New Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/691835 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Rental Person Who Does Nothing: The True Adventures of Japan''s Do-Nothing Rental Person Author: Shoji Morimoto Narrator: Kevin Shen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 35 minutes Release date: January 9, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: ***Now an International Bestseller!*** "Distinctively Japanese musings on meaning and connection."—Observer I'm starting a service... available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there. Maybe there's a restaurant you want to go to, but you feel awkward going on your own. Maybe a game you want to play, but you're one person short. Or perhaps you'd like someone to keep a space in the park for your cherry blossom viewing party... Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told by his boss, "It makes no difference whether you’re here or not," and that his presence contributed nothing to the company. Morimoto began to wonder whether a person who "does nothing" could still have actual value and a place in the world. Perhaps he could turn "doing nothing" into a service? With one tweet, Rental Person was born. Rental Person provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. This book details thousands of his true-life adventures: - Accompanying a divorcee to her favorite restaurant - Waving goodbye to a client from the train platform - Sitting in the courtroom during a client’s trial - Supporting a client during a difficult surgery Rental Person is dependable, nonjudgmental and committed to remaining a stranger, and the curious encounters he shares are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology. In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/682215 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life Author: Matt Hay Narrator: Matt Hay Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 58 minutes Release date: January 9, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: This program is read by the author. An inspiring memoir of a young man who discovered he was going completely deaf just at the moment he’d fallen in love for the first time. As a child, Matt Hay didn’t know his hearing wasn’t the way everyone else processed sound—because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn’t catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn’t pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay’s condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast. A personal soundtrack was Hay’s determined compensation for his condition. As a typical Midwestern kid growing up in the 1980s whose life events were pegged to pop music, Hay planned to commit his favorite songs to memory. He prepared a mental playlist of the bands he loved and created a way to tap into his most resonant memories. And the track he needed to cement most clearly? The one he and his new girlfriend, Nora—the love of his life—listened to in the car on their first date. Made vivid with references to instantly recognizable songs—from the Eagles to Elton John, Bob Marley to Bing Crosby, U2 to Peter Frampton—Soundtrack of Silence asks listeners to run the soundtrack of their own lives through their minds. It’s an involving memoir of loss and disability, and, ultimately, a both unique and universal love story. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/684395 to listen full audiobooks. Title: On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life's Great Labors Author: Brandi Sellerz-Jackson Narrator: Brandi Sellerz-Jackson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 50 minutes Release date: January 9, 2024 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A renowned doula shares powerful lessons on healing and thriving through the murky seasons of life in this moving, intimate guide to deeper self-awareness and radical joy. “This book is a beacon of resilience. . . . A must-read for anyone committed to growth.”—Erica Chidi Cohen, author of Nurture We’ve all been there: We take a pause, look at our lives, and desire more—more from our relationships, more from our wellness journeys, maybe simply more from ourselves. For some, it might be more fun, more peace, more exploration—but what does it take to get to the other side of living in survival mode? In On Thriving, Brandi Sellerz-Jackson helps us wade through what she calls the four great labors of our lives—labors that she’s had to overcome and that she has led many clients through. Drawing from her experiences as a doula and intimate storytelling from her own life, Sellerz-Jackson guides us through the many phases of these great labors—labors that we can get stuck in, stunting our ability to thrive. Across age, gender, economic status, or background, we all move through the great labor of our relationships, our mental health, grief and loss, and the feeling of being othered. Sellerz-Jackson doesn’t shy away from the pitfalls of these labors but rather challenges us to actively remain present within them and ask ourselves: What do I need to thrive in the space I’m currently in? In On Thriving, you’ll come to recognize the survival tools you’ve picked up along the way and exchange them for thriving tools and “rich-uals.” You’ll commit to no longer making a home out of chaos and rediscovering sanctuary within yourself.  Comparing our thriving to that of plant life, Sellerz-Jackson simplifies the complicated—and oftentimes overwhelming—journey as we attempt to grow in an inhospitable environment. With insightful and vulnerable storytelling, she invites a deep, soul-stirring investigation of our past and present to gather all that we need to thrive right where we are, right now.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/684400 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia Author: Kate Manne Narrator: Kate Manne Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 38 minutes Release date: January 9, 2024 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.75 of Total 4 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it—from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled “An elegant, fierce, and profound argument for fighting fat oppression in ourselves, our communities, and our culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She’s been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not. Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except one: body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates—how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person’s attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential. In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of “body reflexivity”—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/673176 to listen full audiobooks. Title: When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice From a Professional Clown Author: Kenan Thompson Narrator: Kenan Thompson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 58 minutes Release date: December 5, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: “Kenan is a master storyteller with extraordinary stories to tell. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”—Leslie Jones When I Was Your Age is a hilarious, heartwarming and surprising ode to growing up, getting older and wiser, and luck, life, and learning from the school of hard knocks, from SNL's longest-serving actor, Kenan Thompson Kenan Thompson is Saturday Night Live’s longest-ever-serving cast member and a star of such pioneering sketches as “Black Jeopardy” and is hugely beloved thanks to a tidal wave of nostalgic fans who grew up on early 2000s classics All That, Good Burger, and Kenan & Kel on Nickelodeon. He’s also a dad (to two girls) in his mid-40s living in suburbia, and whose universal, relatable, family-friendly humor has created unbelievable appeal and engagement from fans from middle America to coastal elites. Becoming a dad sucked the cool right out of him -- and he's OK with that! When I Was Your Age is packed with hilarious yet poignant essays that are aimed to offer any reader valuable advice on parenting, focusing on positivity, and having fun in life. Kids, new parents, fellow fathers, budding comics, and aunties who want to pinch his cheeks, can all learn from his biggest mistakes and most triumphant victories. There’s something for everybody here!

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/678883 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Out of History Author: Howell Raines Narrator: Mark Bramhall Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 19 hours 58 minutes Release date: December 5, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist reveals the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books. “It is my sincere hope that this compelling and submerged history is integrated into our understanding of our nation, and allows us to embrace new heroes of the past.”—Imani Perry, professor, Harvard University, and National Book Award–winning author of South to America We all know how the Civil War was won: Courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But is there more to the story? As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Howell Raines shows, it was not only soldiers from northern states who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers—including at least one member of Raines’s own family. Called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., this regiment of mountain Unionists, which included sixteen formerly enslaved Black men, was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy. The famed general hailed their skills and courage. So why don’t we know anything about them? Silent Cavalry is part epic American history, part family saga, and part scholarly detective story. Drawing on the lore of his native Alabama and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade southerners—a key component of the Lost Cause effort to restore glory to white southerners after the war, even at the cost of the truth. In this important new contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, Raines tells the thrilling tale of the formation of the First Alabama while exposing the tangled web of how its wartime accomplishments were silenced, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League and a sanctimonious former keeper of the Alabama state archives. By reversing the erasure of the First Alabama, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of historians to destroy as well as to redeem.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/679133 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes Author: Anthony Veasna So Narrator: Keong Sim Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 58 minutes Release date: December 5, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: LA Times * Boston Globe * The Millions * LitHub * Shondaland By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race  The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon” (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions. Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth. Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years” (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise” (The New Yorker).

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/681828 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning Author: Liz Cheney Narrator: Liz Cheney Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 14 minutes Release date: December 5, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 171 Ratings of Narrator: 4.91 of Total 65 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Read by Liz Cheney with 50+ audio source material clips included, Oath and Honor is a gripping first-hand account from inside the halls of Congress as Donald Trump and his enablers betrayed the American people and the Constitution--leading to the violent attack on our Capitol on January 6th, 2021—by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it.   In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the Constitution: they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol.   Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/677963 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Wrexham Story: The Inspirational Autobiography From The Beloved Football Hero Author: Paul Mullin Narrator: Paul Mullin Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 20 minutes Release date: November 23, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 3 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. The memoir from Wrexham's star player, Paul Mullin, as featured in Welcome to Wrexham, a Disney+ documentary series by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. In July 2021, shortly after being named League Two's Player of the Season and Golden Boot, Paul Mullin sent shockwaves through the EFL by taking a downwards move to National League team, Wrexham AFC. Since then, 'Super Paul Mullin' has helped transform the Wrexham team, scoring dozens of goals and capturing the imaginations of football fans across the world in the process. Here for the first time, Mullin tells his own story: his roots in Liverpool, the highs and lows of English football's promotion race, lessons learnt from his young son, and what happens when Hollywood comes knocking. ©2023 Paul Mullin (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/680826 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Eyeliner: A Cultural History Author: Zahra Hankir Narrator: Soneela Nankani Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 55 minutes Release date: November 16, 2023 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. A dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmetic From the distant past to the present day, humans have been drawn to lining their eyes. The aesthetic trademark of figures ranging from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse, eyeliner is one of our most enduring cosmetic tools; ancient royals and Gen Z beauty influencers alike would attest to its uniquely transformative power. It is undeniably fun - yet it is also far from frivolous. Seen through Zahra Hankir's (kohl-lined) eyes, this ubiquitous but seldom-examined product becomes a portal to history, proof both of the stunning variety among cultures across time and space and of our shared humanity. Through intimate reporting and conversations - with nomads in Chad, geishas in Japan, dancers in India, drag queens in New York, and more - Eyeliner embraces the rich history and significance of its namesake, especially among communities of colour. What emerges is a delightful, surprising, and unexpectedly moving journey through streets, stages, and bedrooms around the world, and a thought-provoking reclamation of a key piece of our collective history. ©2023 Zahra Hankir (P)2023 Penguin Audio