Discover the Best Audio Stories in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/765420 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Everything and Nothing At All: Essays Author: Jenny Heijun Wills Narrator: Jenny Heijun Wills Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 14 minutes Release date: August 27, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: 'Here is my disconnect: the private and public self. My mind and body. The real person and curated spectacle. . . . Are there actual roots with which to fasten this performance to anything real?' As a transnational and transracial adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the fraught spaces of ethnicity and belonging. As a pan-polyam individual, she lives between types of family—adopted, biological, chosen—and 'community'; heternormativity and queerness; commitment and a constellation of love. And as a parent with a lifelong eating disorder, who self-harms to cope with mental illness, her love language is to feed, but daily she wishes her body would disappear. These facets of Wills' being have served as the anchors she once clung to and the harsh parameters of what others now imagine she can be. Everything and Nothing At All weaves together a lifetime of literary criticism, cultural study, and a personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge. And though the experiences of accumulating this knowledge have often been shot through with pain, Wills spins these threads into priceless gold—a radical, fearless vision of kinship and family. Devastating, illuminating, and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Wills' self, transforming them into something more—something that could be everything.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/778278 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison Author: Ahmed Naji Narrator: Michael Rahhal Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 23 minutes Release date: August 27, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In February 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison for “violating public decency,” after an excerpt of his novel Using Life reportedly caused a reader to experience heart palpitations. Naji ultimately served ten months of that sentence, in a group cellblock in Cairo’s Tora Prison.Rotten Evidence is a chronicle of those months. Through Naji’s writing, the world of Egyptian prison comes into vivid focus, with its cigarette-based economy, homemade chess sets, and well-groomed fixers. Naji’s storytelling is lively and uncompromising, filled with rare insights into both the mundane and the grand questions he confronts.How does one secure a steady supply of fresh vegetables without refrigeration? Write and revise a novel in a single notebook? Make a wall hook out of a razor? Fight boredom? And, most crucially, how does one make sense of a senseless oppression: finding oneself in prison for the act of writing fiction. Genuine and defiant, this book stands as a testament to the power of the creative mind in the face of authoritarian censorship.“Ahmed Naji confronts what happens when one’s fundamentally unserious, oversexed youth dovetails with an authoritarian, utterly self-serious regime.”—Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/761106 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Ingrained: The making of a craftsman Author: Callum Robinson Narrator: Callum Robinson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 9 minutes Release date: August 22, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Ingrained is a love letter to trees, timber and craftsmanship – and to finding your own voice. The eldest son of a Master Woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing craft lessons in his father’s workshop, playing amongst the sycamore, oak and Scots pine that bordered his home. In time he became his father’s apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path led him to establish his own workshop; to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects, to business meetings, bright lights and bureaucracy, to lose touch with his roots. Until the devastating loss of one major job threatened to bring it all crashing down. Faced with the end of his business, his team and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most. In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop, and to the wood; to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it, and then pass it on to the next generation – antidotes to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature, and to the physical act of creation. Close enough to smell the sawdust, to see the wood’s grain and character and to feel the magic of furniture coming to life. At the same time, we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son. Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world – one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light. ''Original. Rare. As beautiful as trees... A masterpiece.'' JOHN LEWIS-STEMPEL, author of Meadowland, The Running Hare and The Wood 'This magnificent debut isn't just an ode to the craft of carpentry, but the art of writing. Robinson's chiselled, elegant prose is the sound of a bright new voice in non-fiction. His memoir brings to life the heartwood in trees, families, and a young man making his way in the world with an inspiring integrity. This is essential reading for any artist who might be losing their way.' SOPHY ROBERTS, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia © Callum Robinson 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/767144 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Author: Annie Dillard Narrator: Nan Mcnamara Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 31 minutes Release date: August 20, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel.” — Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of ''beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.'' Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/758984 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Life of Dai Author: Jaquie Brown, Dai Henwood Narrator: Jaquie Brown, Dai Henwood Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 2 minutes Release date: August 18, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A deeply moving and profoundly uplifting story about living with joy, even in the face of adversity. 'Part memoir and part masterclass in finding hope and joy in the face of unthinkable challenges. This isn't a book about cancer, it's a book about living' – Jaquie Brown Dai Henwood wanted to be a comedian even before he knew what a comedian was. He always knew there was something special in being able to make people laugh. Over a 25-year career, the much-loved Kiwi entertainer and TV host has won every major comedy award in New Zealand. But in January 2023, Dai shared publicly that three years earlier he had been diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. Perhaps the ultimate teacher for what really matters, Dai's incurable cancer has shown him a new way of living that embraces small moments of perfection and cherishes things we often overlook. As well as showing us how laughter can be a wonderful medicine – and there are many laughs in his book – Dai teaches us that often the gifts we've been searching for are right in front of us, if only we could see them.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/777444 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Out of Faith: A Mother, A Sect, And a Journey to Freedom Author: Maria Compton Narrator: Deryn Edwards Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 7 minutes Release date: August 15, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: AS SEEN IN THE TIMES Maria Compton was born and raised in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. Encouraged to keep her distance from outsiders, she grew up in a world of Church meetings, banishments and with the fear that the end of the world - known as the Rapture - was nigh. When she was still in her late teens, she married a man she barely knew. To those around her she lived the perfect life; dutiful wife, loving mother, devout Brethren woman. But underneath the surface, this life was far from perfect. Plagued by spiritual doubts, stuck in an abusive marriage and with her mental health in severe decline, Maria came to realise that she simply could not go on. And so, although knowing everything it would cost, she did the unthinkable: she left her church. Despite her attempts to stay in touch, Maria is no longer seen by her family, her friends or even her own children. But whilst she continues to grieve for everything she has lost, she holds fast to what she has gained: her liberty and her hope for the future. Out of Faith is testament to the strength of the human spirit even in the darkest of times, and an incredible story exposing the tangled ties between family, faith and freedom.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/758397 to listen full audiobooks. Title: An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work Author: Charlotte Shane Narrator: Caitlin Kelly Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 38 minutes Release date: August 13, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.33 of Total 3 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a “rigorous and compulsively readable memoir” (New York magazine) exploring what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society. “A memoir of sex work that is also a poignant love story” —The Washington Post In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results. Shane uses her “unsparing honestly” (The New York Times Book Review) and her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at a romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.” Braiding the personal and the universal, An Honest Woman is a merciless and moving love letter to men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/775355 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Men Have Called Her Crazy: The New York Times bestselling memoir Author: Anna Marie Tendler Narrator: Anna Marie Tendler Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 39 minutes Release date: August 13, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: 'A stunning self-portrait of a woman trying to make sense of the misogyny and sexism she has faced throughout her life.' - TIME Magazine In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, 'There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.' In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. This is a memoir that speaks to every woman who has been made to question her own sanity, doubt herself and her worth. Anna Marie Tendler's powerful writing, insight and clarity enabled her to find a way out of the narratives that had been foisted on her since girlhood and create her own, new story. This beautiful and heartfelt book invites us to do the same. This stunning literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message of hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, 'My wish for myself is that one day I'll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.' By the end of the book, she fulfils that wish.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/771554 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Consultant Author: Jay Malkoun Narrator: Hazem Shammas Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 9 minutes Release date: August 6, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Jay Malkoun isn't the type of man who lets a little thing like being blown up slow him down. In March 2019, a car bomb outside a gym in Athens detonated the Mercedes Jay's his children had been riding in less than an hour earlier. It was an explosion heard around the world, as global media, law enforcement agencies, and underworld cartels speculated on who had moved to assassinate the former gangster and retired leader of one of the world's most feared and powerful underworld organisations. There were a hundred possible suspects. Jay has some ideas about it too. Now, in this gripping true crime autobiography, for the first time, Jay tells his story - that of one of the most fascinating and complex figures that Australia has ever given the world. Jay is streetfighter from Melbourne's roughest suburb who rubs shoulders with movie stars and opera singers. Convicted drug trafficker and champion horse breeder. Survivor of the Melbourne underworld wars, and ten years in Australia's most brutal prison. Nightclub enforcer and peacemaker. Strip-club mogul and incurable romantic. A family man of deep religious faith who is capable of extreme violence when pushed. A loving father and a loyal son. A negotiator of multi-million-dollar deals in both the boardroom and the backroom. The one-time leader of one of the most influential and powerful outlaw motorcycle clubs the world has ever seen - whose power extends across the globe. Now, the author of this stunning autobiography. Confronting, confounding, hard to the core, and laugh-out loud funny, this is Jay Malkoun in his own words - a compelling narrative of violence, contradiction, and redemption. It is both an unprecedented tour of the underworld, and a compelling exploration of a man who has lived a hundred lifetimes in one and is now ready to tell his story.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/752912 to listen full audiobooks. Title: War & Peace & War: Twenty years in Afghanistan Author: Andrew North Narrator: Andrew North Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 11 minutes Release date: August 1, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In early 2022 ,veteran journalist Andrew North was kidnapped by the Taliban. By the time he found himself imprisoned in a jail cell, he had been reporting from Afghanistan for two decades, coming to know hundreds of Afghans along the way. This book brings together both his and their stories. Farzana was banned from attending school as a child, but education would take her further than she could have imagined. Bilal's dream of becoming a journalist came true, but at a cost. While Abdul's ambition to become a doctor was thwarted, Jahan's prospects transformed radically for the better. And in a quiet province, the life of a boy called Naqibullah was shattered. Witness to both the country's transformation and the mistakes that eventually led to its collapse, in War & Peace & War North vividly evokes a country where foreign powers and internal forces have been on a collision course for over two centuries.