Literary Criticism audiobooks

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik

Narrated by: Lili Anolik

Length: 12 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this outrageously provocative and profoundly moving new work "that reads like a propulsive novel" (Oprah Daily) on the mutual attractions—and mutual antagonisms—of Didion and her fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz.

Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan... Read more

One in a Millennial

By: Kate Kennedy

Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

Abridged: No

This program is read by the author.

From pop culture podcaster and a voice of a generation, Kate Kennedy, a celebration of the millennial zeitgeist

One in a Millennial is an exploration of pop culture, nostalgia, the millennial zeitgeist, and the life lessons learned (for better and for worse) from coming of age as a member of a much-maligned... Read more

Poetry Unbound

By: Pádraig Ó Tuama

Narrated by: Pádraig Ó Tuama

Length: 7 hours 18 minutes

Abridged: No

In the tumult of our contemporary moment, poetry has emerged as an inviting, consoling outlet with a unique power to move and connect us, to inspire fury, tears, joy, laughter, and surprise. This generous anthology pairs fifty illuminating poems with poet and podcast host Pádraig Ó Tuama's appealing, unhurried reflections. With keen insight and... Read more

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman...

Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

From the New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today.

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA... Read more

Monsters

By: Claire Dederer

Narrated by: Claire Dederer

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture, and of the link between genius and monstrosity. Can we love the work of controversial classic and contemporary artists but dislike the artist?

"A lively, personal... Read more

Pandora's Jar

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

Length: 9 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

“Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's TaleThe national bestselling author of A Thousand Ships returns with a fascinating, eye-opening take on the remarkable women at the heart of classical stories Greek... Read more

Trick Mirror

By: Jia Tolentino

Narrated by: Jia Tolentino

Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire
 
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

Minor Feelings

By: Cathy Park Hong

Narrated by: Cathy Park Hong

Length: 6 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE • A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

In... Read more

Meet Me in the Margins

By: Melissa Ferguson

Narrated by: Talon David

Length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

"Meet Me in the Margins is a delightfully charming jewel of a book that fans of romantic comedy won't be able to put down!" --Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author of A Happier LifeYou've Got Mail meets The Proposal--this romance is one for the books.Savannah Cade's dreams are coming true. The Claire Donovan, editor-in-chief... Read more

Divine Might

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

Length: 9 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the... Read more

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Maya Hawke

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction,... Read more

Reading Like a Writer

By: Francine Prose

Narrated by: Nanette Savard

Length: 9 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a... Read more

The Language of the Night

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan & Michael Crouch

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

Featuring a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, her thoughts on writing, and her commentary on literary science fiction and fantasy and their future.“We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark;... Read more

How to Read Literature Like a Professor [Third Edition]

By: Thomas C. Foster

Narrated by: David de Vries

Length: 11 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Thoroughly revised and expanded for a new generation of readers, this classic guide to enjoying literature to its fullest—a lively, enlightening, and entertaining introduction to a diverse range of writing and literary devices that enrich these works, including symbols, themes, and contexts—teaches you how to make your everyday reading... Read more

Astounding

By: Alec Nevala-Lee

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 13 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

An Economist Best Book of the YearA Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of 2018""Enthralling…A clarion call to enlarge American literary history.” — Washington Post“Engrossing, well-researched… This sure-footed history addresses important issues, such as the lack of racial diversity and gender parity for much of the genre’s history.” — Wall... Read more

The Lessons of Tragedy

By: Hal Brands & Charles Edel

Narrated by: Marc Cashman

Length: 6 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

An eloquent call to draw on the lessons of the past to address current threats to international order

The ancient Greeks hard-wired a tragic sensibility into their culture. By looking disaster squarely in the face, by understanding just how badly things could spiral out of control, they sought to create a communal sense of responsibility and... Read more

Slouching Towards Los Angeles

By: Steffie Nelson

Narrated by: Xe Sands & Eric Jason Martin

Length: 5 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

In The White Album, Joan Didion famously wrote that "a place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively . . . loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image." Cruising in her Daytona yellow Corvette Stingray, taking it all in behind dark glasses, Joan Didion claimed California for all time. Slouching... Read more

The Gulag Archipelago Volume 1

By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 25 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —TimeVolume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society. Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.

“The greatest and most powerful single indictment of a... Read more

What We Talk About When We Talk About Books

By: Leah Price

Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers

Length: 5 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Reports of the death of reading are greatly exaggerated Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the... Read more

The Bright Book of Life

By: Harold Bloom

Narrated by: Stephen Mendel

Length: 21 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

America's most original and controversial literary critic writes trenchantly about forty-eight masterworks spanning the Western tradition—from Don Quixote to Wuthering Heights to Invisible Man—in his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction.

In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom—who for more than half a century was... Read more

Year of the Monkey

By: Patti Smith

Narrated by: Patti Smith

Length: 4 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

Riveting, elegant, and humorous, New York Times bestseller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.
 
Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by... Read more

Wonderworks

By: Angus Fletcher

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

Length: 15 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

This “fascinating” (Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times bestselling author of Outliers) examination of literary inventions through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, shows how writers have created technical breakthroughs—rivaling scientific inventions—and engineering enhancements to the human heart and mind.

Literature is a... Read more

Devotion

By: Patti Smith

Narrated by: Patti Smith

Length: 2 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

From the renowned artist and author Patti Smith, an inspired exploration of the nature of creative invention.A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic—its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of... Read more

No Judgment

By: Lauren Oyler

Narrated by: Lauren Oyler

Length: 8 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

""The essay collection everyone’s talking about.""—New YorkA MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024: Elle, The Millions, LitHub, Nylon, BookPage, PureWow, and moreFrom the national bestselling novelist and essayist, a groundbreaking collection of brand-new pieces about the role of cultural criticism in our ever-changing world.In her writing for Harper’s,... Read more