Audiobooks for Nonfiction November
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Narrator
Maya Hawke
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Length
6 hours 23 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“In this snapshot of mid-century American culture, Didion, deliberate and unabashed, takes the reader on journeys across the United States - from Newport, to Sacramento, to Hollywood, to Hawaii, and back to San Francisco - digesting political unrest, youthful buoyancy, and fundamental questions of morality and human responsibility. Her essays feature true crime intrigue, John Wayne gallantry, '60s hippie counterculture, and personal glimpses into her motivations and struggles. A masterpiece from the mind of America's very own Queen Mother. ”
— Lambie • Underground Books
This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.
"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
“Maya Hawke performs this classic collection superbly...Hawke gets Didion's measured pace and thoughtful tone just right as she conveys the much admired author's idiosyncratic, elegant language.”—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)
Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the “best prose written in this country.”
More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: “[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.”
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Joan Didion (1934-2021) was the National Book Award-winning author of many works of fiction and nonfiction. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley, she started her literary career writing articles and essays for Vogue, Mademoiselle, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and National Review, establishing herself as a prominent member of the New Journalism movement. Her books include The White Album, Play It As It Lays, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Didion’s revelatory memoir The Year of Magical Thinking was adapted as a one-woman stage show starring Vanessa Redgrave on Broadway. She also wrote several screenplays with her husband John Gregory Dunne, including Panic in Needle Park with Al Pacino, the second remake of A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and an adaptation of her own Play It As It Lays with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.
Maya Hawke is an actor, musician, songwriter and producer. Hawke made her acting debut in the miniseries adaptation of the classic novel Little Women for PBS in 2018 and has continued to shine on both the big and small screens, in addition to crafting an acclaimed independent music career. She has released three lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022), Blush (2020), and Chaos Angel (2024)
which showcase her natural gift for songwriting.
Maya’s acting credits include the critically acclaimed Netflix drama Stranger Things. Dubbed by Entertainment Weekly as the “breakout star,” Hawke became a fan favorite for her performance as Robin Buckley and received an HCA Award Nomination for her performance. Hawke was also in Showtime’s 2020 historical drama, The Good Lord Bird alongside her father Ethan Hawke. This year, she portrayed
“Anxiety” in Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which became the biggest animated movie of all time,
grossing over $1.5 billion. She stars in, and co-produced, Ethan Hawke’s biographical film of
Flannery O’Connor, Wildcat, which premiered at Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, and was released to wide acclaim in 2024.
Past film credits include Asteroid City, Do Revenge, Human Capital, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Maestro.
Hawke was included in Variety’s 2022 New Power of New York list, the 2023 Young Hollywood Impact Report, and the 2023 TIME100 Next list.
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Audiobook details
Author:
Joan Didion
Narrator:
Maya Hawke
ISBN:
9781250384263
Length:
6 hours 23 minutes
Language:
English
Publisher:
Macmillan Audio
Publication date:
November 5, 2024
Edition:
Unabridged
Libro.fm rank:
#1,419 Overall
Genre rank:
#3 in Literary Criticism
Reviews
“In her portraits of people, Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naive acid-trippers, left wing ideologues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful.... A rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” —Dan Wakefield, The New York Times Book Review
"These literary gems are the perfect stocking-stuffer size for the serious reader on your list; you’ll look smart wrapping up one or all of them." --USA Today
"A slant vision that is arresting and unique...Didion might be an observer from another planet--one so edgy and alert that she ends up knowing more about our own world than we know ourselves." —Anne Tyler
"The story between the lines of Slouching Towards Bethlehem is surely not so much 'California' as it is [Didion's] ability to make us share her passionate sense of it." —Alfred Kazin
“Give one of these adorable mini-editions of classic nonfiction books by women—only slightly larger than a mobile phone—to a bookish friend, and they’ll get lit, literally.”—BUST
“Gorgeous . . . among the season’s sexiest little literary gifts . . . Close-up portraits of the grand dames by illustrator Celia Carlstedt grace the textured, curve-cornered jackets of these pocket-sized volumes (it’s as if they’ve already been gift wrapped).” —Passport Magazine
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