Download the Best Full Audiobooks in Fiction, Literary

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Ecliptic

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Benjamin Wood

Narrator: Jane MacFarlane

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-03-16

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 6 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

From the award-winning author of The Bellwether Revivals comes a "gorgeous and harrowing work" (Emily St. John Mandel) set on a mysterious island where artists strive to recover their lost gifts - and where nothing is quite as it seems.

Situated on a Turkish island, Portmantle might be the strangest, most exclusive artists' colony around. Its brilliant residents linger for years, all expenses paid and living under assumed names. Relieved of the burdens of time and ego, they are free to create their next masterpieces.

Elspeth Conroy (aka "Knell") is a Scottish painter who has been at Portmantle for a decade, a refugee from the hectic London art scene. Her fellow longtimers include Quickman, whose sole book became a classic and paralyzed his muse; MacKinney, a playwright who left behind her family; and Pettifer, an architect obsessing over an unfinished cathedral.

In his astonishing second novel, Benjamin Wood gives us "an intensely intimate portrait of an artist as a young woman, with truths on every page" (Independent). The hermetic world at Portmantle shatters when the 17-year-old Fullerton arrives at the gates, his provenance and talents unknown. As Knell searches for answers, she reveals the path that led her to this place: her intimate bond with her gruff drunk of a mentor; her early successes and crushing failures; a journey across the Atlantic and into the psychiatrist's office; and a grand commission of astronomical significance.

What is "The Ecliptic", and how does it relate to the life Elspeth left behind? This gorgeous puzzle of a novel touches the head and the heart, and the effect is nothing short of electrifying.

Members Reviews:

I loved "The Bellwether Revivals" and have been anticipating this book ...

I loved "The Bellwether Revivals" and have been anticipating this book since I finished that one--and "The Ecliptic" does not disappoint. I was hooked from the first page--who are these people? Where are they and what are they doing there? The questions get slowly answered---or do they? The writing is wonderful and the characters are extraordinary. Anyone who has ever wondered what happened to that creative spark of youth will love this book.

Unfinished Symphony

Update: I have awarded another two stars. In the intervening weeks since I wrote my review I have found myself haunted by this book, it is a great work!

This novel has much to commend it. I can only liken it to watching a great work of art in progress. Great flourishing brush strokes flying across the canvas, intriguing forms taking shape only to recede into shadows. One is confused but drawn in to the masterpiece unfolding. Sadly, it would appear, that the artist is either bored or unable to complete the work; they take up a small sable brush, sign the work and leave the room.

The line between madness and creative genius

Fabulous follow-up novel by a new author. Original writing with a very intriguing premise.

Two Stars

Was just OK for me. Weird ending, I needed more .

Five Stars

A hypnotic, powerful read.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: My Struggle, Book 5

Author: Karl Ove Knausgaard

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Format: Unabridged

Length: 21 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-22-16

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 121 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The fifth book of Knausgaard's powerful My Struggle series is written with tremendous force and sincerity.

As a 19-year-old, Karl Ove moves to Bergen and invests all of himself in his writing. But his efforts get the opposite effect - he wants it so much that he gets writer's block. At the same time, he sees his friends, one-by-one, publish their debuts. He suspects that he will never get anything published.

Book Five is also a book about strong new friendships and a shattering love affair. Then one, day Karl Ove reaches two crucial points in his life: his father dies, and shortly thereafter, he completes his first novel.

Members Reviews:

the silence of the living...

"...the silence of the living is quite different from the silence of the dead"

- Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book 5

Book 5: Some Rain Must Fall

First, just a quick observation. I'm a little perplexed by the photo on the cover of the Archipelago English edition. Isn't that Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty? Wait. I've been there. How does a giant earthwork, counterclockwise coil shooting into the Great Salt Lake fit into this novel? Beautiful, certainly, but odd.

Ok, back to the novel. Back to Knausgaard's strange, boring, brilliant, spiraling, frustrating 5th book in his 6 book übernovel. In many ways, it is fairly standard Künstlerroman. A young artist is trying to find his voice, to mark his own path, to open his eyes, open his mouth, find that literary rhythm. The amazing thing is after 5 books, I still care about Knausgaard, even after he has exposed, again and again, an often irritating and destructive side. I'm not sure if my affection is because he resembles in some ways my own brother, or because there is something warm and attractive about his strange sense of brutal honesty (as brutally honest as a fictional biography can get). I'm not sure being his brother or mother would be a job I'd volunteer for. He is fairly aware of his indulgent side, but this is one guy you might want to remove sharp items from once he starts to drink.

In the novel I was most interested in his relationship with family and his relationship with women (oh, and the scenes at the clinic are amazingly strange). I think the technique he uses to explore these relationships can be described as an inversion. What is inside of Knausgaard gets put outside. Things most rational and sane people would not expose to the world, he exposes. At the same time he chews inwardly on the outside. He brings in as almost an emotional experience the water, the weather, the cold, the ground, birds, geography. Knausgaard describes this fascination after he writes a poem:

Two leather chairs

in the wind

noise from a town

You have left.

The girl disappears

into the girl.

He follows the poem with a line that perhaps hints at some of his larger themes, "ever since I was small I had been fascinated by the relationship between the inside and the outside, when what was supposed to be inside was outside, and vice versa." Knausgaard struggles throughout most of this book to find his voice between the inside and the outside. He literally struggles with friends and family and other writers to speak. He struggles to write. He wants to write literature buy seems destined to write nonfiction. Insecurities, distractions, women, school, and his own competitiveness seem to constantly pull at his desire to be a writer.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Go-Between

Author: L.P. Hartley

Narrator: Sean Barrett

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-15-16

Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 15 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

Haunting, moving, evocative, The Go-Between is L. P. Hartley's heartbreaking novel about social constraints and childhood innocence.

During the long, hot summer of 1900, young Leo Colston is invited to stay for a month at a lordly, aristocratic manor in Norfolk. There he falls in love with his friend's older sister, who commissions him to ferry secret messages to the local farmer, her lover. His naiveté sustains their affair until ultimately leading to an event that will change their lives irrevocably.

Members Reviews:

Great walk back in time.

Would you listen to The Go-Between again? Why?

This story keep me listening! Was get story!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Leo

What about Sean Barretts performance did you like?

Brought each character alive!

If you could take any character from The Go-Between out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Leo

Any additional comments?

I love listening to this story!!!

Superb evocative reading

Sean Barret's quiet understated delivery is perfect for the emotionally damaged Leo Colston and the supporting cast of characters

Stunning

Having vaguely heard of this book for many years, but confused about why a story about a boy passing letters could be so lauded, I took the plunge and started listened. Even from the opening chapter it is incredibly engaging - the old Leo looking back on 1900 the way we may look back on 1950. It's a tale of the end of innocence and entry into adulthood. A boy encountering his masculine potentials through Ted and Hugh. Adults using children for their own ends. The themes are powerful - class, magic vs fact, ability to determine our own fate. A brilliant listen, superbly narrated.

A book to be enjoyed time and again.

An enthralling many-faceted story of a young boy caught up in a passionate, clandestine love-affair: the year is 1900. His unsuspecting role as a go-between is vital to the mismatched lovers, who would be social outcasts if discovered. But as he slowly becomes aware of what is really going on and tries to extricate himself, events spin out of control and there is an unexpectedly dramatic outcome for all concerned. The ending is upbeat and well managed.

This book made Hartley famous. Wonderfully well written and constructed, it deserves close listening - each word counts. Feelings and emotions on every level are discussed in such a way that the reader feels them too: this is a sensitive author whose story is compelling, and beautifully read by Sean Barrett in this recording.

The film with Julie Christie playing the lead, is distressingly shallow and unremarkable. The book deserves better: it is monumental.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: As Close to Us as Breathing

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Elizabeth Poliner

Narrator: Janet Metzger

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-29-16

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 193 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A multigenerational family saga about the long-lasting reverberations of one tragic summer by "a wonderful talent [who] should be read widely" (Edward P. Jones).

In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut, shoreline, affectionately named Bagel Beach, has long been a summer destination for Jewish families. Here sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in tow and weekend-only husbands who arrive each Friday in time for the Sabbath meal.

During the weekdays, freedom reigns. Ada, the family beauty, relaxes and grows more playful, unimpeded by her rule-driven, religious husband. Vivie, once terribly wronged by her sister, is now the family diplomat and an increasingly inventive chef. Unmarried Bec finds herself forced to choose between the family-centric life she's always known and a passion-filled life with the married man with whom she's had a secret years-long affair.

But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters' watch, a summer of hope and self-discovery transforms into a lifetime of atonement and loss for members of this close-knit clan. Seen through the eyes of Molly, who was 12 years old when she witnessed the accident, this is the story of a tragedy and its aftermath, of expanding lives painfully collapsed. Can Molly, decades after the event, draw from her aunt Bec's hard-won wisdom and free herself from the burden that destroyed so many others?

Elizabeth Poliner is a masterful storyteller, a brilliant observer of human nature, and in As Close to Us as Breathing she has created an unforgettable meditation on grief, guilt, and the boundaries of identity and love.

Critic Reviews:

"What a lovely, lovely book." (Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge)

"Vivid, complex, and beautifully written, Elizabeth Poliner's novel, As Close to Us as Breathing, brims with characters who leave an indelible impression on the mind and heart. This moving story of the way one unforgettable family struggles with love and loss shows an uncommon depth of human understanding. Elizabeth Poliner is a wonderful talent and she should be read widely, and again and again." (Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World)

"Poliner depicts each character with sensitivity and insight.... Beautifully written, stringently unsentimental, and yet tender in its empathy for the perennial human conflict between service and self." (Kirkus)

Members Reviews:

Multigenerational Family Saga

I just finished listening to Linda Lavin reading a Selected Shorts short story and she was excellent. When I started this book I was let down by the huge difference in Metzger's reading when I compared it to the other narration done by Lavin. Through the first half of the listen I couldn't stop wishing that they had chosen a different narrator. In the end I thought that Metzger did an acceptable job--not great--just ok. I think the book would have been so much brighter and dynamic with a more animated reader.

I enjoyed this story of a large multigenerational family who worked together at the family department store and summered together at their cottage on Bagel Beach. The writing showed slices of life through different character perspectives using the voice of one daughter--Molly. Poliner really captured each character and their inner experience subtly.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Madwoman Upstairs

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Catherine Lowell

Narrator: Katie Koster

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-01-16

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 320 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In Catherine Lowell's smart and original debut novel, the only remaining descendant of the Brontë family embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family's long-rumored secret estate, using only the clues her eccentric father left behind and the Brontës' own novels.

Samantha Whipple is used to stirring up speculation wherever she goes. Since her father's untimely death, she is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts passed down from the Brontë family - a hidden fortune never revealed to anyone outside the family but endlessly speculated on by Brontë scholars and fanatics. Samantha, however, has never seen this alleged estate, and for all she knows, it's just as fictional as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.

Yet everything changes when Samantha enrolls at Oxford University and long-lost objects from the past begin rematerializing in her life. Her father's distinctive copy of Jane Eyre, which should have perished in the fire that claimed his life, mysteriously appears on Samantha's bed. Annotated in her father's handwriting, the book is the first of many clues in an elaborate scavenger hunt derived from the world's greatest literature. With the help of a handsome but inscrutable professor, Samantha must plunge into a vast literary mystery and an untold family legacy - one that can be solved only by decoding the clues hidden within the Brontës' own writing.

For listeners who devoured The Weird Sisters and Special Topics in Calamity Physics, The Madwoman Upstairs is a suspenseful, exhilarating debut by an exciting new talent who offers a moving exploration of what it means when the greatest truth is, in fact, fiction.

Critic Reviews:

"Koster's impressive emotional range captures Samantha's complex personality. She flawlessly portrays the girl's cheekiness as a cover for embarrassment and insecurity and perfectly captures her other emotions... Using an expressive, relaxed style, Koster connects listeners to the fun of Samantha's adventures." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

Marvelous

Intelligent, witty, charming, thought provoking. Ms. Lowell's courage in taking on the Brontes was worth it. Wonderful character development. Samantha's outlook on life, literature, family and herself made me laugh out loud.

Inspirational

This book has made me want to read more and read everything. I wish I had the time.

Yyyyyyyeeeeeesssss!

I got this book because I thought the story sounded interesting and I was willing to take a chance in it, fully prepared to be utterly disappointed. I. Was. Not. This is a charming story full of memorable characters and a somewhat lighthearted mystery. It was well-written (despite some odd Anglo-Ameri phrase discrepancies (although told from the perspective of an American, some of the phrases she uses are very English so I was a little confused by the author's choices there), and well-performed. There were one or two atrociously mispronounced words but nothing that really rendered the book unlistenable. I would recommend this book to almost anyone.

Interesting and intriguing

This is not a type of book I usually read (listen to) but it sounded interesting and did not disappoint!!

An entitled brat with a good story

The story line is good maybe even great. You want to know the answers to the puzzle.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Doubter's Almanac

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Ethan Canin

Narrator: David Aaron Baker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-16-16

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 190 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of Northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at UC Berkeley, he realizes the extent - and the risks - of his singular gifts.

California in the '70s is a seduction, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there - and the rival he meets alongside her - will haunt him for the rest of his life. For Milo's brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence.

Critic Reviews:

"David Aaron Baker's delivery of this outstanding novel is a tour de force of the narrator's art.... Baker gives each family member a distinct voice and memorably acts out a violent scene with such restraint that the listener imagines himself in the room. The repartee between the gravelly voiced aging father and the brainy son is skillfully portrayed. Be it the subtle musings of an Egyptian doctor or the fast-clipped banter of Milo's lifelong rival, Baker masterfully turns this complex story into a mesmerizing modern tale." (AudioFile)

Members Reviews:

The curse of genius?

A superb story told in elegant prose, the first half of The Doubter's Almanac is the story of Milo Andret, who grows up in the 1950s in Michigan. Hes a loner and average student, although he always knows exactly where he is on the plane of the earth, an ability that will purportedly serve him well in the field of topology (geometric properties and spatial relations). He is confused by the domain of human relations, and can neither predict nor understand the behavior of others, so he concludes that hes entirely alone in the world. This axiom shapes his whole life. After working as a car mechanic, he eventually ends up in grad. school at Berkeley. He meets a girl named Cle, and with her discovers sex, alcohol, and LSD. Milo is old for a mathematician (they allegedly do their best work prior to age 40), and the sex, drugs, and alcohol seem to allay his fears and frustrations. Milo does go on to solve the fictional Malosz conjecture, win the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize equivalent in mathematics), and become a professor at Princeton University.

There is an interesting incident in Milo's childhood that figures repeatedly in the story. When he is roaming the forests where he can always place himself, he finds a blown-down tree. Working by himself for weeks, he carves the stump into a 25-foot-long continuous, seamless wooden chain. Its a beautiful thing, described so well by the author that I could easily picture it and want to possess one just like it. Milo does not readily share the chain with others, but it's a project closely linked to his future work and an interesting symbol.

The second part of the book is narrated by Milos son Hans, who chronicles exactly how horrible a person Milo really is a nasty, drunken womanizer who alternately curses and ignores his family and demeans his colleagues, all without shame or apology. He seems to believe that the curse of his own genius entitles him to behave this way, but there will be a high price to pay. He has become a nowhere dense set a set whose closure has empty interior. This second part also describes the ongoing struggle between Milo and his son.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: The Man Without a Shadow

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Narrator: Susan Hanfield

Format: Unabridged

Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-19-16

Publisher: HarperAudio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 45 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

In this taut and fascinating novel, the New York Times best-selling and National Book Award-winning author of The Sacrifice, The Accursed, and Lovely, Dark, Deep examines the mysteries of memory, personality, and identity and pierces the enigmatic force that drives human lives - love.

In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets the attractive, charismatic Elihu Hoopes - the "man without a shadow" - whose devastated memory, unable to store new experiences or to retrieve the old, will make him the most famous and most studied amnesiac in history. Over the course of the next 30 years, Margot herself becomes famous for her experiments with E. H. - and inadvertently falls in love with him, despite the ethical ambiguity of their affair and though he remains forever elusive and mysterious to her, haunted by mysteries of the past.

The Man Without a Shadow tracks the intimate, illicit relationship between Margot and Eli as scientist and subject embark upon an exploration of the labyrinthine mysteries of the human brain. Where does "memory" reside? Where is "love"? Is it possible to love an individual who cannot love you, who cannot "remember" you from one meeting to the next?

Made vivid by her exceptional eye for detail and her keen insight into the human psyche, The Man Without A Shadow is a unique story of forbidden love, a kind of secret, evolving marriage, depicted in Joyce Carol Oates' tight, impassioned prose. It is an uncanny, ambitious, and structurally complex novel that penetrates the mind and illuminates the heart.

Members Reviews:

Awful

As a fan of Oates I am sorely disappointed and miserable having read this book. It is boring, repetitive and a ridiculous story wth shallow characters. But Oates has been writing strange books lately.

don't know why I listened after first chapter

pathetic characters, no redemptive value, hated story, recommended for people who like wallowing in dysfunction

Great story.

Loved it. Listened to it over three days.

My favorite part of the story was the learning of the selfish aspect of love, even at its most compassionate.

The narrator has a great voice, sometimes conjuring up memories of Tippi Hedren; She read the story with proper emotion and it felt like she had a complete grasp on what the story was about (whether she did or not is not the point, the talent is in sounding like she did.)

Interesting story

I love the writing of Joyce Carol Oates. And that is one reason why I got this book. I was also fascinated by this subject matter. Eli Hoops he has severe amnesia where he cannot remember anything or anyone longer than 70 seconds. However he can remember everything that happened before the accident that gave him amnesia. This book is an interesting investigation of the realm between fantasy and reality which lies someplace between memory and expectation. If you love Joyce Carol Oates I highly recommend this book.

Third Person POV

This type of story in third person was hard to follow and it was difficult to connect with any of the characters (ended up not caring for any of the main characters). Maybe reading it on paper would have provided a better experience but this is definitely not a story meant for audiobook.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Beauty Is a Wound

Author: Eka Kurniawan

Narrator: Jonathan Davis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-05-16

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 165 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

The English-language debut of Indonesia's rising star. The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony.

The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists", followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.

Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: "One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for 21 years...." Drawing on local sources - folktales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope - and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

Members Reviews:

Like nothing I've read (heard) before

While this is most certainly a graphic book and explores in at some times crude terms the facets of love and desire, there is so much going on that I will need to listen to it a second time to pick up everything the author is saying. One of my new favorites!

Enthralling

This was an audiobook. What a great story weaver the author is! I would highly recommend.

Beauty is apparently a wound

Very interesting storyline which wandered greatly throughout the story, but did finally bring itself to a culmination of all the stories. I really enjoyed this book and the tales it told. Very well worth a read

Perfect balance of humour and sadness

I enjoyed this audio book, though not sure I would have finished if it were not for the narrators entertaining depiction of characters and story.

Like One Hundred Years of Solitude & Animal Farm

If you enjoy allegorical tales; yearn to learn and think as you read without being overly challenged; delight in discovering (or trying to) the metaphorical meaning of actions, characters and things within a story; and/or relished "Animal Farm" and/or "One Hundred Years of Solitude,"

You should definitely read this novel which reflects and criticizes the turbulent history of the world's 4th most populous country Indonesia, a country of more than 14,000 islands and of terrible tsunamis. Indonesia's native citizens suffered under three and a half centuries of Dutch rule, Japanese occupation for 3 years during WWII, the mass slaughter of possibly a million citizens after the failed Communist coup in 1965, followed by the despotic rule of Suharto for 3 decades.

Kurniawan tells this tempestuous history by the epic story, by turns ridiculous, magical and hilarious but always captivating, of Dewi Ayu, the 3/4 Dutch and 1/4 Malaysian girl forced into prostitution in her late teens upon Japanese occupation, her four daughters (each with different fathers), their lovers and husbands, Dewi Ayu's 3 grandchildren, and the village of Halimundo, which is very reminiscent of the village of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Beatlebone

Author: Kevin Barry

Narrator: Kevin Barry

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-17-15

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 50 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

A searing, surreal novel that bleeds fantasy and reality - and Beatles fandom - from one of literature's most striking contemporary voices, author of the international sensation City of Bohane.

It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching 40s, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.

Members Reviews:

The story didn't do it for me

I just couldn't get into the narrative. Perhaps , I was missing out on the John Lennon experience.

The reader, however, was excellent.

Nooooo way

I thought I'd try this out before waiting for others ratings as I'm a big Beatles fan. Especially Lennon. But the narrator speaks in whispers like Batman and the writing feels like some rambling psychedelic rant that waa cut from Sgt Peppers. I couldn't get through another second of this. Thankful for platinum membership benefits. Going straight to RETURN.

Someone's trying WAY too hard. to be edgy and cooll.

Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Numero Zero

Author: Umberto Eco

Narrator: David Colacci

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-03-15

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 73 votes

Genres: Fiction, Literary

Publisher's Summary:

Numero Zero is the feverish and delightfully readable tale of a ghostwriter in Milan whose work pulls him into an underworld of media politics and murderous conspiracies (involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double, naturally). This novel is vintage Eco - corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories - and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones.

Members Reviews:

Numero NADA!

"Suspicions never go too far. Suspect, always, suspect, that's the only way you get to the truth. Isn't that what science says?"

-- Umberto Eco

I'm not sure what it is about aging, but some of my favorite writers DeLillo, Roth, and Eco produce absolutely sh!t novellas in their later years. Delillo seems to have hit his high mark with 'Underworld'. Philip Roth with 'The Plot Against America'. The minor books these greats wrote in their later years (Roth's entire Nemesis series, for example) just seem like the apathetic efforts of grumpy old men who don't know how to NOT write, but actually seem fairly uninterested in the processes now. It bores them, and thus it bores us too.

And let me just say that when writing a book of less than 200 pages, all future authors take note, PLEASE don't use the term 'danse macabre' more than once unless you are writing ON the medieval genre or allegory or personification of death. Seriously, where was the editor?

OK, to walk back my review, just a bit. There were a few interesting sections of this novella. The Mussolini/Vatican/Gladio/Stay-Behind conspiracy WAS interesting. Also, Eco's critique of journalism was pretty d@mn sharp. Just not sharp and interesting enough to make this anything more than a G-chord (muted middle finger) of a novel. But I would argue you get better writing and a more interesting story from the French Flaps on either Foucault's Pendulum or The Name of the Rose than you get from the entire Numero Nada.

The book Eco shouldnt have written

Late un life, Umberto Eco turned out some good books, The Prague Cemetery among them. He should have stopped there. This, his last novel, is a disaster.

the final act of the maestro...a short conspiracy

we have a short conspiracy for those who can't get enough of Umberto Eco and his intelligently impotent characters. the cards are stacked against the little guys and echoes little guys are the only ones who stumbled on that truth.

Eco Ultra-Lite

Just notice the length of this book and you know it cant be a typical Eco novel. If youve read Foucaults Pendulum, just imagine taking that book, swapping out the occult for a few largely Italy-specific political conspiracies, and scaling it way down (its about 1/4th the size and scope). Eco even recycles jokes from FP (e.g. I love you even though youre stupid, and knowing German means never graduating). It reminds me of Pynchons Crying of Lot 49, being the authors shortest and (alas) weakest work. But still enjoyable, minute for minute I rank it higher than the latest Lee Child (for example, and not that that was bad at all), hence the top rating Im giving it.

The reader did an excellent job.

An excellent novel and an excellent narrator

I love all Eco's novels, and it is good that he was able to publish just one more before he passed away. May god bless his soul.