Get Best Audiobooks in Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

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 Life and Creativity of Anton Chekhov

Author: July Ihenvald

Narrator: Victoriya Serebryanskaya

Format: Abridged

Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-25-12

Publisher: Agentstvo, Ltd.

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

A biography of Russian physician, dramatist, and author Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), best known for his critically acclaimed short stories. Included is the famous work of outstanding scholar of Russian literature July Ihenvald (1872-1928).

Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

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 Life and Creativity of Alexander Pushkin

Author: Marina Tsvetaeva

Narrator: Tamara Smarzhevskaya

Format: Abridged

Length: 1 hr and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-25-12

Publisher: Agentstvo, Ltd.

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

A biography of Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837), who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Included is a brilliant work of the great Russian poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, "My Pushkin".

Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

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: Poe

Author: James M. Hutchisson

Narrator: Aaron Henkin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-15-12

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 9 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American original - a luminous literary theorist, an erratic genius, and an analyst par excellence of human obsession and compulsion. The scope of his literary achievements and the dramatic character of Poe's life have drawn readers and critics to him in droves.

And yet, upon his death, one obituary penned by a literary enemy in the New York Daily Tribune cascaded into a lasting stain on Poe's character, leaving a historic misunderstanding. Many remember Poe as a difficult, self-pitying, troubled drunkard, often incapable of caring for himself.

Poe reclaims the Baltimore and Virginia writer's reputation and power, retracing Poe's life and career. Biographer and critic James M. Hutchisson captures the boisterous worlds of literary New York and Philadelphia in the 1800s to understand why Poe wrote the way he did and why his achievement was so important to American literature. The biography presents a critical overview of Poe's major works and his main themes, techniques, and imaginative preoccupations.

This portrait of the writer emphasizes Poe's southern identity; his existence as a workaday journalist in the burgeoning magazine era; his authority as a literary critic and cultural arbiter; his courtly demeanor and sense of social propriety; his advocacy of women writers; his adaptation of art forms as diverse as the so-called "gutter press" and the haunting rhythms of African American spirituals; his borrowing of imagery from such popular social movements as temperance and freemasonry; and his far-reaching, posthumous influence.

James M. Hutchisson, Charleston, South Carolina, is a professor of American literature and southern studies at The Citadel.

Critic Reviews:

"The new biography, Poe, by James M. Hutchisson, is to be admired." (Boston Globe)

"Hutchisson provides a fresh reading that will not soon be surpassed. Highly recommended." (Library Journal)

Members Reviews:

Good addition to Poe analysis

A good view of Poe, from a slightly different perspective than other previous biographies. This one focuses more on Poe's relations with others, particularly his family and close associates (of which there were few). It highlights his difficult personality which ruined several potentially favorable situations, claiming that he had a self-destructive personality that precluded success. It looks at his drinking problem realistically, and delves more in depth into the mystery of his death than many other biographies, leading to some interesting speculations.

Four Stars

I was completely satisfied with my purchase. Thank you.

"POE"

I've just finished reading James M. Hutchisson's biography entitled "POE."

Naturally, there were numerous exciting tidbits and facts about Poe that Hutchisson gives to the reader. Many of these things were truly interesting to me, especially for someone who is not as familiar with his personal life as many students of literature probably are. After all, his relationship and marriage to his 13 year old cousin, Virginia would raise the eye brow of any reader!

Hutchisson has a way of performing an in-depth psychological autospy of Poe using his sharp literary scalpel.

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: Giving Up the Ghost

Subtitle: A Memoir

Author: Hilary Mantel

Narrator: Jane Wymark

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-01-12

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Opening with "A Second Home", in which Mantel describes the death of her stepfather, Giving Up the Ghost is a wry, shocking, and beautifully written memoir of childhood, ghosts (real and metaphorical), illness, and family. Finally, at the memoir's conclusion, Mantel explains how a series of medical misunderstandings and neglect left her childless, and how the ghosts of the unborn have come to haunt her life as a writer.

Members Reviews:

Her Grief Observed

What made the experience of listening to Giving Up the Ghost the most enjoyable?

The anecdotes from the life of Hilary Mantel that are then reflected upon by the author and placed into the context of her whole life. It is a complex book, but there is a simplicity about it that is very graceful.

What other book might you compare Giving Up the Ghost to and why?

Clearly, by my plagiarism of his title, C S Lewis' book, ' a Grief Observed'. Although Lewis is writing about the death of his wife, and his responses to it; and Mantel is writing about her never-born child, to me they are very synchronistic in their integrity and openness.

I did not think either wrote of raw pain, but rather of observed pain. They were able to experience and then describe an internal feeling.

Have you listened to any of Jane Wymarks other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I have watched innumerable 'Midsomer Murders' though.

In this book, I found her voice sympathetic and expressive. It told the story without being in any way obtrusive to it.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I do not think this could be made into a film. It is too intimate and inward looking. The actual story of the author's life is not remarkable and would not really make for good watching.

What is remarkable is how Hilary Mantel focusses on her emotional responses to the events of her life - and that is something that can only be presented in words, not pictures.

Any additional comments?

The book is complex and rewarding. It is short and beautifully crafted.

I think it speaks to all of us, as each one of us has had a deep loss at sometime in our lives.

It is important to say that such a complex book will not satisfy in a single listening/reading. There is too much in it to take in. However given its brevity it is easy to listen to a 2nd and even a 3rd time with as much interest in it as was there the 1st time.

slow start, wonderful middle and end.

For the first part of this book I had two very strong opinions - I was impressed by how beautifully it is written, but even the best writer must have something interesting to say and I just wasn't grabbed by any of the anecdotes and incidents from Hilary's childhood. But by the time she started university I was captivated, and her experiences with the medical profession are heart-breaking and recounted with such honesty I was fascinated and felt very privileged to be witness to everything she had gone through. The middle and end made up for the beginning so, overall I'm very glad I stayed with it.

Acerbic but nice

What did you like most about Giving Up the Ghost?

The author's fiercely loud and beautiful use of words.

Escuche este audio libro completo gratis en https://hotaudiobook.com

Título: El Siglo de Oro: La Mistica [The Golden Age: The Mystic]

Autor: Frank Rivera, Fr. Luis de Granada, Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz

Narrador: Graciela Lecube, Frank Rivera

Formato: Unabridged

Duración: 1 hr and 43 mins

Idioma: Español

Fecha de publicación: 04-24-12

Editor: Coral Communications Group, LLC

Calificaciones: 4 de 5 de 3 votos

Categorías: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Resumen del editor:

La Mistica is a collection of the life and works of a sampling of "Mystical" writers from Spain's literary Golden Age. This audiobook includes biographies and selections of Fray Luis de Granada, Santa Teresa, and San Juan de la Cruz. Great for home, library and schools.

Escritores místicos del Siglo de Oro español. Incluye reseñas biográficas y selecciones de Luis de Granada, Santa Teresa, San Juan de la Cruz y otros. Para uso particular y para bibliotecas públicas, escolares y universitarias.

Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.

Opiniones de los miembros:

A short examination of Spain's mystical poets

A very brief examination of the best of Spain's XVI century mystical poets. Very well executed readings. I would have liked more examples of the mystical poetry.

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: Roughneck

Author: Jim Thompson

Narrator: Bob Walter

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins

Language: English

Release date: 03-01-12

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

By the time Jim Thompson was 16 years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel, and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was 18, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive.

A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, Roughneck chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir - or wildly entertaining tall tale - as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good.

Members Reviews:

Autobiographical tall tales.

Like its companion piece, Bad Boy, Roughneck is a collection of autobiographical vignettes by the legendary Jim Thompson. While each vignette may contain a kernel of truth, most of them are highly embellished and exaggerated so as to maximize the comedic or, on occasion, the dramatic effect.

Like Bad Boy, Roughneck was largely written to provide the reader with light entertainment. The one place Thompson does get quite serious is where he describes his tenure as director of the Oklahoma state writer's project, a federally funded Depression era program. Here, Thompson's pride in his work comes through and is undeniably real.

But the truth of the matter is that Jim Thompson was ill suited to write autobiography. The things he needed to say about himself can be found within the dark, disturbing pages of his many novels, some of which are now recognized as classics. For the real story of Jim Thompson's life, read Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito.

How to become an author

This is an autobiographical account of Jim Thompson's life (obviously embellished)from sometime in his 20s up to his later 30s when he arrived in New York City and managed to get a novel accepted by a publisher. He survived a lot, including the Great Depression. He took whatever jobs he could find (some of the accounts are funny) and sometimes was paid for writing. He had to deal with family responsibilities, con artists, deadbeats, bosses hard to work for, and various ventures that did not pan out. He also went through various injuries, illnesses, and alcoholism. Somehow he made it.

It has always been hard to earn a living as a writer. Some are successful, but most are not (the same could be said for musicians and artists - keep your day job). The book is worth reading. It provides a look at an era in the history of the United States. Prices were cheap, but who had any money. You could buy a lot for 25 cents, if you happened to have 25 cents.

Stretching the truth a lot but enjoyable

Jim Thompson was a one of a kind writer who could write the absolute worst chapters one could dream of followed by tremendous passages of work.

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: Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

Author: Simon Callow

Narrator: Simon Callow

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-07-12

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

A short life of Dickens which celebrates the impact of the theatre on his life and work. Two hundred years after his death, Dickenss work is more popular than ever, in a variety of media, most of them undreamed of during his lifetime. Over the last few decades of intensive research, Dickens the man has become much better known to us and the sheer originality of his personality blazes forth as never before. Unique in so many ways, he is certainly the only major novelist perhaps the only novelist ever to have been a compelling performer in his own right, playing to spellbound audiences of up to four thousand all over the English-speaking world.

Theatre was central to his life, from his earliest years as a child entertainer in Portsmouth pubs, to his reluctant retirement from these garish lights barely a year before his death. He wrote plays, he acted in them; he stage-managed them, all with fanatical perfectionism. Dickenss novels are famously filled with unforgettable descriptions of performers, from Sleary and his troupe in Hard Times to the Infant Phenomenon and the rest of the glorious Crummleses in Nicholas Nickleby.

As a writer, he was a compulsive performer. His very imagination was theatrical, his method that of the stage, both in terms of plot devices and construction of character. There is in his writing a palpable sense of him reaching out to his readers, his public, courting their favour, speaking on their behalf, stirring them, building their applause. Simon Callow explores this extraordinary theatrical core to Dickens in this short life of one of our greatest novelists.

Members Reviews:

Amazing Biography of Charles Dickens by Simon Callow

Perhaps no one alive today has done more to shine a light on Charles Dickens, the man and his works, than Simon Callow. Callow has achieved a delightful and compelling biography.

Callow himself performs one-man shows of Dickens life, along with adaptations of selected novel scenes for the stage. This is appropriate because Dickens often thrilled audiences by acting out scenes from his novels when his public readings burst into dramatic performances. Callow carries on the tradition, becoming much more than a scholarly biographer, but a dramatic virtuoso who breathes new life into the 19th-century author and his creative genius.

Dickens wrote from life. The statement has become a cliché, but no one can say it more truly than Dickens. Callow does a marvelous job mapping the biographical facts with characters and scenes in the novels. Even Dickensâ famous detailed descriptions of quaint shops and other charming nooks of 19th-century Londonâthey derived from intentional explorations of hundreds and hundreds of those shops with the express purpose of describing them later.

One of Dickensâ favorite pastimes was to walk London streets for miles and miles, hours on end, every day, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone. He also haunted theaters and tried his hand at acting early in life. He was conversant with stage life and made use of that knowledge in his stories as well. Also notably, Dickensâ depictions of child labor came from his own consignment to forced child labor in a blacking factory.

Many of Dickensâ contemporaries recognized themselves and each other in the novels. Several of the novelsâ lawyers, proctors, courts, and even specific court cases were lifted straight from the real thing.

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: Min amerikanske drm

Author: Martin Krasnik

Narrator: Martin Krasnik

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-05-12

Publisher: ArtPeople

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 5 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Efter succesen med bestselleren De retfrdige - en islamisk stafet er Martin Krasnik draget p opdagelsesrejse i USA for at genfinde den amerikanske drm, som ogs er hans egen. Og hele verdens. De amerikanske forfattere er de bedste drmmetydere, og derfor opsger han de allerstrste af dem. Med sin egen personlige bagage af lngsel efter bermmelse og anerkendelse, kampen mod depression og en alvorlig sygdom og ikke mindst en intens interesse for politik, magt, kvinder og sex tegner Martin Krasnik et billede af landet, hvor menneskets strben, drifter og laster trder klarere frem end noget andet sted p kloden.

Please note: This audiobook is in Danish.

Members Reviews:

Jeg er i tvivl om, hvad jeg synes.

Would you listen to Min amerikanske drm again? Why?

Probably no. There is so many books here that I would also like to read.

Any additional comments?

En samling af gode historier om forskellige amerikanske personligheder.

Martin Krasnik er en virkelig god fortller og har en levende stemme til oplsning. Jeg kunne lide bogen, men kan ikke helt sige, hvorfor.

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: Book of Souls

Author: Jack Ketchum

Narrator: Thomas M. Hatting

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 35 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-07-11

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Ratings: 2.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

In this intimate glimpse into the heart of his own creative spirit, Jack Ketchum shares his early career, literary influences, and some of the characters that formed the man he has become. From his early respect and admiration for Henry Miller to the tortured lives of friends, and the aftermath of 9/11 - these are the stories that define a career. This is the kind of book that opens windows into the soul. Step up and take a look.

Critic Reviews:

"Who's the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum" (Stephen King)

Members Reviews:

was hard to follow

I am unsure what all was going on . Just kind of went back and forth and hard to follow. I would not recommend this title. But i will try one of his other storys and see if its better

The narrator was borning and just no emotion

rubbish

This is the worst book ive ever listened to. There was no story no point to it what so ever. I love his books normally but he must have been having a off day when he wrote this I couldn't get into it at all.

Listen to this audiobook free with a 30-day trial. Go to http://hotaudiobook.com/free

Title: One and Only

Subtitle: The Untold Story of On the Road

Author: Gerald Nicosia, Anne Marie Santos

Narrator: Vanessa Hart, Stephen Bowlby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-06-11

Publisher: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Lu Anne Henderson was a beautiful 15-year-old girl in Denver in 1945 when she met Neal Cassady, a fast-talking hurricane of male sexuality and vast promises. The two married, and soon they were hanging out with a group of young would-be writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. But Neal and Jack initially didnt like each other very much. Lu Anne ended up loving them both, and she taught them how to love each other - in effect, making the Beat Generation possible, as well as giving Kerouac material for one of the seminal novels of the 20th century, On the Road. One and Only traces the immense struggles of Lu Annes own life, which ranged from the split-up of her family during the Great Depression, to the ravages of abusive men and the grief of losing the two most important men in her life; and shows how her life intertwined with Jacks and Neals to the very end.

Critic Reviews:

A real find for Beat aficionados, adding verve to a cherished moment in American history and the novel that came to define it. (Kirkus Reviews)

Contact me for any questions: [email protected]