Master Writers, Master Readers

By: Isabel Allende, Jane Austen, Paul Auster

Narrated by: Elliott Gould, Glenda Jackson, Ben Kingsley

Just as the style of a great writer cannot easily be imitated, the performance of a great reader is hard to duplicate. This volume features some of the best readers dramatizing some of the best writings. Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things is read by Vanessa Redgrave; Amy Tan reads her own The Hundred Secret Senses; Elizabeth Peña performs Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna; Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep is read by Elliott Gould; Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby is read by Paul Scofield; Jane Austen's Persuasion is read by Glenda Jackson; Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County is performed by Waller, Ben Kingsley, and Isabella Rossellini; and Michael York reads The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.©1989 by Isabel Allende, 1991 by Macmillan Publishing Co., A Division of Macmillan, Inc.; 1995 by Amy Tan; 1987 by Paul Auster; 1939 by Raymond Chandler, Copyright Renewed 1966 by Mrs. Helga Greene; 1992 by Robert James Waller (P)1996 Dove Audio, Inc.

The Best Readers Are Not Enough

This would be a good primer for actors aspiring to read audio books. It was less appealing to me as a listener. This is not a collection of short stories, but a group of excerpts from novels. Imagine a movie made up of scenes from other movies without transitions. The book also lacks an index or any introduction to the excerpts, so the listener careens from one voice describing 19th century France to another describing contemporary Chinese-American sensibilities. The book does work as a sampler, albeit an awkward one.