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.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Summary
Whether she is contemplating the history of walking as a cultural and political experience over the past 200 years (Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late 19th-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.
©2005 Rebecca Solnit (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Leigh Bardugo
Summary
Best-selling author Leigh Bardugo joins Robin Morgan in the Audible Studios to discuss her latest release.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible Ltd
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
Summary
Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this is the definitive presentation of Dick’s brilliant, and epic, work. In the Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called “2-3-74”, a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe “transformed into information”. In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, in a freewheeling voice that ranges through personal confession, esoteric scholarship, dream accounts, and fictional fugues, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit. This volume, the culmination of many years of transcription and archival research, has been annotated by the editors and by a unique group of writers and scholars chosen to offer a range of views into one of the most improbable and mind-altering manuscripts ever brought to light.
©2011 Philip K. Dick, Pamela Jackson (Editor), Jonathan Lethem (Editor) (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Charles Dickens
Summary
The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens: A Life, the major new biography from the highly acclaimed Claire Tomalin, published for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Read by the actor Alex Jennings. Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonically hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, a supporter of liberal social causes, but most of all a great novelist - the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination: the Artful Dodger, Mr Pickwick, Pip, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Lady Dedlock, and many more. At the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory by his affectionate but feckless parents. From these unpromising beginnings, he rose to scale all the social and literary heights, entirely through his own efforts. When he died, the world mourned, and he was buried - against his wishes - in Westminster Abbey. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family in his writings, he took up passionately with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children. Claire Tomalin, author of Whitbread Book of the Year Samuel Pepys, paints an unforgettable portrait of Dickens, capturing brilliantly the complex character of this great genius. Charles Dickens: A Life is the examination of Dickens we deserve. Alex Jennings is an associate actor with the RSC and has also worked with the Royal National Theatre. He was Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for which he won the second of his Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Musical. He played Charles, Prince of Wales in the film The Queen, and his TV appearances include The State Within, Inspector Morse and the title role in Ashenden. He's a prolific reader of audiobooks, the most notable of which are The Horse and his Boy, Oliver Twist and Attention All Shipping.
©2011 Claire Tomalin (P)2011 Penguin Books Limited
Hannah Fry
Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to talk about her latest book, Hello World, is mathematician, UCL lecturer, public speaker and presenter Hannah Fry. Alongside her academic position at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL, where her research into the patterns of human behaviour can apply to a huge range of social problems, Fry’s expertise has also led to the development of several BBC documentaries including City in the Sky and her long-running BBC Radio 4 show, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. Her latest book, Hello World, was published in August 2018. Hannah Fry talks to us about handing autonomy to machines, where art and algorithms intersect and the time her husband had to deal with the trolley problem in real life.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
The Emigrants
Summary
A devastating novel about memory, alienation, and trauma from acclaimed novelist W. G. Sebald. The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs - the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts the question to realism, the four stories merge into one unfathomable requiem.
©1992 Vito von Eichborn GmbH & Co Verlag KG, Frankfurt am Main (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. English translation © 1996 by The Harvill Press
Bettany Hughes
Summary
Bettany Hughes is a historian, an author and a broadcaster whose many TV and radio documentaries have toured ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt. Her critically acclaimed writing has explored the lives and worlds of Helen of Troy and Socrates, and today she visits the Audible Studios to tell us more about her new book, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities.
©2017 Audible Studios (P)2017 Audible Studios
Thunder Through My Veins
Summary
Gregory Scofield's Thunder Through My Veins is the heartbreakingly beautiful memoir of one man's journey toward self-discovery, acceptance, and the healing power of art. Few people can justify a memoir at the age of 33. Gregory Scofield is the exception, a young man who has inhabited several lives in the time most of us can manage only one. Born into a Métis family of Cree, Scottish, English, and French descent but never told of his heritage, Gregory knew he was different. His father disappeared after he was born, and at five he was separated from his mother and sent to live with strangers and extended family. There, began a childhood marked by constant loss, poverty, violence, and self-hatred. Only his love for his sensitive but battered mother and his Aunty Georgina, a neighbor who befriended him, kept him alive. It wasn't until he set out to search for his roots and began to chronicle his life in evocative, award-winning poetry, that he found himself released from the burdens of the past and able to draw upon the wisdom of those who went before him. Thunder Through My Veins is Gregory's traumatic, tender, and hopeful story of his fight to rediscover and accept himself in the face of a heritage with diametrically opposed backgrounds.
©2019 Gregory Scofield (P)2019 Penguin Random House Canada
Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World
Summary
When Picasso became Picasso: the story of how an obscure young painter from Barcelona came to Paris and made himself into the most influential artist of the 20th century In 1900, an 18-year-old Spaniard named Pablo Picasso made his first trip to Paris. It was in this glittering capital of the international art world that, after suffering years of poverty and neglect, he emerged as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Fueled by opium and alcohol, inspired by raucous late-night conversations at the Lapin Agile cabaret, Picasso and his friends resolved to shake up the world. For most of these years Picasso lived and worked in a squalid tenement known as the Bateau Lavoir, in the heart of picturesque Montmartre. Here he met his first true love, Fernande Olivier, a muse whom he would transform in his art from Symbolist goddess to Cubist monster. These were years of struggle, often of desperation, but Picasso later looked back on them as the happiest of his long life. Recognition came slowly: first in the avant-garde circles in which he traveled, and later among a small group of daring collectors, including the Americans Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1906, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Inspired by the groundbreaking painting of Paul Cezanne and the startling inventiveness of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured and defined the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he'd gone mad. Only his colleague George Braque understood what Picasso was trying to do. Over the next few years they teamed up to create Cubism, the most revolutionary and influential movement in 20th-century art. This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is filled with heartbreak and triumph, despair and delirium, all of it played out against the backdrop of the world's most captivating city.
©2018 Simon & Schuster Audio (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio
Catherine Steadman
Summary
Actress and author Catherine Steadman talks to Audible about her debut novel Something in the Water and reveals the strange things she uncovered on YouTube whilst researching. Having trained at the Oxford School of Drama, Steadman made her screen debut as Julia Bertram in the ITV adaptation of Mansfield Park and has gone on to star in Breathless and Downton Abbey. She’s had much success onstage, too, and was nominated for the 2016 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her part in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Oppenheimer. Now taking her first steps into the world of being an author, Steadman has been greeted with much praise in the form of the film rights for Something in the Water being snapped up by Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine and Witherspoon subsequently choosing the book for her June 2018 Hello Sunshine book club pick. And all this before the book’s publication! Joining Audible for a chat, in this interview Steadman delves into her protagonist Erin (including any thoughts on who might play Erin in a film), tells us which books she loves to read and gives us a sneak peak into what we can expect to see her in next.
©2018 Audible, Ltd (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
James Baldwin
Summary
This is a biography of James Baldwin, author, one-time preacher, and civil rights activist. He chose David Leeming, a close friend and colleague, to write his biography and granted him access to his correspondence. Leeming traces his life from his birth in Harlem in 1924 to his self-imposed exile in Europe, his later years as political activist, and his public funeral in 1987.
©1994 David Leeming, First Arcade Edition 2015 (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Nicholas Sparks
Summary
Nicholas Sparks has published over 20 books, most of which have been international bestsellers. Many have gone on to be adapted in high-profile films. The adaptation of The Notebook has, of course, left most of us reaching for the tissue box. He visits the Audible Studios to talk about his amazing career, and his latest novel, See Me.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible Ltd
Eddie Izzard
Summary
Following the release of his best-selling autobiography, Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens, Eddie Izzard spoke to us about history, politics, books... and funky poultry. As a transgender artist, Eddie explains how a steadfast ambition has helped him to overcome discrimination and prejudice, long enough to make it in the world of Hollywood. Now a hugely successful comedian and actor who's starred alongside the likes of Dame Judi Dench, George Clooney and Julia Roberts, Eddie takes a look back at his favourite roles and co-stars. Eddie has also always been a firm supporter of the Labour party and, in this interview, hints at pursuing a future as a member of parliament – a well thought-out plan which he delves into further in his audiobook. Written and performed in the keenly intelligent, wholly honest and predictably hilarious style that we have come to expect from Eddie, his audiobook Believe Me has been hailed by critics for its commentary on historical and sexual politics, mad ancient kings and chickens with guns. A critic wrote of it: "Izzard is one of the funniest people alive, a talented actor, a sharp cross-dresser, an experienced marathon runner, and a great writer. You will have to read this if only to find out what a jazz chicken is." (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
©2017 Audible Ltd (P)2017 Audible Ltd
Tolkien and the Great War
Summary
A new biography exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s wartime experiences and their impact on his life and his writing of The Lord of The Rings. “To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 … by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.” So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology to life. It shows how, after two of these brilliant young men were killed, Tolkien pursued the dream they had all shared by launching his epic of good and evil.John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earth’s enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect and transform the cataclysm of his generation. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day.This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977, meticulously researched and distilled from his personal wartime papers and a multitude of other sources.
©2011 John Garth (P)2011 HarperCollins Publishers Limited
The Recovering
Summary
"An honest and important book... Vivid writing and required reading." (Stephen King) "A Tolstoyan study of the human condition." (Andrew Solomon) One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2018: Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Elle, Newsday, The Millions, Huffington Post, Nylon, Bustle, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Bitch, The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, Boston Globe, The Week From the New York Times best-selling author of The Empathy Exams, a transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction - both her own and others' - and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need". It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience - the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.
©2018 Leslie Jamison (P)2018 Hachette Audio
The Empathy Exams
Summary
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014 Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade each other? By confronting pain - real and imagined, her own and others' - Jamison uncovers a personal and cultural urgency to feel. She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory - from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration - in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.
©2014 Leslie Jamison (P)2015 Audible Inc.
South and West
Summary
From the best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks - writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Joan Didion has always kept notebooks - of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays, and articles - and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through. And from a different notebook: the "California Notes" that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the Western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book Where I Was From. One of Time's most anticipated books of 2017 One of The New York Times Book Review's "What You'll Be Reading in 2017"
©2017 Joan Didion (P)2017 Random House Audio
Claire North
Summary
Audible exclusive. The delightful Claire North visits the Audible studios to talk about what to expect from her new book - The Sudden Appearance of Hope. How do you live your life when everything you do is meaningless and forgotten? What is a life worth? And what really is perfection? Her first novel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, the extraordinary journey of one unforgettable character who lives his life over and over again became a bestseller and was selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club, the Waterstones Book Club and the Radio 2 Book Club.
©2016 Audible Studios (P)2016 Audible Studios
Derren Brown
Summary
English mentalist and illusionist, Derren Brown, talks to us about the release of his latest audiobook, Happy, and how he believes we can attain peace of mind and solidity within ourselves. Quoting some of the greatest philosophical minds of the past, Derren explains why he has found affinity with the Stoics and their approach in the pursuit of happiness. Also presenting a highly critical view of modern self-help books, Derren argues against the suggestion that we can control the uncontrollable; the universe will not give you what you desire simply because you ask for it. First introduced to British audiences through a series of programmes entitled, Mind Control, Derren has been demystifying the subtle art of magical and psychological manipulation for 17 years. With his new audiobook, Happy, he agrees that he's moving on to similar but perhaps more intellectual pastures. Describing Happy as an 'anti-self-help self-help book', Derren Brown wills his listeners to live in the present and think of happiness as a by-product and not an end in itself.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible Ltd
Lindsey Davis
Summary
Lindsey Davis drops by the Audible Studios to talk about her career as a historical novelist; how she develop her characters, how historically accurate are they, where her inspiration come from and more.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible Ltd