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My Mistake
- Narrated by: Daniel Menaker
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
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My Mistake
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Publisher's summary
In this audiobook Daniel Menaker brings us a "ruefully funny insider's tour of the publishing world" (Vogue.com). Haunted by a self-doubt sharpened by his role in his brother's unexpected death, he offers wry, hilarious observations on publishing, child-rearing, parent-losing, and the writing life. But as time passes, we witness a moving, thoughtful meditation on years well lived, well read, and well spent. Full of mistakes, perhaps. But full of effort, full of accomplishment, full of life.
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Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
- By Bonny on 01-07-14
By: Ann Patchett
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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5 out of 5 stars
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4 out of 5 stars 99
It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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Salinger
- By: David Shields, Shane Salerno
- Narrated by: Peter Friedman, January LaVoy, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 122
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Story4 out of 5 stars 120
Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last 56 years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, listeners will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Ingenious novel or biography? Hard to tell....
- By Melinda on 09-05-13
By: David Shields, and others
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 79
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
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So We Read On
- How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
- By: Maureen Corrigan
- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 238
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 198
Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan
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Bad Boy
- By: Walter Dean Myers
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
Into a memoir that is gripping, funny, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, Walter Dean Myers richly weaves the details of his Harlem childhood in the 1940s and 1950s: a loving home life with his adopted parents, Bible school, street games, and the vitality of his neighborhood. Although Walter spent much of his time either getting into trouble or on the basketball court, secretly he was a voracious reader and an aspiring writer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Tough times
- By Megan on 01-30-12
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Harry, a History
- The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon
- By: Melissa Anelli
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 288
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4 out of 5 stars 196
With remembrances from J. K. Rowling's editors, agents, publicists, fans, and Rowling herself, Melissa Anelli takes us on a personal journey through every aspect of the Harry Potter phenomenon - from his very first spell to his lasting impact on the way we live and dream.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Relive the magic!
- By Heather on 03-19-09
By: Melissa Anelli
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 117
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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She Made Me Laugh
- My Friend Nora Ephron
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about his "third-person memoir": "I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends - Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!
- By Leigh Lerro on 10-27-17
By: Richard Cohen
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City Boy
- My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
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Draft No. 4
- On the Writing Process
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: John McPhee
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 200
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 201
Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.
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4 out of 5 stars
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McPhee is the Craft
- By Darwin8u on 09-19-17
By: John McPhee
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 242
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 241
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unabridged?
- By K. Stiffler on 02-11-22
By: John Irving