about her relationship with Burt Reynolds and discusses what it was like to open up old wounds in writing the book.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
There Was a Country
Summary
From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes a long-awaited memoir about coming of age with a fragile new nation, then watching it torn asunder in a tragic civil war. The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. By then, Chinua Achebe was already a world-renowned novelist, with a young family to protect. He took the Biafran side in the conflict and served his government as a roving cultural ambassador, from which vantage he absorbed the war's full horror. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events, from a writer whose words and courage have left an enduring stamp on world literature. Achebe masterfully relates his experience, both as he lived it and how he has come to understand it. He begins his story with Nigeria's birth pangs and the story of his own upbringing as a man and as a writer so that we might come to understand the country's promise, which turned to horror when the hot winds of hatred began to stir. To read There Was a Country is to be powerfully reminded that artists have a particular obligation, especially during a time of war. All writers, Achebe argues, should be committed writers - they should speak for their history, their beliefs, and their people. Marrying history and memoir, poetry and prose, There Was a Country is a distillation of vivid firsthand observation and 40 years of research and reflection. Wise, humane, and authoritative, it will stand as definitive and reinforce Achebe's place as one of the most vital literary and moral voices of our age. "1966", "Benin Road", "Penalty of Godhead", "Generation Gap", "Biafra, 1969", "A Mother in a Refugee Camp", "The First Shot", "Air Raid", "Mango Seedling", "We Laughed at Him", "Vultures", and "After a War" from Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe. Copyright 1971, 1973, 2004 by Chinua Achebe. Used by permission of Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and The Wylie Agency, LLC.
©2012 Chinua Achebe (P)2012 Penguin Audio
On Writers and Writing
Summary
What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift? Atwood's wide reference to other writers, living and dead, is balanced by anecdotes from her own experiences, both in Canada and elsewhere. The lightness of her touch is offset by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing, and by a deep familiarity with the myths and traditions of western literature. Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Quebec, Ontario, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College. Throughout her 30 years of writing, Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Hew novel The Blind Assassin won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction. She is the author of more than 25 volumes of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include Alias Grace (1996), The Robber Bride (1994), Cat's Eye (1988), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), Surfacing (1972) and The Edible Woman (1970). Acclaimed for her talent for portraying both personal lives and worldly problems of universal concern, Atwood's work has been published in more than 35 languages, including Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic, and Estonian.
©2002 O.W. Toad Ltd 2002 (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Salman Rushdie
Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about his 13th novel, The Golden House, is critically acclaimed British-Indian novelist and writer Sir Salman Rushdie. Born in Bombay, British India, Salman Rushdie has become literary nobility, lauded for his ability to combine magical realism with historical fiction, focusing on the connections between Eastern and Western civilisations. Rushdie has had his titles translated into over 40 languages, and his best-known books include his second novel, Midnight's Children - which won the Booker Prize in 1981 - and his fifth book, The Satanic Verses, which prompted a fatwa against him in 1989. Rushdie has since received countless awards and honours for his work and remains one of the most popular and controversial writers of the 20th century. Salman Rushdie talks to us about his venture back into realism, what underlying message he is trying to convey in his latest book and the humour people missed in The Satanic Verses. This interview also includes an exclusive reading by Salman of the opening of The Golden House.
©2017 Audible Ltd (P)2017 Audible Ltd
Running in the Family
Summary
In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.
©1982 Michael Ondaatje (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Johann Hari
Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to discuss his latest book, Lost Connections, is New York Times best-selling author and journalist Johann Ari. A Cambridge graduate, Johann Ari has a long and experienced career as an award-winning journalist. His in-depth research and accessible style, beginning with the war on drugs, which made up his first acclaimed title, Chasing the Scream, challenged the way we see drug addiction and legalisation. He now explores the myths surrounding mental health with his latest book, Lost Connections. Johann Hari talks to us about the inspiration behind his latest title, what he feels we need to be addressing when it comes to mental health and his own past dealing with depression.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
Colin Morgan
Summary
Joining us at Audible Studios is actor Colin Morgan. Morgan has been appearing on stage and television since 2007, performing at The Globe Theatre and The National Theatre and starring in programmes such as Merlin, Doctor Who, Humans and The Fall. He spoke to us about his amazing career so far as well as his experience of the audiobook world after reading The Worldship Humility by R R Haywood, a science fiction novel detailing the escapades of a petty thief and an Airlock Operative who accidentally steals a code with information about a new habitable planet.
©2019 Audible Ltd (P)2019 Audible Ltd