Literary Criticism audiobooks

Sense of Wonder

By: Bill Schelly

Narrated by: Derek Botten

Length: 10 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A fascinating story of growing up as a gay fan of comic books in the 1960s, building a fifty-year career as an award-winning writer, and interacting with acclaimed comic book legends

Award-winning writer Bill Schelly relates how comics and fandom saved his life in this engrossing story that begins in the burgeoning comic fandom movement of the... Read more

Book Girl

By: Sarah Clarkson

Narrated by: Erica Sullivan

Length: 8 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

When you hear a riveting story, does it thrill your heart and stir your soul? Do you hunger for truth and goodness? Do you secretly relate to Belle’s delight in the library in Beauty and the Beast?If so, you may be on your way to being a book girl.Books were always Sarah Clarkson’s delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green... Read more

I'd Rather Be Reading

By: Anne Bogel

Length: 2 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

For so many people, reading isn't just a hobby or a way to pass the time--it's a lifestyle. Our books shape us, define us, enchant us, and even sometimes infuriate us. Our books are a part of who we are as people, and we can't imagine life without them.I'd Rather Be Reading is the perfect literary companion for everyone who feels that way. In... Read more

Shakespeare and the Resistance

By: Clare Asquith

Narrated by: Allan Corduner

Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Shakespeare's largely misunderstood narrative poems contain within them an explosive commentary on the political storms convulsing his country

The 1590s were bleak years for England. The queen was old, the succession unclear, and the treasury empty after decades of war. Amid the rising tension, William Shakespeare published a pair of poems... Read more

Headley and I

By: S. Hussain Zaidi, Mahesh Bhatt & Rahul Bhatt

Narrated by: Ganpathy Iyer

Length: 6 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

'Hussain Zaidi, Mumbai's prodigious chronicler of the underbelly of the maximum city, pulls the covers off a friendship that only ended when Mumbai burned' – Adrian Levy For most of his childhood, Rahul Bhatt did not know a father's unconditional love – a vacuum that the advent of David Coleman Headley filled for a while. David Headley: the... Read more

Zeppelin!

By: Alexander Häusser

Narrated by: Alexander Häusser

Length: 2 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Pfingsten 1909: Von Süden her nähert sich ein Zeppelin einem kleinen schwäbischen Dorf. Der riesige Schatten des Luftschiffs fällt auf den sechsjährigen Robert Silcher. Der Schuljunge ist sofort fasziniert. Für ihn steht fest: Ich werde Zeppeliner. Beinahe ein Jahrhundert später macht sich sein Enkel René, der als Archivar im Zeppelinmuseum... Read more

Reflections on Herman Melville's Moby Dick

By: Gil Bailie

Narrated by: Gil Bailie

Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

Gil Bailie's exploration of Herman Melville's epic American tale. Melville's masterwork has been recognized as one of the major achievements of 19th century American literature influencing writers down to the present. As confirmed in the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature speech by Bob Dylan, who said, "Moby Dick is a fascinating book, a book... Read more

Discovering Great Plays

By: Leonard Peikoff

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 13 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Based on a series of lectures by Leonard Peikoff and edited by Marlene Trollope, Discovering Great Plays provides the ability to understand, judge, and savor the values offered by great drama. Listeners will discover plot-theme as the key to a play; see Antigone as a great heroine and Iago as the darkest villain in literature; learn about the... Read more

Transforming Harry

By: P. Andrew Miller & John Alberti

Narrated by: Shaun Grindell & Esther Wane

Length: 6 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age is an edited volume of eight essays that look at how the cinematic versions of the seven Harry Potter novels represent an unprecedented cultural event in the history of cinematic adaptation. The movie version of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's... Read more

Simply Faulkner

By: Philip Weinstein

Narrated by: Milton Bagby

Length: 3 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

Nobel Laureate and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner William Faulkner (1897–1962) was one of America’s greatest and most celebrated writers, whose work reflects and, at the same time, questions the South's most deeply held values. His novel The Sound and the Fury is frequently cited as one of the best books of all time, and all of his works... Read more

The Wave in the Mind

By: Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by: Christina Moore

Length: 10 hours 15 minutes

Abridged: No

Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women’s shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of readings. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin’s finest literary... Read more

The Book

By: Amaranth Borsuk

Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Length: 5 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we... Read more

What to Read and Why

By: Francine Prose

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

Abridged: No

In this brilliant collection, the follow-up to her New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, the distinguished novelist, literary critic, and essayist celebrates the pleasures of reading and pays homage to the works and writers she admires above all others, from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to Jennifer Egan and Roberto Bolaño.In an age... Read more

Procesos de la noche

By: Diana del Ángel

Narrated by: Gloria Edith Gómez

Length: 3 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

"Procesos de la noche" narra la odisea judicial que la familia de Julio César Mondragón tuvo que emprender para poder esclarecer la verdad sobre su asesinato. El caso de Julio sobresale por haber sido la evidencia más explícita de la violencia empleada en Iguala contra los estudiantes de la normal de Ayotzinapa, y que derivó en la desaparición... Read more

Paradiso

By: Dante Alighieri

Narrated by: Charles Armstrong

Length: 3 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Paradiso is the third and final part of The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem describing man's progress from hell to salvation. In it, the author progresses through nine concentric spheres of heaven. Corresponding with medieval astronomy, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn deal with the four cardinal virtues Prudence,... Read more

Dead Girls

By: Alice Bolin

Narrated by: Em Eldridge

Length: 8 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

“Dead Girls is everything I want in an essay collection: provocative lines of inquiry, macabre humor, blistering intelligence... I love this book. I want to take it into the middle of a crowded room and hold it up and scream until someone tackles me the ground; even then, I’d probably keep screaming.”
— Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body... Read more

Purgatorio

By: Dante Alighieri

Narrated by: Charles Armstrong

Length: 3 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

Purgatorio is the second part of The Divine Comedy, Dante's epic poem describing man's progress from hell to paradise. Having escaped the Inferno, Dante and his guide, the classical Roman poet Virgil, ascend out of the underworld to the Mountain of Purgatory on an island on the far side of the world. The mountain has nine terraces, seven of... Read more

Inferno

By: Dante Alighieri

Narrated by: Charles Armstrong

Length: 4 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

The Inferno is the first part of The Divine Comedy, Dante’s epic poem describing man's progress from hell to paradise. In it, the author is lost in a dark wood, threatened by wild beasts and unable to find the right path to salvation. Notable for its nine circles of hell, the poem vividly illustrates the poetic justice of punishments faced by... Read more

The Divine Comedy

By: Dante Alighieri

Narrated by: Charles Armstrong

Length: 11 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

The Divine Comedy is a narrative poem by Dante Alighieri that describes the the pilgrim Dante’s travels through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso). This trio of books, or cantiche, is one example of the number three as a theme throughout the work. Each book consists of 33 cantos, which—added to an introductory... Read more

Where the Stress Falls

By: Susan Sontag

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 12 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Two decades of indispensable work by a great American writer—more than forty longer and shorter pieces that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideasThirty-five years after her first collection, the classic Against Interpretation, America’s most important essayist chose more than forty longer... Read more

Mythic Worlds, Modern Words

By: Joseph Campbell

Narrated by: Braden Wright

Length: 12 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was... Read more

Eating My Heroes

By: Rick Bass

Length: TBA

Abridged: No

On the Road meets Tuesdays with Morrie in this pilgrimage by "an American classic" (Newsweek) to thank his most important mentors through memorable meals and conversations

"Some years later, George Plimpton offered to punch me in the nose," recounts Rick Bass, remembering fondly a conversation with the famed Paris Review editor in his office, in... Read more

The Traveling Feast

By: Rick Bass

Narrated by: Rick Bass

Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Acclaimed author Rick Bass decided to thank all of his writing heroes in person, one meal at a time, in this "rich smorgasbord of a memoir . . . a soul-nourishing, road-burning act of tribute" (New York Times Book Review).

From his bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has... Read more

After the Love (O.L.D. & M.A.T.U.R.E.)

By: Jeffrey V. Perry

Narrated by: Barry Schwam

Length: 1 hour 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Finding one’s self is not a product of age or time. But, learning to love and accept ourselves can be. Every day we learn that we cannot deceive our self until we must face our truth. You need no mirror nor any outside help. You will only have you.This poetry is written in various styles and on different subjects. It is inspired writing on... Read more