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The Life and Legacy of James Joyce
- Pioneer of Modern Literature
- Narrated by: Mark Norman
- Length: 1 hr and 18 mins
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The Life and Legacy of James Joyce
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Publisher's summary
"His writing is not about something. It is that something itself." (Samuel Beckett, Joyce’s friend and secretary, about Finnegans Wake)
James Joyce is the high priest of modernist writing who lived a life of endless sacrifice to literature, loaded with poverty and petty humiliations. He blazed the path of the writer as resolute individualist, rejecting all conformity and risking everything, even public shaming, in order to "communicate" over the supine body of language with his enthralled readers. He once remarked to his younger brother Stanislaus, “Don’t you think there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do? I mean that I am trying...to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own...for their mental, moral, and spiritual uplift.”
Joyce pioneered modern literature through his use of stream of consciousness, a literary technique that lets readers get straight into the mind of the book’s characters and stands in stark contrast to Ernest Hemingway's "iceberg" style of leaving things to the readers' imaginations. In his masterpiece Ulysses, Joyce explores several topics and thoughts that go through the mind of one man in Dublin for a day, and he also wrote other critically-acclaimed works such as the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
He said of his frequent use of Dublin as a setting, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."
The Life and Legacy of James Joyce: Pioneer of Modern Literature profiles the life and career of one of America's most famous entertainers. You will learn about Joyce like you never have before, in no time at all.
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By: Charlotte Gordon
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 329
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 286
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 284
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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Charlotte Brontë
- A Fiery Heart
- By: Claire Harman
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
Charlotte Brontë's life contained all the drama and tragedy of the great Gothic novels it inspired. Like Jane Eyre, she was raised motherless on remote Yorkshire moors and sent away to a brutally strict boarding school at a young age. Charlotte grew up and watched helplessly as, one by one, her five beloved siblings sickened and died; by the end of her short life, she was the only child of the Brontë clan remaining.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Clear-Eyed Bio of Literature's Most Elusive Figure
- By wally on 09-02-16
By: Claire Harman
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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Lara
- The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago
- By: Anna Pasternak
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
When Stalin came into power in 1924, the Communist government began persecuting dissident writers. Though Stalin spared the life of Boris Pasternak - whose novel in progress, Doctor Zhivago, was suspected of being anti-Soviet - he persecuted Boris' mistress, typist, and literary muse, Olga Ivinskaya. Boris' affair with Olga devastated the straitlaced Pasternaks, and they were keen to disavow Olga's role in Boris' writing process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderfully enjoyable read
- By gran 80 on 03-15-17
By: Anna Pasternak
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House of Dreams
- The Life of L.M. Montgomery
- By: Liz Rosenberg, Julie Morstad - illustrator
- Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Maud who adored stories. When she was fourteen years old, Maud wrote in her journal, "I love books. I hope when I grow up to be able to have lots of them." Not only did Maud grow up to own lots of books, she wrote twenty-four of them herself as L. M. Montgomery, the world-renowned author of Anne of Green Gables. For many years, her lifelong struggles with anxiety and depression, her "year of mad passion" and her difficult married life were buried deep within her unpublished personal journals....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Home’o’dreams
- By Steve G. on 02-25-20
By: Liz Rosenberg, and others
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Nazi Literature in the Americas
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eerie and fascinating
- By Jikai Zenshin on 03-19-21
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others
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Georgette Heyer
- Biography of a Bestseller
- By: Jennifer Kloester
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heyer as a person
- By Jerri C on 06-15-15
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The Club
- Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 299
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk's Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually, the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as "the Club". In this captivating audiobook, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful survey
- By Tad Davis on 05-10-19
By: Leo Damrosch
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Wonderful Read with Vibrant Characters
- By A on 11-11-15
By: Justin Martin
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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4 out of 5 stars
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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So We Read On
- How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
- By: Maureen Corrigan
- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan