-
Unfinished Business
- Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Prime member exclusive: pick 2 free titles with trial.
Unfinished Business
Buy for $15.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Situation and the Story
- The Art of Personal Narrative
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.Â
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Monsters
- A Fan's Dilemma
- By: Claire Dederer
- Narrated by: Claire Dederer
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
I needed this book.
- By Jennifer E. Glapion on 05-16-23
By: Claire Dederer
-
On Writers and Writing
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 219
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 192
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 191
What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
l just love Margaret Atwood.
- By Brandy Ringleb on 01-11-21
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Inciting Joy
- Essays
- By: Ross Gay
- Narrated by: Ross Gay
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it. In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautifully told truths
- By Anonymous User on 02-16-23
By: Ross Gay
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Situation and the Story
- The Art of Personal Narrative
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.Â
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Monsters
- A Fan's Dilemma
- By: Claire Dederer
- Narrated by: Claire Dederer
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
I needed this book.
- By Jennifer E. Glapion on 05-16-23
By: Claire Dederer
-
On Writers and Writing
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 219
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 192
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 191
What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
l just love Margaret Atwood.
- By Brandy Ringleb on 01-11-21
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Inciting Joy
- Essays
- By: Ross Gay
- Narrated by: Ross Gay
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 73
In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we expand it. In an era when divisive voices take up so much air space, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Beautifully told truths
- By Anonymous User on 02-16-23
By: Ross Gay
-
Dying of Politeness
- A Memoir
- By: Geena Davis
- Narrated by: Geena Davis
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 692
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 624
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 622
From two-time Academy Award winner and screen icon Geena Davis, the surprising tale of her “journey to badassery”—from her epically polite childhood to roles that loaned her the strength to become a powerhouse in Hollywood. Dying of Politeness is a touching account of one woman’s journey to fight for herself, and ultimately fighting for women all around the globe.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
so perfect
- By Kimber on 10-16-22
By: Geena Davis
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 155
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 156
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Coventry
- Essays
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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.Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
This review is biased
- By Paul on 05-16-21
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Also a Poet
- A Memoir
- By: Ada Calhoun
- Narrated by: Ada Calhoun, Lili Taylor, Josephine Brill
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 164
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
Â
When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started 40 years earlier. As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s and her own.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Pretty Interesting
- By Michele A. Cacano-Green on 08-02-22
By: Ada Calhoun
-
Constructing a Nervous System
- A Memoir
- By: Margo Jefferson
- Narrated by: Karen Murray
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 23
The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson has lived in the thrall of a cast of others—her parents and maternal grandmother, jazz luminaries, writers, artists, athletes, and stars. These are the figures who thrill and trouble her, and who have made up her sense of self as a person and as a writer. In her much-anticipated follow-up to Negroland, Jefferson brings these figures to life in a memoir of stunning originality, a performance of the elements that comprise and occupy the mind of one of our foremost critics.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Challenging essays
- By Charlotte on 05-21-23
By: Margo Jefferson
-
The Great Good Thing
- A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
- By: Andrew Klavan
- Narrated by: Andrew Klavan
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 2,132
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,932
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 1,928
How did a New York-born, Jewish, former-atheist novelist and screenwriter - a winner of multiple Edgar Awards, whose books became films with Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas - find himself at the age of 50 being baptized and confessing Jesus as Lord? That's a tale worth telling.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Profound and Beautiful
- By Jason Hague on 09-30-16
By: Andrew Klavan
-
A Room of One's Own
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,151
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,020
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,016
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Witty, Beautiful Plea for Androgynous Integrity
- By Jefferson on 08-20-14
By: Virginia Woolf
-
Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 74
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great insight
- By Kelly Houske on 02-02-19
By: Jan Morris
-
Letters to a Young Poet
- By: Charlie Louth - translator, Lewis Hyde - introduction, Rainer Maria Rilke
- Narrated by: Dan Stevens, Max Deacon
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 133
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 117
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
At the start of the 20th century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex, suffering, and the nature of advice itself. These profound and lyrical letters have since become hugely influential for generations of writers and artists of all kinds, including Lady Gaga and Patti Smith. With honesty, elegance, and a deep understanding of the loneliness that often comes with being an artist, Rilke's letters are an endless source of inspiration and comfort.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
A Chest of Treasures for any Artist
- By W Perry Hall on 04-16-14
By: Charlie Louth - translator, and others
-
The Three Marriages
- Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
- By: David Whyte
- Narrated by: David Whyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 396
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 270
According to Whyte, we humans are involved not just with one marriage with a significant other. We also have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to an inner, constantly developing self. Whyte's thesis is that to separate these marriages in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself; that in each of these marriages, will, effort, and hard work are overused, overrated, and in many ways self-defeating.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
RARE SELF-HELP BOOK THAT ACTUALLY HELPS
- By Elizabeth on 03-05-09
By: David Whyte
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 101
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
Publisher's summary
One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life.
“I sometimes think I was born reading…I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.”
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse literary criticism, memoir, and biography, one of our most celebrated critics writes about the importance of reading - and re-reading - as life progresses. Gornick finds herself in contradictory characters within D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, assesses womanhood in Colette’s The Vagabond and The Shackle, and considers the veracity of memory in Marguerite Duras’s The Lover. She revisits Great War novels by J. L. Carr and Pat Barker, uncovers the psychological complexity of Elizabeth Bowen’s prose, and soaks in Natalia Ginzburg, “a writer whose work has often made me love life more.” After adopting two cats, whose erratic behavior she finds vexing, she discovers Doris Lessing’s Particularly Cats.Â
Guided by Gornick’s trademark verve and insight, Unfinished Business is a masterful appreciation of literature’s power to illuminate our lives from a peerless writer and thinker who “still read[s] to feel the power of Life with a capital L.”
More from the same
What listeners say about Unfinished Business
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us
- By: Lawrence Weinstein
- Narrated by: Lawrence Weinstein
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Grammar is about much more than rules: It’s about choices, too - since a thought can always be expressed correctly in multiple ways. Why settle for a normal audiobook on grammar when you could learn new things about it and become your own best self at the same time? Grammar is about much more than rules: It’s about choices, too - since a thought can always be expressed correctly in multiple ways. Weinstein shows that certain tweaks to a person’s grammar can bring consequential changes in his or her fulfillment and well-being.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Loved his take on life
- By Debrajoygwen on 12-01-21
-
The Situation and the Story
- The Art of Personal Narrative
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.Â
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Best American Essays 2023
- Best American
- By: Vivian Gornick, Robert Atwan
- Narrated by: Will Tulin, Marie Hoffman, Elena Rey, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.
By: Vivian Gornick, and others
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Men in My Life
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: J. Michael McCullough
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In this collection, Vivian Gornick turns her attention to a large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us
- By: Lawrence Weinstein
- Narrated by: Lawrence Weinstein
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Grammar is about much more than rules: It’s about choices, too - since a thought can always be expressed correctly in multiple ways. Why settle for a normal audiobook on grammar when you could learn new things about it and become your own best self at the same time? Grammar is about much more than rules: It’s about choices, too - since a thought can always be expressed correctly in multiple ways. Weinstein shows that certain tweaks to a person’s grammar can bring consequential changes in his or her fulfillment and well-being.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Loved his take on life
- By Debrajoygwen on 12-01-21
-
The Situation and the Story
- The Art of Personal Narrative
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 11
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 10
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 10
How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks—and answers. Taking us on a tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras.
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Fierce Attachments
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.Â
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Best American Essays 2023
- Best American
- By: Vivian Gornick, Robert Atwan
- Narrated by: Will Tulin, Marie Hoffman, Elena Rey, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and populist censorship movements, the twenty-one essays collected here reflect their authors’ unapologetic observations of the world around them.
By: Vivian Gornick, and others
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
The Men in My Life
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: J. Michael McCullough
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
-
Story0 out of 5 stars 0
In this collection, Vivian Gornick turns her attention to a large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.
By: Vivian Gornick
Related to this topic
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 101
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence. Â
By: Francesca Wade
-
Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
-
Philosopher of the Heart
- The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
- By: Clare Carlisle
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
One word wow. Loved the book one of the best
- By Kindle Customer on 04-03-22
By: Clare Carlisle
-
The Odd Woman and the City
- A Memoir
- By: Vivian Gornick
- Narrated by: Vivian Gornick
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 20
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Yet another Gornick masterpiece
- By Lo on 01-14-23
By: Vivian Gornick
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 52
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 101
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence. Â
By: Francesca Wade
-
Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 121
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
-
Philosopher of the Heart
- The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
- By: Clare Carlisle
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.Â
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
One word wow. Loved the book one of the best
- By Kindle Customer on 04-03-22
By: Clare Carlisle
-
The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 54
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 48
Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
-
The Man Without Qualities
- By: Robert Musil
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 60 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
In 1913, the Viennese aristocracy is gathering to celebrate the 17th jubilee of the accession of Emperor Franz Josef, even as the Austro-Hungarian Empire is collapsing and the rest of Vienna is showing signs of rebellion. At the centre of this social labyrinth is Ulrich: a veteran, a seducer and a scientist, yet also a man 'without qualities' and therefore a brilliant and detached observer of his changing world.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
An unmatched intellectual epic
- By Delano on 06-23-22
By: Robert Musil
-
Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 75
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 74
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Great insight
- By Kelly Houske on 02-02-19
By: Jan Morris
-
The Three Marriages
- Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
- By: David Whyte
- Narrated by: David Whyte
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 396
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 270
According to Whyte, we humans are involved not just with one marriage with a significant other. We also have made secret vows to our work and unspoken vows to an inner, constantly developing self. Whyte's thesis is that to separate these marriages in order to balance them is to destroy the fabric of happiness itself; that in each of these marriages, will, effort, and hard work are overused, overrated, and in many ways self-defeating.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
RARE SELF-HELP BOOK THAT ACTUALLY HELPS
- By Elizabeth on 03-05-09
By: David Whyte
-
The Birthmark
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Walter Covell
- Length: 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 73