The Essays category has 117 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 702 ratings. The most-rated is What the Dog Saw.
Birds by the Shore
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Genius of Birds, the revised and reissued edition of her beloved book of essays describing her forays along the Delaware shore For three years, Jennifer Ackerman lived in the small coastal town of Lewes, Delaware, in the sort of blue-water, white-sand landscape that draws summer crowds up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Birds by the Shore is a book about discovering the natural life at the ocean's edge: the habits of shorebirds and seabirds, the movement of sand and water, the wealth of creatures that survive amid storm and surf. Against this landscape's rhythms, Ackerman revisits her own history - her mother's death, her father's illness, and her hopes to have children of her own. This portrait of life at the ocean's edge will be relished by anyone who has walked a beach at sunset, or watched a hawk hover over a winter marsh, and felt part of the natural world. With a quiet passion and friendly, generous intelligence, it explores the way that landscape shapes our thoughts and perceptions and shows that home ground is often where we feel the deepest response to the planet.
©2019 Jennifer Ackerman (P)2019 Penguin Audio
On Disruption
Summary
On Disruption is a report on the effects the internet has had on the foundations of life - what has happened, will it keep happening? The internet has shaken the foundations of life: public and private lives are wrought by the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week news cycle that means no one is ever off duty. On Disruption is a report from the coalface of that change: what has happened, will it keep happening, and is there any way out of the chaos?
©2018 Katherine Murphy (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing
On Father
Summary
A son's homage to his father. John Birmingham's father died. And his life fell apart. The next six months were spent grinding through the dark forests of depression until he finally emerged out of the darkness onto sunlit upland. A unique yet universal story, On Father reaches out to everyone who has experienced and survived deep grief.
©2019 John Birmingham (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
Alone Together
Summary
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19 is a collection of essays, poems, and interviews to serve as a lifeline for negotiating how to connect and thrive during this stressful time of isolation as well as a historical perspective that will remain relevant for years to come. Ms. Haupt rallied a diverse roster of more than 90 authors to contribute their work to Alone Together, free of charge, including Kwame Alexander, Jenna Blum, Andre Dubus III, Jamie Ford, Nikki Giovanni, Pam Houston, Jean Kwok, Major Jackson, Caroline Leavitt, Ada Limón, Dani Shapiro, David Sheff, Garth Stein, Luis Alberto Urrea, Steve Yarbrough, and Lidia Yuknavitch. Alone Together is divided into five sections: What Now?, Grieve, Comfort, Connect, and Don't Stop. The overarching theme is how this age of isolation and uncertainty holds the possibility of changing us as individuals and a society. Narrated by a full cast, including Edoardo Ballerini, January LaVoy, Dion Graham, Julia Whelan, Adenrele Ojo, Emily Woo Zeller, Thérèse Plummer, Ron Butler, Adjoa Andoh, Christian Barillas, Almarie Guerra, Cynthia Farrell, and Dawn Harvey.
©2020 Podium Audio (P)2020 Podium Audio
Tinnes Martha
Summary
In ihrer autobiographischen Erzählung gibt die Autorin Einblicke in das Leben im Kreise der Familie, der Verwandtschaft und der Dorfgemeinschaft in Neunkirchen (Kreis Daun) in der Eifel. Sie berichtet aus dem Schulalltag, erzählt von Pastor und Kirche, vom Zusammenleben mit den Tieren und den alltäglichen anfallenden Arbeiten auf dem Bauernhof. Ausgangspunkt ist dabei die Kindheit und dann die Jugend der "Tinnes Martha" in ihrem Eifeldorf in den 40-er bis 60-er Jahren. Anschaulich erzählt Roos vom frühen Tod der Mutter, und davon, dass der Vater nun sieben Kinder allein ernähren musste. Sie schildert die Not in der Kriegszeit auf dem Land, als man bares Geld kaum kannte. Nachdem auch der Vater starb, begann für Martha das Leben als Dienstmädchen. Erst mit ihrer Heirat konnte sie Hoffnung auf ein besseres Leben schöpfen... Martha Roos wurde am 18. Februar 1937 als siebtes Kind einer echten Eifelbauernfamilie aus Neunkirchen (Kreis Daun) geboren. In ihrem autobiografischen Werk erzählt sie von der Kindheit und Jugend in ihrem Eifeldorf in den 40'er bis 60'er Jahren.
©2018 SAGA Egmont (P)2018 SAGA Egmont
A Biography of Innovations
Summary
R. Gopalakrishnan, the best-selling author of The Case of the Bonsai Manager, explores how concepts turn into ideas, which then become prototypes, models, and products. Defining thought as the ancestor of innovation - as without thought, there could be no innovation - he explores the impending questions such as: What happens next? How can you take on challenges and keep your ideas relevant? The Biography of Innovation is the definitive audiobook on the life cycle of new ideas and transformations.
©2017 R. Gopalakrishnan (P)2018 Random House Audio
This Living Hand
Summary
When the multitalented biographer Edmund Morris (who writes with equal virtuosity about Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Beethoven, and Thomas Edison) was a schoolboy in colonial Kenya, one of his teachers told him, "You have the most precious gift of all - originality." That quality is abundantly evident in this selection of essays. They cover 40 years in the life of a maverick intellectual who can be, at whim, astonishingly provocative, self-mockingly funny, and richly anecdotal. (The title essay, a tribute to Reagan in cognitive decline, is poignant in the extreme.) Whether Morris is analyzing images of Barack Obama or the prose style of President Clinton, or exploring the riches of the New York Public Library Dance Collection, or interviewing the novelist Nadine Gordimer, or proposing a hilarious "Diet for the Musically Obese", a continuous cross-fertilization is going on in his mind. It mixes the cultural pollens of Africa, Britain, and the United States, and propogates hybrid flowers - some fragrant, some strange, some a shock to conventional sensibilities. Repeatedly in This Living Hand, Morris celebrates the physicality of artistic labor, and laments the glass screen that today’s e-devices interpose between inspiration and execution. No presidential biographer has ever had so literary a "take" on his subjects: He discerns powers of poetic perception even in the obsessively scientific Edison. Nor do most writers on music have the verbal facility to articulate, as Morris does, what it is about certain sounds that soothe the savage breast. His essay on the pathology of Beethoven’s deafness breaks new ground in suggesting that tinnitus may explain some of the weird aural effects in that composer’s works. Masterly monographs on the art of biography, South Africa in the last days of apartheid, the romance of the piano, and the role of imagination in nonfiction are juxtaposed with enchanting, almost unclassifiable pieces such as "The Bumstitch: Lament for a Forgotten Fruit" (Morris suspects it may have grown in the Garden of Eden); "The Anticapitalist Conspiracy: A Warning" (an assault on The Chicago Manual of Style); "Nuages Gris: Colors in Music, Literature, and Art"; and the uproarious "Which Way Does Sir Dress?", about ordering a suit from the most expensive tailor in London. This Living Hand is packed with biographical insights into such famous personalities as Daniel Defoe, Henry Adams, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Truman Capote, Glenn Gould, Jasper Johns, W. G. Sebald, and Winnie the Pooh - not to mention a gallery of forgotten figures whom Morris lovingly restores to "life". Among these are the pianist Ferruccio Busoni, the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, the novelist James Gould Cozzens, and 16 so-called "Undistinguished Americans", contributors to an anthology of anonymous memoirs published in 1902. Reviewing that book for The New Yorker, Morris notes that even the most unlettered persons have, on occasion, "power to send forth surprise flashes, illuminating not only the dark around them but also more sophisticated shadows - for example, those cast by public figures who will not admit to private failings, or by philosophers too cerebral to state a plain truth." The author of This Living Hand is not an ordinary person, but he too sends forth surprise flashes, never more dazzlingly than in his final essay, "The Ivo Pogorelich of Presidential Biography".
©2012 Edmund Morris (P)2012 Random House Audio
Irons in the Fire
Summary
Fabulously entertaining and filled with the intriguing trivia of life, Irons in the Fire is another impeccably crafted collection of seven essays by John McPhee. His peerless writing, punctuated with a sharp sense of humor and fascinating detail, has earned him legions of fans across the country. Whether he's riding with a cattle brand inspector in wild and wide-open eastern Nevada or following Plymouth Rock through its various sizes, shapes, and resting places, McPhee provides the listener with an intimate glimpse into ordinary people and the extraordinary interests that shape their lives. These delightful pieces, including "Irons in the Fire", "Travels of the Rock", "Release", "In Virgin Forest", "The Gravel Page", "Duty of Care", and "Rinard at Manheim", reveal the fascinating worlds hiding right under our noses. Narrator Nelson Runger's studied voice conveys McPhee's understated and thought-provoking writing. If you have never sampled McPhee's inspired prose, this audiobook will turn you into a lifelong fan.
©1997 John McPhee (P)1997 Recorded Books, LLC
The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club
Summary
Introducing Laurie Notaro, the leader of the Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club. Every day she fearlessly rises from bed to defeat the evil machinations of dolts, dimwits, and creepy boyfriends - and that's before she even puts on a bra. For the past 10 years, Notaro has been entertaining Phoenix newspaper readers with her wildly amusing autobiographical exploits and unique life experiences. She writes about a world of hourly-wage jobs that require absolutely no skills, a mother who hands down judgments more forcefully than anyone seated on the Supreme Court, horrific high-school reunions, and hangovers that leave her surprised she woke up in the first place. The misadventures of Laurie and her fellow Idiot Girls ("too cool to be in the Smart Group") unfold in a world that everyone will recognize but no one has ever described so hilariously. She delivers the goods: life as we all know it.
©2002 Laurie Notaro (P)2011 Tantor
The Magic Weight-Loss Pill
Summary
What's the one remedy common to controlling diabetes, hyperthyroidism, kidney and liver stones, and excess weight? Lifestyle. Luke Coutinho, coauthor of The Great Indian Diet, shows us that nothing parallels the power and impact that simple sustained lifestyle changes can have on a person who's struggling to lose excess weight or suffering from a chronic disease. The first part of the audiobook concentrates on the reason we get such diseases in the first place, while the second is filled with 62 astonishingly easy and extremely practicable changes that will have you feeling healthier and happier and achieving all your health goals without the rigor and hard work of a hardcore diet or fitness regime. The suggested habits, such as drinking lemon water every day or doing five breathing exercises to fall asleep, are accompanied by detailed explanations on how and why to adopt a habit. Together, these will become your magic weight-loss pill.
©2019 Luke Coutinho and Anushka Shetty (P)2020 Random House Audio
Mobile Home
Summary
Uprooting ourselves and putting down roots elsewhere has become second nature. Americans are among the most mobile people on the planet, moving house an average of nine times in adulthood. Mobile Home explores one family's extreme and often international version of this common experience. Inspired by Megan Harlan's globe-wandering childhood - during which she lived in 17 homes across four continents, ranging in location from the Alaskan tundra to a Colombian jungle, a posh flat in London to a doublewide trailer near the Arabian Gulf - Mobile Home maps the emotional structures and metaphysical geographies of home. In 10 interconnected essays, Harlan examines cultural histories that include Bedouin nomadic traditions and modern life in wheeled mobile homes, the psychology of motels and suburban tract housing, and the lived meanings within the built landscapes of Manhattan, Stonehenge, and the Winchester Mystery House. More personally, she traces the family histories that drove her parents to seek so many new horizons - and how those places shaped her upbringing. Her memoir in essays skillfully explores the flexible, continually inventive natures of place, family, and home.
©2020 Megan Harlan (P)2020 Tantor
Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country
Summary
Spread over 15 of the country’s 28 states, India’s Maoist movement is now one of the world’s biggest and most sophisticated extreme-left movements. Hardly a week passes without people dying in strikes and counter-strikes by the Maoists - interchangeably known as the Naxalites - and the police and paramilitary forces. In this brilliant and sobering examination of the "Other India", Sudeep Chakravarti combines reportage, political analysis, and individual case histories as he takes us to the heart of Maoist zones in the country - areas of extreme destitution, bad governance and perpetual war.
©2009 Sudeep Chakravarti (P)2019 Random House Audio
From the Top
Summary
“I’m happy to go to the opera, but I should like to be allowed to wear steel-toed boots with my evening suit. I like to read Harper’s with a chaser of Varmint Hunter Magazine. Maybe that’s why I enjoy a good show under canvas. Here we sit, brain-deep in arts and culture, but we’re also just people hanging out in a tent, some of us wearing logging boots, a few of us wearing Birkenstocks, but best of all we’re breathing free fresh air filled with music.” From Scandihoovian Spanglish to snickering chickens, New York Times best-selling author and humorist Michael Perry navigates a wide range of topics in this collection of brief essays drawn from his weekly appearances on the nationally syndicated Tent Show Radio program. Fatherhood, dumpster therapy, dangerous wedding rings, Christmas trees, used cars, why you should have bacon in your stock portfolio, loggers in clogs - whatever the subject, Perry has a rare ability to touch both the funny bone and the heart.
©2013 Michael Perry (P)2019 Michael Perry
Certi momenti
Summary
Quasi una vita, momento per momento, quelli più intensi che nel tempo acquistano ancora più vigore e ritornano in tutta la loro vividezza. Tanti incontri qui offerti nella forma del racconto, ognuno dei quali ha una luce, un'atmosfera e dei personaggi indimenticabili che hanno segnato soprattutto la giovinezza e l'adolescenza di Camilleri. Alcuni conosciuti negli anni più maturi, durante la sua carriera di regista teatrale e televisivo, molti altri sconosciuti, che ci riportano ai tempi del fascismo, della guerra, momenti segnati da storie che nei loro risvolti più umani e sinceri acquistano un tratto epico e la magia del ricordo assoluto perché unico nel costituire una tappa, una svolta nella formazione dello scrittore. L'anarchica, invincibile indifferenza di Antonio, insensibile ai richiami militari e agli orrori della guerra; la bellezza sorprendente dell'incontro con un vescovo libero nella mente e nel cuore; l'indelebile ricordo di quella notte di burrasca quando il padre di Camilleri andò a salvare l'eroico comandante Campanella, dato per disperso; il coraggio della "Sarduzza" e la determinazione nel difenderla dal tenente tedesco; l'ultimo saluto a "Foffa", prostituta per necessità, sola nella vita e negli affetti. Intermezzati gli uni con gli altri ecco l'incontro con Primo Levi e i suoi silenzi, la stravaganza di Gadda e la suscettibilità di D'Arrigo, il franco scontro con Pasolini riguardo alla regia di una sua opera teatrale, poco prima della sua morte, l'impareggiabile bravura di Salvo Randone (senza dimenticare Elio Vittorini, Benedetto Croce e il quasi incontro con Antonio Tabucchi). Tra tanti personaggi si staglia un libro, quello più importante, La condizione umana di André Malraux, la cui lettura fu decisiva nel far crollare la fede fascista di Camilleri.
©2015 Chiarelettere (P)2020 Adriano Salani Editore
Imaginary Homelands
Summary
Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer's intellectual and personal odyssey. The 70 essays collected here, written over the last 10 years, cover an astonishing range of subjects - the literature of the received masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries; the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture; film, politicians, the Labour Party; religious fundamentalism in America; racial prejudice; and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression.
©1991 Salman Rushdie (P)2017 Recorded Books
On Quiet
Summary
International best-selling author Nikki Gemmell writes on the power of quiet in today's shouty world. Quiet comes as a shock in these troubled times. Quietism means 'devotional contemplation and abandonment of the will - a calm acceptance of things as they are'. Gemmell makes the case for why quiet is steadily gaining ground in this noisy age: Why we need it now more than ever. How to glean quiet, hold on to it, and work within it.
©2019 Nikki Gemmell (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Goodbye Europe
Summary
From Paris to Prague, from the past to the present, authors and artists say farewell in this unique collection. In this audiobook you'll find personal letters, reminiscences, poetry, art and brand new fiction from some of the most talented and important voices at work today, including Jessie Burton, Alain de Botton, Matt Haig, Richard Herring, Owen Jones, Mark Kermode, Robert Macfarlane, Kate Mosse, Chris Riddell, Lionel Shriver and many others. A fascinating, funny and moving must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the times we live in, our relationship with the continent, and ourselves. Includes original pieces by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Tom Bradby, Jessie Burton, Ben Collins (aka The Stig), Colonel Tim Collins, Robert Crampton, Adam Dant, Alain de Botton, Kate Eberlen, Matt Frei, Nicci French, Simon Garfield, Former Prime Minister Jim Hacker (Jonathan Lynn), Matt Haig, Richard Herring, Jennifer Higgie, Afua Hirsch, Owen Jones, Oliver Kamm, Alex Kapranos, Mark Kermode, Hari Kunzru, Olivia Laing, Marie Le Conte, Amy Liptrot, Robert Macfarlane, Henry Marsh, Val McDermid, Hollie McNish, Kate Mosse, Jenni Murray, Sarah Perry, Ian Rankin, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Chris Riddell, Andrew Roberts, Will Self, David Shrigley, Lionel Shriver, Sunny Singh, Ece Temelkuran, Rob Temple, Bee Wilson and Sara Winman. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio on our desktop site.
©2017 Orion Publishing Group (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
Kama: The Riddle of Desire
Summary
A riveting account of love and desire. India is the only civilization to elevate kama - desire and pleasure - to a goal of life. Kama is both cosmic and human energy, which animates life and holds it in place. Gurcharan Das weaves a compelling narrative soaked in philosophical, historical, and literary ideas in the third volume of his trilogy on life's goals: India Unbound was the first, on artha, "material well-being"; and The Difficulty of Being Good was the second, on dharma, "moral well-being". Here, in his magnificent prose, he examines how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life, arguing that if dharma is a duty to another, kama is a duty to oneself. It sheds new light on love, marriage, family, adultery, and jealousy as it wrestles with questions such as these: How to nurture desire without harming others or oneself? Are the erotic and the ascetic two aspects of our same human nature? What is the relationship between romantic love and bhakti, the love of god? PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Gurcharan Das (P)2019 Random House Audio
What on Earth Have I Done?
Summary
Robert Fulghum's new book begins with a question we've all asked ourselves: "What on earth have I done?" As Fulghum finds out, the answer is never easy and, almost always, surprising. For the last couple of years, Fulghum has been traveling the world, from Seattle to the Moab Desert to Crete, looking for a few fellow travelers interested in thinking along with him as he delights in the unexpected: trick-or-treating with your grandchildren dressed like a large rabbit, pots of daffodils blooming in mid-November, and the friendship one can strike up with someone who doesn't share the same language. What on Earth Have I Done? is an armchair tour of everyday life as seen by Robert Fulghum, one of America's great essayists, a man who has two feet planted firmly on the earth, one eye on the heavens and, at times, a tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Fulghum writes to his fellow travelers, with a sometimes light heart, about the deep and vexing mysteries of being alive and says, "This is my way of bringing the small boat of my life within speaking distance of yours. Hello."
©2007 Robert Fulghum (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC
Collected Essays
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Collected Essays contains nearly 80 essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades. From Henry James and Somerset Maugham to Ho Chi Minh and Kim Philby, the range of subjects is eclectic and stimulating, his subjects brought vividly to life. The resulting collection is as revealing as autobiography and characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.
©1969 Graham Greene (P)2020 Penguin Audio