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.
Sightlines
Summary
In Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie reports from the field - from her native Scottish "byways and hills" to the frigid Arctic in 14 enthralling essays. She dissects whatever her gaze falls upon - vistas of cells beneath a hospital microscope, orcas rounding a headland, the aurora borealis lighting up the frozen sea. In so doing, she questions what, exactly, constitutes "nature", and upends the idea that it is always picturesque. Written with precision, subtlety, and wry humor, Sightlines urges the listener: "Keep looking, even when there's nothing much to see."
©2012, 2013 Kathleen Jamie (P)2019 Tantor
My Southern Journey
Summary
From celebrated New York Times best-selling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Rick Bragg comes a poignant and wryly funny collection of essays on life in the South. Keenly observed and written with his insightful and deadpan sense of humor, Bragg explores enduring Southern truths about home, place, spirit, table, and the regions' varied geographies, including his native Alabama, Cajun country, and the Gulf Coast. Everything is explored, from regional obsessions with college football and fishing to mayonnaise and spoonbread to the simple beauty of a fish on the hook. Collected from over a decade of his writing, with many never-before-published essays written specifically for this edition, My Southern Journey is an entertaining and engaging listen, especially for Southerners (or Southerners at heart) and anyone who appreciates great writing.
©2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2015 Blackstone Audiobooks
New Yorkers
Summary
From the best-selling author of Londoners, an epic portrait of today's New York told through the boisterous voices and true stories of its people. Ten years in the making, New Yorkers is a compulsively enjoyable portrait of New York that is as lively and vibrant as the city itself. Acclaimed writer and editor Craig Taylor ventured into nearly every corner of the city, getting some of its best talkers - rich and poor, old and young, native and immigrant - to share indelible tales about New York in our time. Here you'll find a blind man on navigating the city by smell, a rapper on the sound of New York, a cop on the long aftermath of 9/11, and a boxer on first entering Madison Square Garden. Here are the voices of the people who make the city go: a subway conductor, a window-washer on Rockefeller Center, and an electrician who keeps the lights on at the top of the Empire State Building. And here are unforgettable glimpses of the city, including the Statue of Liberty as seen by one of its security guards, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from a balloon handler, the Marathon from a runner through all five boroughs, and Christmas in New York as seen by a Salvation Army bell-ringer on 42nd and Fifth. New Yorkers is a symphony of the city that dares call itself the greatest in the world.
©2021 Craig Taylor (P)2021 Penguin Random House Canada
Ex Libris
Summary
Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic Michiko Kakutani shares her enthusiasm for more than 100 books in a series of succinct, thought-provoking essays. “An ebullient celebration of books and reading.” (Publishers Weekly) “Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation. There are essential works in American history (The Federalist Papers, The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.); books that address timely cultural dynamics (Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, Daniel J. Boorstin's The Image, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale); classics of children's literature (the Harry Potter novels, Where the Wild Things Are); and novels by acclaimed contemporary writers like Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ian McEwan. Ex Libris is an impassioned reminder of why books matters more than ever.
©2020 Michiko Kakutani (P)2020 Random House Audio
Essays One
Summary
A selection of essays on writing and reading by the master short-fiction writer Lydia Davis Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Jonathan Franzen has called her "a magician of self-consciousness," while Rick Moody hails her as "the best prose stylist in America." And for Claire Messud, "Davis's signal gift is to make us feel alive." Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis's gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades. In this first of two volumes, her subjects range from her earliest influences to her favorite short stories, from John Ashbery's translation of Rimbaud to Alan Cote's painting, and from the Shepherd's Psalm to early tourist photographs. On display is the development and range of one of the sharpest, most capacious minds writing today.
©2019 Lydia Davis (P)2020 Tantor
Still Happy
Summary
Still Happy is Elizabeth's second collection of Facebook posts. Her first, Make Someone Happy, did indeed make many people happy, and so, due to popular demand, she has put together a second volume, which includes "The Book of Homer", a tribute to her beloved dog who recently died. Still Happy, like Make Someone Happy, exemplifies Berg's gift, as the Boston Globe said, "in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday."
©2017 Elizabeth Berg (P)2017 Recorded Books
Essays After Eighty
Summary
Donald Hall has lived a remarkable life of letters, a career capped by a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by the president. Now, in the "unknown, unanticipated galaxy" of very old age, he is writing searching essays that startle, move, and delight. Hall paints his past: "Decades followed each other - 30 was terrifying, 40 I never noticed because I was drunk, 50 was best with a total change of life, 60 extended the bliss of 50...." And, poignantly, often joyfully, he limns his present: "When I turned 80 and rubbed testosterone on my chest, my beard roared like a lion and gained four inches." Most memorably, Hall writes about his enduring love affair with his ancestral Eagle Pond Farm, and with the writing life that sustains him every day.
©2014 Donald Hall (P)2015 Tantor
The Possessed
Summary
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year The true but unlikely stories of lives devoted - absurdly! Melancholically! Beautifully! - to the Russian classics No one who read Elif Batuman's first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. "Babel in California" told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel's last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel's secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature. Batuman's subsequent pieces - for The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and the London Review of Books - have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence - including her own. Jacket Illustration © 2017 Roz Chast
©2017 Elif Batuman (P)2017 Penguin Audio
Other People
Summary
An intellectually thrilling and emotionally wrenching investigation of otherness: the need for one person to understand another person completely, the impossibility of any such absolute knowing, and the erotics of this separation. Can one person know another person? How do we live through other people? Is it possible to fill the gap between people? If not, can art fill that gap? Grappling with these questions, David Shields gives us a book that is something of a revelation: 70-plus essays, written over the last 35 years, reconceived and recombined to form neither a miscellany nor a memoir but a sustained meditation on otherness. The book is divided into five sections: Men, Women, Athletes, Performers, Alter Egos. Whether he is writing about sexual desire or information sickness, George W. Bush or Kurt Cobain, women's eyeglasses or Greek tragedy, Howard Cosell or Bill Murray, the comedy of high school journalism or the agony of first love, Shields' sustained, piercing focus is on the multiplicity of perspectives informing any situation, on the irreducible log jam of human information, and on the possibilities, and impossibilities, for human connection.
©2017 David Shields (P)2020 David Shields
Figures in a Landscape
Summary
A delectable collection of Theroux's recent writing on great places, people, and prose In the spirit of his much-loved Sunrise with Seamonsters and Fresh Air Fiend, Paul Theroux's latest collection of essays leads the listener through a dazzling array of sights, characters, and experiences, as Theroux applies his signature searching curiosity to a life lived as much in reading as on the road. This writerly tour-de-force features a satisfyingly varied selection of topics that showcase Theroux's sheer versatility as a writer. Travel essays take us to Ecuador, Zimbabwe, and Hawaii, to name a few. Gems of literary criticism reveal fascinating depth in the work of Henry David Thoreau, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, and Hunter Thompson. And in a series of breathtakingly personal profiles, we take a helicopter ride with Elizabeth Taylor, go surfing with Oliver Sacks, eavesdrop on the day-to-day life of a Manhattan dominatrix, and explore New York with Robin Williams. An extended mediation on the craft of writing binds together this wide-ranging collection, along with Theroux's constant quest for the authentic in a person or in a place.
©2018 Paul Theroux (P)2018 Recorded Books
Hollywood vs. The Author
Summary
It’s no secret that authors have a love-hate relationship with Hollywood. The oft-repeated cliché that “the book was better than the movie” holds true for more reasons than the average reader will ever know. When asked about selling their book rights to Hollywood authors like to joke that they drive their manuscripts to the border of Arizona and California and toss them over the fence, driving back the way they came at breakneck speed. This is probably because Hollywood just doesn’t “get it.” Its vision for the film or TV series rarely seems to match the vision of the author. And for those rare individuals who’ve had the fortune of sitting across the desk from one of the myriad, interchangeable development execs praising the brilliance of their work while ticking off a never-ending list of notes for the rewrite, the pros of pitching their work to Hollywood rarely outweigh the cons. Stephen Jay Schwartz has sat on both sides of that desk - first as the Director of Development for film director Wolfgang Petersen, then as a screenwriter and author pitching his work to the film and television industry. He’s seen all sides of what is known in this small community as “Development Hell.” The process is both amusing and heartbreaking. Most authors whose work contains a modicum of commercial potential eventually find themselves in “the room” taking a shot at seeing their creations re-visualized by agents, producers or development executives. What they often discover is that their audience is younger and less worldly as themselves. What passes for “story notes” is often a mishmash of vaguely connected ideas intended to put the producer’s personal stamp on the project. Hollywood vs. The Author is a collection of non-fiction anecdotes by authors who’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the development room firsthand - some who have successfully managed to straddle the two worlds, seeing their works morph into the kinds of feature films and TV shows that make them proud, and others who stepped blindsided into that room after selling their first or second novels. All the stories in this collection illustrate the great divide between the world of literature and the big or small screen. They underscore the insanity of every crazy thing you’ve ever heard about Hollywood. For insiders and outsiders alike, Hollywood vs. The Author delivers the goods.
©2018 Stephen Jay Schwartz (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Why Men Are Suspicious of Yoga: And Other Very, Very Funny Stories
Summary
We live in a world where smart fridges are more articulate than most politicians, where the leaders of two nuclear powers engage in a battle of elementary school wits, and where every fact can be dismissed as fake news. Sometimes it seems like the only humor left is tinged with bitterness and despair. Robert Isenberg doesn’t believe that’s true. He knows it’s possible to find humor - true humor - everywhere. Why is it that a politician’s choice of food makes or breaks his or her career, and why should we care? How important is it to attend a funeral if it means canceling your regular Sunday tennis game? What drives a man’s suspicions of yoga, and, perhaps more importantly, why are wives so determined to overcome such reservations? Robert, aka “robear”, has two wives. Esther is his real-life wife. Esther doesn’t want to have anything to do with his imaginary wife, Dana, who is featured in his essays. Robert created Dana to do and say what he wants, but Dana says and does whatever pleases Dana. Isenberg is an affable guy - the kind of man who tries to get along with automated help systems. From his obsession with “As seen on TV!” products to his exploration of the differences between the sexes, he’s instantly recognizable to listeners. We all have a Robert Isenberg in our life, and that’s a good thing - because we need to laugh. Judge this book by its cover! We all have a Robert Isenberg in our lives. He's the one who sees things a little differently than the rest of us. He's the one who makes you laugh when he tells you what he's thinking. Robert actually asserts that elections are won and lost once the public discovers what the candidates are eating. He insists that had Hillary Clinton had said, "Hold the kale and bring on the iceberg," she would definitely have won by a landslide!
©2018 Robert Isenberg (P)2018 Robert Isenberg
From Our Land to Our Land
Summary
Luis J. Rodriguez writes about race, culture, identity, and belonging and what these all mean and should mean (but often fail to) in the volatile climate of our nation. His passion and wisdom inspire us with the message that we must come together if we are to move forward. As he writes in the preface, "Like millions of Americans, I'm demanding a new vision, a qualitatively different direction, for this country. One for the shared well-being of everyone. One with beauty, healing, poetry, imagination, and truth." The pieces in From Our Land to Our Land capture that same fantastic energy and wisdom and will spark conversation and inspiration.
©2020 Luis J. Rodriguez (P)2021 Tantor
Goodbye, Again
Summary
The wonderfully original author of Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too gives us a collection of touching and hilarious personal essays, stories, poems - covering topics such as mental health, happiness, and what it means to belong. Jonny Sun is back with a collection of essays and other writings in his unique, funny, and heartfelt style. The pieces range from long meditations on topics like loneliness and being an outsider, to short humor pieces, conversations, and memorable one-liners. Jonny's honest writings about his struggles with feeling productive, as well as his difficulties with anxiety and depression will connect deeply with his fans as well as anyone attempting to create in our chaotic world. It also features a recipe for scrambled eggs that might make you cry.
©2020 Jonny Sun (P)2020 HarperAudio
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Summary
In her first memoir, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to like-minded readers. “A meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life.” (Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead) “What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?” Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter - and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Søren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live? Praise for Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life: “Li has stared in the face of much that is beautiful and ugly and treacherous and illuminating - and from her experience she has produced a nourishing exploration of the will to live willfully.” (The Washington Post) “Li’s transformation into a writer...is nothing short of astonishing.’” (The New York Times Book Review) “An arrestingly lucid, intellectually vital series of contemplations on art, identity, and depression.” (The Boston Globe) “Li is an exemplary storyteller and this account of her journey back to equilibrium, assisted by her closest companion, literature, is as powerful as any of her award-winning fiction, with the dark fixture of her Beijing past at its centre.” (Financial Times) “Every writer is a reader first, and Dear Friend is Li’s haunted, luminous love letter to the words that shaped her.... Her own prose is both lovely and opaque, fitfully illuminating a radiant landscape of the personal and profound.” (Entertainment Weekly) “Yiyun Li’s prose is lean and intense, and her ideas about books and writing are wholly original.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
©2017 Yiyun Li (P)2019 Random House Audio
Coventry
Summary
From Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline Trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the listener. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions. Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential listening for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
©2019 Rachel Cusk (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
Under the Duvet
Summary
High heels, movie deals, wagon wheels, shoes, reviews, having the blues, builders, babies, families and other calamities... Many think that Marian leads a glitzy life of limos, television, and showbiz parties - but she would argue that she spends the majority of her life writing alone, wearing her PJs, and eating bananas with a laptop on a pillow in front of her. Under the Duvet is a wide collection of her journalism and stories, all personal, closely observed, and painfully funny...
©2001 Marian Keyes (P)2002 W F Howes Ltd