Discover the Libray of Best Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

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Title: This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

Author: Jon McGregor

Narrator: Piers Gibbon

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-05-13

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The powerful first collection of short stories by Jon McGregor.

From the publication of his first Booker-nominated novel, at the age of 26, Jon McGregor's fiction has consistently been defined by lean poetic language, a keen sense of detail, and insightful characterization. Now, after publishing three novels, he's turning his considerable talent toward short fiction. The stories in this beautifully wrought collection explore a specific physical world and the people who inhabit it.

Set among the lowlands and levees, the fens and ditches that mark the spare landscape of eastern England, the stories expose lives where much is buried, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won. The narrators of these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell us what they believe to be important - in language inflected with the landscape's own understatement - while the real stories lie in what they unwittingly let slip.

A man builds a tree house by a river in preparation for a coming flood. A boy sets fire to a barn. A pair of itinerant laborers sit by a lake and talk, while fighter-planes fly low overhead and prepare for war. This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You is an intricate exploration of isolation, self-discovery, and the impact of place on the human psyche.

Members Reviews:

Interactive Storytelling

Jon McGregor doesn't so much tell stories as invite the reader to find them. Take the first two items in this collection, one short, the other fairly long. "That Colour" is a single paragraph of just over a page. A woman standing in the front row of a cottage calls to a man washing dishes in the kitchen to come and look at the autumnal leaves over the road. He finishes the washing; he comes to her; he takes her hand. That is all. But the writing makes you ask questions -- about their relationship, their ages, their history, their mental health -- and your questions are the heart of this beautiful story.

The second story, "In Winter the Sky," is much longer. But more than that, it is composed of two separate layers. The main one is about a man confessing to his wife about something that happened when they were courting, years before. But every few paragraphs, in the Kindle edition, you get a phrase formatted as a hyperlink. Click on it, and you see what seems like the draft of a fragment of a poem, apparently written by the wife, with alternate texts and crossings-out. [In print editions, these appear on facing pages.] The relevance of the poems is evocative rather than literal; their images distill the flat fenland country of East Lincolnshire in which all these stories are set. Eventually, you get crossings-out in the prose text too, as if facts could be changed by the manner in which you tell them; as though the mistakes of life could be edited away. And all this in a landscape perpetually subject to editing of a physical kind, as frequent floods erase and rearrange the land.

Every story in the collection is headed with the name of a place, often just a small village you can hardly see on the map. Two of the stories are set elsewhere, but feature people from the same area; another appears to be set in New York, but not in the way you expect.

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Titel: Der Wolkenatlas

Autor:: David Mitchell

Erzähler: Johannes Steck, Carin C. Tietze, Stefan Wilkening

Format: Unabridged

Spieldauer: 21 hrs and 36 mins

Sprache: Deutsch

Veröffentlichungsdatum: 02-26-13

Herausgeber: Kuebler Hörbuch. Ein Label der Kuebler Television AG

Kategorien: Fiction, Literary

Zusammenfassung des Herausgebers:

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Kritik Bewertungen:

Mitchell kartographiert Seelen und schreibt Weltliteratur.

-- NZZ

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Title: The Man Who Loved Children

Author: Christina Stead

Narrator: Fiona Press

Format: Unabridged

Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-25-13

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Henrietta, privileged and sheltered, expected a smoothly comfortable society life in Washington when she married Sam Pollitt, a handsome self-made biologist. Ten years later, Henny is a skinny, screaming drudge with five children, a raging wreck of a woman driven by "hate, horror, passion or contempt". But Sam, whose impractical idealism has brought his family to near-ruin, is unchanged: still at sea in all adult affairs, an absurd hypocritical buffoon but a genius with children, except Louie, his eldest daughter, an ugly, brilliant adolescent who is forced to take a drastic final step to save herself and the children from lasting tragedy.

Critic Reviews:

"

The Man Who Loved Children is one of the most truthful and terrifying horror stories ever written about family life." (

Times)

Members Reviews:

It may be a good book but I couldn't listen to it

Any additional comments?

Two things killed this for me. I found two of the three main characters unlikeable. And I found the dialogue, which comprises 90% of the text, irritating. It is not badly written. It may even justify the praise given by other reviewers. I just didn't enjoy the endless trivial infant-talk and silly rhymes. After about a quarter of the book I couldn't bear it any longer and stopped listening.

HARD TO BELIEVE THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN THE 1940s

The reading was clear, but sometimes it was hard to work out who was speaking, too little differentiation.

It was an interesting book, but I believe that the tale could have been told in half of the time.

I didn't actually like, any of the characters.

Probably this book was before it's time.

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Title: Cloud Atlas

Author: David Mitchell

Narrator: Garrick Hagon, Jeff Harding, Steve Hodson, Regina Reagan, Liza Ross, David Thorpe

Format: Unabridged

Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-19-13

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 27 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's best-selling Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel which was also one of Richard & Judy's 100 Books of the Decade, has now been adapted for film. The major motion picture, directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and Andy Wachowski, stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Doona Bae, James D'Arcy, Zhou Xun, Keith David, and Hugh Grant.

The novel features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.

The narrators of Cloud Atlas hear one another's echoes down the corridor of history and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

Mitchell's other novels are Ghostwritten, Number9Dream, Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autums of Jacob de Zoet, all published by Sceptre.

Members Reviews:

A good book, brilliantly read

The talented group of narrators make this a great audio book that covers a great rate of inter-weaved stories

What an incredible listen!

To start with I was very confused with what the story was about, but after Jacob de Zoet I was determined to persist. This is the book which has to be listened to with full concentration. After being completely drawn into this incredible yarn of past, present and future, with fantastic readers' voices I found myself postponing jobs and in the end bought the book to listen with the text! I went through each of three parts a few times to savour well written prose and it is sure I will be returning to this listen again and again. I must add that with just a text I would struggle at the beginning.

Great book, brought to life better than any movie

I loved the book when it first came out in print and have been looking out for an unabridged version on audible ever since. The movie may be bonkers (not necessarily bad for that) but don't let that put you off. I know some readers found the hard to get into, but I reckon it's a lot easier with the audible version so, if you have doubts initially, do stick with it. Connections between the different narratives can seem somewhat tenuous, but each is rewarding in its own right. I had forgotten how funny parts of it are (now brought to life by excellent narration), and how unsettling elements set in the future can feel. Overall, a great listen, strongly recommended.

Intriguing

I wanted to see if this lived up to the hype surrounding it. To be honest, probably not - I don't want to give spoilers but I found some of the stories a fraction disappointing in the end. It's not nearly as groundbreaking as it's been made out to be, but it's still intriguing and well-written. The different narrators all came across excellently - they were all read and characterised well and it was, overall, a very good listen. I enjoyed coming back to it each time and wanted to find out what happened in each story.

Loved it!

This is the most extraordinary book, I've never read anything quite like it.

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Title: The Joke

Author: Milan Kundera

Narrator: Richmond Hoxie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-06-12

Publisher: Canongate Faber

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

All too often, this brilliant novel of thwarted love and revenge miscarried has been read for its political implications. Now, a quarter century after The Joke was first published and several years after the collapse of the Soviet-imposed Czechoslovak regime, it becomes easier to put such implications into perspective in favour of valuing the book (and all Kundera 's work) as what it truly is: great, stirring literature that sheds new light on the eternal themes of human existence. This audio edition provides English-language listeners an important further means toward revaluation of The Joke.

For reasons he describes in his Author's Note, Milan Kundera devoted much time to creating (with the assistance of his American publisher-editor) a completely revised translation that reflects his original as closely as any translation possibly can: reflects it in its fidelity not only to the words and syntax but also to the characteristic dictions and tonalities of the novel's narrators. The result is nothing less than the restoration of a classic.

Critic Reviews:

"Kundera is the saddest, funniest, and most lovable of authors." (The Times)

Members Reviews:

The beginning

Like meeting an old friend after a long absence. If you are familiar with his work, then this is a good place to start your audiobook journey of his fantastic novels. The jumping between characters can otherwise be a bit confusing.

The best part of reading Kundera is the phenomenal insight he brings to the human condition

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Title: Narcopolis

Author: Jeet Thayil

Narrator: Robertson Dean

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-11-12

Publisher: Canongate Faber

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay: In Rashid's opium room a young woman holds a long-stemmed pipe over a flame as men sprawl and mutter in the gloom. In Shuklaji Street they say you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. But then whispers build of a new terror, something that shifts the tenuous balance of survival for the city's nameless, invisible poor.

A rich, hallucinatory dream of a novel, Narcopolis captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, and gangsters, it is a lyrical and unforgettable journey into a sprawling underworld.

Members Reviews:

This was great!

What made the experience of listening to Narcopolis the most enjoyable?

I just love the storyline and the narrator read it well. It could of had different narrators for the characters though.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Narcopolis?

It's all memorable after the first couple of chapters.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me feel sad when the main character is asking rachid about dimple and the old man is unhappy that she is no longer with him.

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Title: Life Is Elsewhere

Author: Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher (Translator)

Narrator: Richmond Hoxie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-21-12

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 11 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The author initially intended to call this novel The Lyrical Age. The lyrical age, according to Kundera, is youth, and this novel, above all, is an epic of adolescence; an ironic epic that tenderly erodes sacrosanct values: childhood, motherhood, revolution, and even poetry. Jaromil is in fact a poet. His mother made him a poet and accompanies him (figuratively) to his love bed and (literally) to his deathbed. A ridiculous and touching character, horrifying and totally innocent ("innocence with its bloody smile!"), Jaromil is at the same time a true poet. He's no creep, he's Rimbaud - Rimbaud entrapped by the communist revolution, entrapped in a somber farce.

Members Reviews:

Left me feeling slightly bitter

I always find it difficult to endorse books that feature a protagonist I dislike. In Gunter Grass' 'The Tin Drum' Oskar almost drove me insane with his delusional egoism and pettiness. I couldn't stand him, and that had a big impact on my enjoyment-of and perception-of the novel.

Of course there is no reason why literature featuring flawed or dislikable characters can't still be excellent, but I have to flag my own bias here. How can I recommend a book whose characters I find more irritating than engaging or thought-provoking?

'Life Is Elsewhere' returned me to this difficult position. The book focuses primarily on a young poet, Jaromil, and his changing relationships to society, art and women (particularly his mother). In the beginning he is a potential poet-prodigy bursting with talent and enthusiasm. This Jaromil I grew quite fond of. He reminded me of a character Hermann Hesse might create.

But as the book progresses, Jaromil makes many questionable choices motivated by pettiness, jealousy and insecurity. He moves from the dream-like and aspirational world of the poet to the cruel, "real" world of power and politics. I won't reveal anything more on the book's arc other than to say that in the end Jaromil had become someone that I hated, and I found this transition dispiriting. (No doubt Kundera's intention.)

Kundera is at his best when he digresses from the plot to follow historical anecdotes or philosophical musings. His prose can flow beautifully, which render his ambitious pronouncements on the nature of humankind as intoxicating as they fantastic. Some of his observations of the dynamics between mother and son were brilliant.

This is an engaging and well-constructed novel that perhaps deserves four stars - but Jaromil's lapse into pettiness still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that pushes me towards three. What a shame there are no half-stars to be had. Still worth your time.

The "Anti-Lyrical Thesis" as a Novel of Ideas.

(Note that this review refers to an earlier translation of the novel)

This is a somewhat schematic work and not at all what it might appear to be to the casual reader. Superficially it is a fictional biography of a young man, an aspiring poet who is a contemporary of the author himself. The character is conceived (yes, we get a picture of his conception, or at least his mother's version of it, since he is the center of her existence, and everything about him is not only fascinating to her but must fall into the right place in the well-ordered design of his life which she creates), he is born, he lives a life of ambition and shame, he dies.

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Title: Farewell Waltz

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher (translator)

Narrator: Richmond Hoxie

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-21-12

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 16 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In this dark farce of a novel, set in an old-fashioned Central European spa town, eight characters are swept up in an accelerating dance: a pretty nurse and her repairman boyfriend; an oddball gynecologist; a rich American (at once saint and Don Juan); a popular trumpeter and his beautiful, obsessively jealous wife; an disillusioned former political prisoner about to leave his country and his young woman ward.

Perhaps the most brilliantly plotted and sheerly entertaining of Milan Kundera's novels, Farewell Waltz poses the most serious questions with a blasphemous lightness that makes us see that the modern world has deprived us even of the right to tragedy.

Written in Bohemia in 1969-70, this book was first published (in 1976) in France under the title La valse aux adieux (Farewell Waltz), and later in 34 other countries. This beautiful translation, made from the French text prepared by the novelist himself, fully reflects his own tone and intentions. As such, it offers an opportunity for both the discovery and the rediscovery of one of the very best of a great writer's works.

Members Reviews:

Morality and Mortality

This story is infuriating and unpleasant at times--few of the characters are likable, but the translation and prose are beautiful and the story wrestles with some dense moral issues.

Bleh

This book wasnt for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I haven't read Kundera in a long time, but I remember really loving his work. So perhaps when others said this wasn't a typical Kundera, I should have paid more attention. The story had just enough interesting reflections on life and love to keep me going, but I almost quit a few times. I feel like the reading was also a bit annoying, but it could be that it was simply a faithful rendering of a story I didn't enjoy that much.

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Title: The Bellwether Revivals

Author: Benjamin Wood

Narrator: Ralph Lister

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-28-12

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 12 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

An assistant at a nursing home, 20-year-old Oscar Lowe has made a life for himself amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge, and yet is a world apart from the privileged students who roam its grounds and study in the hallowed halls. By chance, he meets the wealthy, charismatic Bellwether siblings, Iris and Eden, after the otherworldly sounds of an organ entice him inside the chapel at Kings College.

Oscar falls in love with beautiful, quirky Iris, a medical student, and is drawn into her opulent world. He soon becomes entangled in the strange obsessions of her brilliant but emotionally troubled brother, Eden, who believes he can heal people with his music - and who will stop at nothing to prove himself right. Oscar and Iris devise a plan to determine just how dangerous Eden really is, but it might already be too late to keep him from his next treacherous move.

A masterful work of psychological suspense and emotional resonance sure to appeal to fans of Donna Tartt and Marisha Pessl, The Bellwether Revivals will hold listeners spellbound until its breathtaking conclusion.

Members Reviews:

Interesting

Interesting book. Kept you guessing what would happen next. Loved the characters.

Five Stars

great book!

A bit disappointing

Two problems: (1) The author leaves too many questions unanswered. (2) The author chose the wrong character to be the point of view character; he was too far removed from the central conflict of the story.

The Bellwether Revivals

Interesting book!

Took awhile to get into the story and then did not want to put it down - just had to see what was coming next.

Three Stars

It's okay for a first novel but doesn't seem to merit all the fanfare around it.

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Title: Basic Training

Author: Kurt Vonnegut

Narrator: Colin Hanks

Format: Unabridged

Length: 2 hrs and 10 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-19-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 58 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Written to be sold under the pseudonym of "Mark Harvey", this 20,000-word novella was never published in Vonneguts lifetime. It appears (from the address on the manuscript, a suburb of Schenectady, New York, and from the style and slant) to have been written in the late 1940s. Vonnegut was working at that time in public relations for General Electric and used pseudonyms to protect himself from the charge of moonlighting. He was trying to sell to the so-called slick magazines of the time, like The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers, while resisting the lure of science fiction - a tension throughout his professional career.

Basic Training is a bitter, profoundly disenchanted story that satirizes the military, authoritarianism, gender relationships, parenthood, and most of the assumed mid-century myths of the family. Haley Brandon, the adolescent protagonist, comes to the farm of his relative, the old crazy who insists upon being called The General, to learn to be a straight-shooting American. Haleys only means of survival will lead him to unflagging defiance of the Generals deranged (but oh so American, oh so military) values. This story and its thirtyish author were no friends of the milieu to which the slick magazines advertisers were pitching their products.

Another unexpected writers influence underlies this story: J.D. Salinger. Throughout the 40s and before his move to New York, Salinger had produced short stories whose confused or slightly deranged young protagonists (most of them around the age of Haley Brandon) stumbled through pre- and postwar Manhattan and military service, experiencing mild disaffection, alienation, and then terrible anger. All of them came to learn that the people who ran the show were as crazy and dangerous as those nominally on the other side. Shortly after these semi-whimsical social portraits were published, Salinger, like Vonnegut, was drafted, shipped into combat and involved in the Battle of the Bulge.

In this audio edition, performed for the first time by Colin Hanks (Band of Brothers, Orange County), exist not only Vonneguts influences and what later became his voice but Vonneguts grand themes: trust no one, trust nothing; the only constants are absurdity and resignation, which themselves cannot protect us from the void but might divert.

Critic Reviews:

"Kurt Vonnegut's posthumous books have proved as surprising and wonderful as almost anything he published while alive, and Basic Training is no exception." (Amazon.com review)

Members Reviews:

A Quaint Vonnegut Bildungsroman

A previously unpublished novella by Vonnegut. Basic Training is not nearly as absurdist or fanciful as his later novels. The plot/setting/characters are all structurally congruous and reasonable. Basic Training is basically a quaint bildungsroman that deals with issues of love, authoritarianism, family and heroism. It reminded me a lot of J.D. Salinger's and Carson McCuller's novellas, and wouldn't feel too overshadowed by those authors or out of place in the pages of Harpers, the New Yorker, or the Saturday Evening Post of the 1940s and 1950s.

Short Coming of Age Slice of Life

What did you love best about Basic Training?

My first Vonnegut. Slow start but well worth the patience.