Literary Criticism audiobooks
James Joyce in 90 Minutes
By: Paul Strathern
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 1 hour 48 minutes
Abridged: No
From a young age, James Joyce showed a precocious, original intellect and a confidence in his own artistic destiny. He would indeed go on to transform the nature of modern literature, employing a unique stream-of-consciousness technique rich in symbolism and wordplay. Through his art, the Dublin native sought to reveal the radiance and meaning... Read more
View audiobookBorges in 90 Minutes
By: Paul Strathern
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 1 hour 49 minutes
Abridged: No
Weaving fiction with fact, fantastic matter with historical figures, Borges’ frequent theme of a world where time, culture, and place converge is both timely and pertinent in our advance toward globalization. Drawing from his multi-ethnic and -lingual upbringing in Argentina, Borges’ focus on universal themes early on came to belittle the... Read more
View audiobookReading Magic
By: Mem Fox
Narrated by: Mem Fox
Length: TBA
Abridged: No
We all hope and expect our children will learn to read, but how many of us realize we can get our kids on the road to reading simply by reading aloud to them every day? With passion and humor, Mem Fox explains why reading aloud to young children has such an impact on their ability to read—and on their entire lives. Writing as an ordinary mother... Read more
View audiobookJimmy Carter: We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land
By: PBS NewsHour
Narrated by: PBS NewsHour
Length: 8 minutes
Abridged: No
Former President Jimmy Carter discusses his new book on the Middle East peace process, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan that Will Work, with Margaret Warner. Read more
View audiobookThalia Book Club: Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book
By: Geraldine Brooks
Narrated by: John Hockenberry & Rita Wolf
Length: 1 hour 19 minutes
Abridged: No
Geraldine Brooks sits down with John Hockenberry to discuss her novel People of the Book. Rita Wolf reads an excerpt. Read more
View audiobookD. H. Lawrence in 90 Minutes
By: Paul Strathern
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 1 hour 53 minutes
Abridged: No
By the end of his life, Lawrence had despaired of Western civilization, which he felt had corrupted and weakened the human spirit. He believed that we had somehow lost touch with our instinctual being and no longer responded to the 'true voice' of our blood. We still possessed such truth deep within us, but it was smothered by a dead culture.His... Read more
View audiobookBeckett in 90 Minutes
By: Paul Strathern
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 1 hour 55 minutes
Abridged: No
Samuel Beckett’s work evokes passionate responses: readers and playgoers either revere it or consider it a load of pretentious nonsense. But his philosophy of pessimism will always find a new generation of young readers, for it bursts the rainbow soap bubbles of illusion, leaving us blinking with stinging eyes at unremitting reality. Beckett’s... Read more
View audiobookThalia Book Club: Jonathan Stroud's Heroes of the Valley
By: Jonathan Stroud
Narrated by: Matthew Cody
Length: 1 hour 2 minutes
Abridged: No
The author of The Bartimaeus Trilogy discusses his new novel with Matthew Cody (author of the upcoming book Powerless) that follows a young shepherd on a hero's quest. Along the way, he encounters highway robbers, terrifying monsters, and the truth about the legends he grew up listening to. Co-presented with Bank Street Bookstore. Read more
View audiobookRings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature
By: Michael Drout
Narrated by: Henry Strozier
Length: 7 hours 51 minutes
Abridged: No
The overwhelming success of the Lord of the Rings films and the Harry Potter series aptly demonstrates that the fantasy genre is alive and well in the new millennium. The names of authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Brooks evoke ripe tales of heroism and the clash of good versus evil in magical, faraway lands. The rich... Read more
View audiobookOdyssey of the West II
By: Timothy B. Shutt
Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt
Length: 8 hours 10 minutes
Abridged: No
This course is an interdisciplinary series of connected lectures delivered by eminent scholars from several colleges and universi- ties. Each professor addresses an area of personal expertise and focuses not only on the matter at hand, but on the larger story-on the links between the works and the figures dis- cussed. The lectures address a... Read more
View audiobookOdyssey of the West I
By: Timothy B. Shutt
Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt
Length: 8 hours 34 minutes
Abridged: No
This course is an interdisciplinary series of connected lectures delivered by eminent scholars from several colleges and universities. Each professor addresses an area of personal expertise and focuses not only on the matter at hand, but on the larger story-on the links between the works and the figures discussed. The lectures address-in... Read more
View audiobookThalia Book Club: Louise Erdrich's The Red Convertible
By: Louise Erdrich
Narrated by: Louise Erdrich, Amy Goodman & Sonia Manzano
Length: TBA
Abridged: No
Louis Erdrich sits down with Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) to discuss her short story collection, The Red Convertible. Sonia Manzano reads an excerpt from the book. Read more
View audiobookSherlock Holmes Was Wrong
By: Pierre Bayard
Narrated by: John Lee
Length: 4 hours 10 minutes
Abridged: No
Eliminate the impossible, Sherlock Holmes said, and whatever is left must be the solution. But, as Pierre Bayard finds in this dazzling reinvestigation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, sometimes the master missed his mark. Using the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key, Bayard unravels the case, leading the reader to the astonishing... Read more
View audiobookThe Bible and the Roots of Western Literature
By: Adam Potkay & Monica Brzezinski Potkay
Narrated by: Adam Potkay
Length: 6 hours 52 minutes
Abridged: No
The Bible is renowned as a rich source of myth and parable, prose and poetry. Indeed, much of Western Literature owes an enormous debt to the unique and widely varied writings in this important religious text. Read more
View audiobookThe Ten-Cent Plague
By: David Hajdu
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes
Abridged: No
In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between “high” and “low” art.David Hajdu... Read more
View audiobookThe Souls of Black Folk
By: W. E. B. Du Bois
Narrated by: Richard Allen
Length: 8 hours 39 minutes
Abridged: No
W. E. B. Du Bois was the foremost black intellectual of his time. The Souls of Black Folk, his most influential work, is a collection of fourteen beautifully written essays, by turns lyrical, historical, and autobiographical. Here, Du Bois records the cruelties of racism, celebrates the strength and pride of black America, and explores the... Read more
View audiobookEternal Chalice
By: Monica Brzezinski Potkay
Narrated by: Monica Brzezinski Potkay
Length: 7 hours 32 minutes
Abridged: No
The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the many different ways writers of fiction and nonfiction have imagined, and reimagined, the object known as the Grail. We'll look at how the Grail was invented as a powerful literary symbol in the late 12th and early 13th centuries by a group of medieval romancers who celebrated the Grail as... Read more
View audiobookTolkien’s Ordinary Virtues
By: Mark Eddy Smith
Narrated by: Simon Vance
Length: 2 hours 55 minutes
Abridged: No
“As I get older and learn more of what sort of person I am, and continue sojourning to the rich soil of the Shire and the high tower of Minas Tirith, I discover that many of my notions of what is good and right and noble in this world have their source in that one.”—from the authorThe Lord of the Rings offers us essential lessons in living. Here... Read more
View audiobookThalia Book Club: Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath
By: Cornelia Funke
Narrated by: Madeline Cohen
Length: 1 hour 3 minutes
Abridged: No
New York Times best-selling author Cornelia Funke makes a rare appearance to talk about the stunning conclusion to the beloved Inkheart trilogy, a thrilling adventure series. Co-presented with Bank Street Bookstore, Thalia Kids' Book Club events are lively talks between children's book authors and their fans (ages 9-12) plus one event for teens.... Read more
View audiobookOdyssey of the West V
By: Timothy B. Shutt
Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt, Fred Baumann, Joel Richeimer ...
Length: 7 hours 49 minutes
Abridged: No
In weaving together the varied and interrelated strands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourse and events, this course focuses on the contributions to Western history that bear the most responsibility for shaping the world of today. Among these contributions are such vital, yet markedly different documents as the Federalist Papers and... Read more
View audiobookWhat Fire Cannot Burn
By: John Ridley
Narrated by: Patricia R. Floyd
Length: 12 hours 22 minutes
Abridged: No
John Ridley is an acclaimed screenwriter and best-selling author. His first novel featuring LAPD mutant hunter Soledad O'Roark, Those Who Walk in Darkness, was an instant hit. Soledad's second adventure finds her hunting down a vigilante who is murdering metanormals indiscriminantly. She has no love for the mutants, but no one is above the law.... Read more
View audiobookIn Morocco
By: Edith Wharton
Narrated by: Anna Fields
Length: 4 hours 53 minutes
Abridged: No
"To step on board a steamer in a Spanish port, and three hours later to land in a country without a guidebook, is a sensation to rouse the hunger of the most replete sightseer. The sensation is attainable by any one who will take the trouble to row out into the harbor of Algeciras and scramble onto a little black boat headed across the... Read more
View audiobookOdyssey of the West III
By: Timothy B. Shutt
Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt
Length: 8 hours 47 minutes
Abridged: No
Odyssey of the West I and II explored timeless works from the ancient world that shaped, and continue to shape, the culture and philosophies of life today. In part three of this fascinating series, Professor Timothy B. Shutt of Kenyon College is joined by Professors Thomas F. Madden (Saint Louis University) and Monica Brzezinski Potkay (College... Read more
View audiobookOdyssey of the West IV
By: Timothy B. Shutt
Narrated by: Timothy B. Shutt
Length: 8 hours 11 minutes
Abridged: No
The Odyssey of the West series addresses in chronological sequence the works that have shaped the ongoing development of Western thought both in its own right and in cultural dialogue with other traditions. Part four provides a close look at the period from the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution and into the early Enlightenment. These... Read more
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