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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
- The History and Future of Reading
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
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Publisher's summary
Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated.
Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English Professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed. From the dawn of mass literacy to the invention of the paperback, most readers already skimmed and multitasked. Print-era doctors even forbade the very same silent absorption now recommended as a cure for electronic addictions. The evidence that books are dying proves even scarcer. In encounters with librarians, booksellers, and activists who are reinventing old ways of reading, Price offers fresh hope to bibliophiles and literature lovers alike.
Winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, 2020
Critic reviews
"Price's book—unlike other examples of what she calls 'autobibliography'—is funny and hopeful, rather than dour and pious...What We Talk About When We Talk About Books is an enjoyable tour, full of surprising byways into historical arcana."—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"[Price] is not an elegist for print: her extraordinary grasp of every development in book history, from incunabula to beach reads, monasteries to bookmobiles, suggests that a love of printed matter need not be a form of nostalgia...Her radiant descriptions of the physical properties of books, the forensic traces—from smudges to candle wax—of earlier bodies holding them, immediately sent me to the Internet..."—Dan Chiasson, New Yorker
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's name doesn't appear anywhere on it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Porn for Ye Old Bibliophiles
- By George M. Liveakos on 03-24-17
By: Rebecca Romney, and others
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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The Lost Gutenberg
- The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey
- By: Margaret Leslie Davis
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
For rare-book collectors, an original copy of the Gutenberg Bible - of which there are fewer than 50 in existence - represents the ultimate prize. Here, Margaret Leslie Davis recounts five centuries in the life of one copy, from its creation by Johannes Gutenberg, through the hands of monks, an earl, the Worcestershire sauce king, and a nuclear physicist to its ultimate resting place, in a steel vault in Tokyo.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Spare me
- By Dr. Small on 05-04-20
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Process
- The Writing Lives of Great Authors
- By: Sarah Stodola
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 154
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature's most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world's most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By Davina Rush on 04-10-15
By: Sarah Stodola
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The Untold Story of the Talking Book
- By: Matthew Rubery
- Narrated by: Jim Denison
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account is nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison's recitation of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877 to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans to today's billion-dollar audiobook industry.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Historical Review of Audiobooks
- By Jean on 07-20-17
By: Matthew Rubery
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Ex Libris
- Confessions of a Common Reader
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4 out of 5 stars 60
Anyone who has ever loved a book will relish this playful, yet deeply literate collection of essays celebrating the joy of reading. From building castles with books as a child, to the trauma of joining her library with her husband's, the author reveals, with much warmth and humor, the intimate details of her lifelong affair with books. For Anne Fadiman, books are not built for function, and certainly not for decoration. They are close personal friends who never fail to delight and amaze.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reading IS fun!
- By Diana on 04-14-05
By: Anne Fadiman
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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
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Parfit
- A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
- By: David Edmonds
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it
- By Anna Karenina on 07-05-23
By: David Edmonds
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Veritas
- A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 234
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 200
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 195
In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star religion professor at Harvard, announced a breathtaking discovery just steps from the Vatican: she’d found an ancient scrap of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene “my wife”. The mysterious manuscript, which King provocatively titled “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife”, had the power to topple the Roman Catholic Church. It threatened not just the all-male priesthood, but centuries of sacred teachings on marriage, sex, and women’s leadership, much of it premised on the hallowed tradition of a celibate Jesus.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow
- By Dorothy on 08-23-20
By: Ariel Sabar
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How to Write Short
- Word Craft for Fast Times
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
In How to Write Short , Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed - from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Ironically long
- By Amazon Customer on 03-14-16
By: Roy Peter Clark
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World Without Mind
- The Existential Threat of Big Tech
- By: Franklin Foer
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 255
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 220
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Story4 out of 5 stars 217
Franklin Foer reveals the existential threat posed by big tech, and in his brilliant polemic gives us the toolkit to fight their pervasive influence. Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon, socialize on Facebook, turn to Apple for entertainment, and rely on Google for information.
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5 out of 5 stars
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5-Star Book with a 1-Star Title
- By David Larson on 09-18-17
By: Franklin Foer
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Author in Chief
- The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
- By: Craig Fehrman
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, Author in Chief, the story of America’s presidents and their books opens a rich new window into presidential biography. From volumes lost to history - Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titles of 1929 - to ones we know and love - Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, which was very nearly never published - Fehrman unearths countless insights about the presidents through their literary works.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 03-12-20
By: Craig Fehrman
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Shakespeare's Library
- Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature
- By: Stuart Kells
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 75
Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dismissed Mary Sidney Herbert without explanation
- By Lisa on 07-30-19
By: Stuart Kells
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The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5,249
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,044
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,059
Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Bookworm
- A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- By: Lucy Mangan
- Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I love this!
- By M. Ashby on 03-12-20
By: Lucy Mangan
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Sacred Treasure - The Cairo Genizah
- The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic
- By: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Narrated by: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue - the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1897, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not what I thought it would be, but worth it
- By Lisa on 03-14-12
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A Place for Everything
- The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
- By: Judith Flanders
- Narrated by: Julia Winwood
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification.
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4 out of 5 stars
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You have to love library science
- By A. Yoshida on 10-23-21
By: Judith Flanders
What listeners say about What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer in FL
- 02-25-24
Unique perspective on the topic with great quality content
i enjoyed and appreciate the thoughtfulness and witty style of the author's writing. Sometimes i would get annoyed with what i thought was an overly simplistic but highly creative description to references of other work or bits of history, only to pause and reflect on it and realize i almost missed the point or hidden meaning. i actually enjoy some of those delayed or laggy realizations, but if it happens a lot then it likely means its due to my own limitations. All in all, very enjoyable and entertaining book on books.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- My Reviews
- 12-27-20
Wasn't a fan.
I would have enjoyed it more if the author didn't make political assumptions. I'm so tired of that.
Would help if the editor would have lessened the frequent word usages. (Author really likes the word 'eponymous.')
Reader was great.
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2 people found this helpful