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The Bells of Old Tokyo
- Meditations on Time and a City
- Narrated by: Holly Palance
- Length: 6 hrs
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Publisher's summary
An elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo and its residents.
From 1632 until 1854, Japan’s rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called Tokyo, kept the hours in the shoguns’ city.
An exploration of Tokyo becomes a meditation not just on time, but on history, memory, and impermanence. Through Sherman’s journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo follows haunting voices through the labyrinth that is the Japanese capital: an old woman remembers escaping from the American firebombs of World War II. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. The head of the Tokugawa shogunal house reflects on the destruction of his grandfathers’ city: “A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness.”
The Bells of Old Tokyo marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer who presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life in the guise of a tour through a city and its people.
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Disappointed
- By Nom de Guerre on 08-06-21
By: Elaine Sciolino
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Summer
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Juliette Burton
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the exciting culmination of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories.
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terrific book, beautifully read.
- By Sasha on 02-07-21
By: Ali Smith
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Street Without a Name
- Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
- By: Kapka Kassabova
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and grew up under the drab, muddy, gray mantle of one of communism’s most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other places. But when Bulgaria was formally inducted to the European Union she decided it was time to return to the home she had spent most of her life trying to escape. What she found was a country languishing under the strain of transition. This two-part memoir of Kapka’s childhood and return explains life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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Good start, but ended up not liking the author
- By Giselle on 11-02-21
By: Kapka Kassabova
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On the Plain of Snakes
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico.
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A pedantic, poorly narrated, 20 hour lecture
- By Birdshot on 11-16-19
By: Paul Theroux
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Sovietistan
- Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
- By: Erika Fatland
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.
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Outstanding book
- By George MP on 04-24-22
By: Erika Fatland
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The Innocents Abroad
- Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In June 1867, Mark Twain set out for Europe and the Holy Land on the paddle steamer Quaker City. His enduring, no-nonsense guide for the first-time traveler also served as an antidote to the insufferably romantic travel books of the period.
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Twain's Hidden Gem
- By Cynthia Franks on 05-08-12
By: Mark Twain
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The Waves
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Frances Jeater
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The Waves traces the lives of six friends from childhood to old age. It was written when Virginia Woolf was at the height of her experimental powers, and she allows each character to tell their own story, through powerful, poetic monologues. By listening to these voices struggling to impose order and meaning on their lives, we are drawn into a literary journey that stunningly reproduces the complex, confusing and contradictory nature of human experience. It is read with affection and skill by Frances Jeater.
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Not an easy read but worth it
- By Lena on 03-26-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Autumn
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
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Incredible use of language
- By Mary on 03-06-17
By: Ali Smith
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What listeners say about The Bells of Old Tokyo
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Buretto
- 08-26-19
Endearing view of Tokyo, with a few minor stumbles
The vast majority of the book is charming. As a foreign resident of Tokyo myself, I could appreciate a lot of the nuances of the outsider eagerly trying to learn the intricacies of the city, the language and the people. The author is at her best connecting the history of Edo with the complexity of modern life in Tokyo. My only wish is that it had done more strolling around the neighborhoods of Tokyo, a hobby I like to do myself, literally.
Only a few times does the book stray, primarily in the descriptions of parts of Roppongi and Kabukicho, love hotels and the seedier side of the city. These are certainly parts of the story, but don't neatly fit into her historical time narrative. Similarly, I'm not sure why she was surprised at the Japanese reaction to the foreigners who'd fled after 3/11. As one who stayed, I can entirely understand if a sense of abandonment and betrayal was felt, and later conveyed to those returnees. And, I'm not usually a stickler for pronunciation, but after hearing Asakusa and Tsukiji, (among others) repeatedly bruised, it made me wonder why there wasn't more preparation for the narration.
But ultimately, these few distractions are minor hiccups. it's an otherwise enchanting stroll around Tokyo..
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