D. Donohue

Well, Mark Twain is delightful the 5th time or the 100th time, and this is a book that had stayed with me 25 years, so needed revisiting. What I love is the pace - slower than most Twain works - and filled with his digestion of other histories and literatures, so you get a lot of bang for your buck reading this.

I love the delightful tour of Europe, with his ironic reports of how many religious relics there are and the mean conditions of some very grand old cultures from his humorous point of view [no carpets, lousy haircuts!]

It is a genuine channeling of Twain. Terrific pauses for ironic emphasis - you can just see Twain stroking his mustaches.

Actually, a lifelong disdain of cruises came from reading this as a young person.

I was reminded of that when the Italian cruise ship crash happened and wanted to revisit it.

It started right in with a transcription of the promotion for the trip he was about to embark on, complete with all of the promises of cruising elegance and then it did not even take a week for everything on the cruise to be turned on its head.

I laughed a lot, but also cringed a lot.

The racial remarks made throughout the book have to be swallowed in context, but give a lot of insight into the era. Overall, he is as liberal an observer of the era's world as I have found.

It is up towards the top.

I just finished the Bowles short stories and it is a great reward. I am pleased with that sequence.

He is REALLY GREAT. I LOVE his voice for this.

Everyone was fascinating. Bowles is fascinating. One cannot help but wonder what comes from him, as he is so iconic.

I never read Bowles. I am so converted to him thanks to Audible. I have had a big project in a damp cold warehouse in the winter and these hot dry tales of North Africa have been my constant companion and cure. It was an inspired pairing!

Sontag gripped me. What do I love? History. Edgy. Thoughtful. Surprises. Romance. This delivered all beyond my expectations. I am still tingling and feel a sense of abandonment one feels when a great "read" ends.

Naples. Evocative descriptions. Art. Furious and spot-on conclusion that is literally the best conclusion of any novel ever - bar none - even my great beloveds of the Brontes, Wilkie Collins, Tolstoy, James. This is a great great read.

Van Dyck is obliged to capture a variety of narrators: male and female, living and dead, and she nails them all. Her voice is like burnt caramel. I felt like Sontag was there, and I spoke to her. Van Dyck has her round tones and deep power.
She needs some work on Italian names, but I gave her 5 stars because I am still a true fan and would acquire any audiobook by her.

The ending was like a punch in the chest and I love it completely.

I had the audiobook of Sontag's other novel, In America, and it was a love hate. The audio book was great, but the writing pissed me off for the first third. Afterwards, she redeemed herself and I was content. I had moderate expectations of this novel, and, from the beginning was flabbergasted. I never wanted to do anything other than listen. It is a great great work. This production is so worthy of a remarkable piece of writing.

I actually have already listened to some of the stories over again. I cannot add too much to all that has been said about Bowles, but this is a great survey, and my introduction, really, to him as a short story writer. I could not take my headphones off!

It was a whalloping dose of humor, misery and careful observation. I dreamt differently after hearing this collection.

The narrator was a whole repertory company! WHAT a treat! It really added texture and variety to the stories and the selection of voices to stories was made by a very astute person, indeed.

There is a harrowing story - just awful - that can be described, at first, as picaresque, about a naive English philologist embarking on field work in Africa and it all turning very very unexpected, indeed, within 12 hours of arriving. I could barely stand the story, but will never forget a moment of it.

A perfect dream of a book. Absolutely a show-stopper!

The narrator cannot pronounce a single name or word in the text.

It is really beautifully done - a detestable amount of detail about King Leopold's unsurpassed genocide in the Congo, but I am behind all of his unpacking of Colonialism.

Never, although he has a perky Adam Gopnik-like voice and I listened for way too long because of the book. There is not ONE SINGLE WORD in French in German he can pronounce to save his life, to my regret, as it ruined the book for me. I had to give up.

Great book I need to read in text and pronounce in my head correctly before I can decide.

Missed opportunity. Great book, I think. A well-meaning perky reader with zilch ability in French/German pronunciation [key to hearing]. I blame the audiobook publisher for not briefing him. A waste. If you doubt me, check out Robert Hughes in Shock of the New on Ubuweb, since it is a lot of the same names and words and he gets 100 percent, and the narrator here, barely a thing.

Riveting, no matter any preconceptions about Curtis, this author is a master.

Rebecca Solnit's remarkable River of Shadows, which is about Edweard Muybridge and the amazing geo-socio-psychological and historical reasons for his work.

He is really perfect. Has a world-weary voice, suitable to the material.

The Impossible Dream! A Quixotic Story of a man who gave up everything for a 20 volume photobook.

My review of the book on the ICP Library blog

Well, I love Jonah Lehrer, and he has a great way of telling a story.

It is packed with thought provoking ideas that lead to further reading [listening too].

No, I only wish the author had been reading, as he did for Imagine. That was terrific. This is fine, just not as good as Lehrer.

It made me have a 180 on my opinion of Gertrude Stein, for one thing. It made me tell people stories from it, as Imagine did, and recommend it avidly.

I do not care a fig about the supposition about Lehrer's Dylan quotes, although I am sure that he does. I think he is a remarkable story-teller and I am very sorry he resigned from the New Yorker. These little details do not matter in the service of the high-level thinking that he conveys in such plain English in his books. I am still recommending this book to everyone.

Wow, I cannot remember why I selected this, as I had not read Ghosh before. It has been too enthralling an audiobook to put down! It has remarkable language portraits of India, Burma and Malaya, complete with smells, people, built environments, economics and politics. Sometimes it feels that too many historic events directly affect its players, but the reader is extraordinary and the novel's ability to evoke a place and time is superb.

I missed reading this when young, and the only impression I had of it was from the James Dean film, I am sad to say. This narrator sounds like the voice of Steinbeck whispering in your ear. I reach work in the morning desperate to leave my headphones on because I cannot bear to be parted from the book. It is the very best of Steinbeck produced and read to perfection. I may just start listening to it from the beginning in a couple of hours when I reach the end.

Well, I loved reading a recent excerpt of this in the New Yorker, so it was on the top of my list. Like David Sedaris, there is something particular about Lehrer's own reading that makes a great piece of writing extraordinary.
The book has been on the top of my conversations for a week and I started listening again with my partner, as he was desperate to hear after all I had said, but I wanted to hear again.
Lively, smart, and extremely thought-provoking!