Dave's Faves

Kitchen Confidential

Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

By: Anthony Bourdain
Narrated by: Anthony Bourdain
Length: 8 hours 18 minutes

When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded the appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet that lays out his twenty-five years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.

From his... Read more

The Order of Time

By: Carlo Rovelli
Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

“In thirteen succinct chapters, Rovelli shows us that time as we know it—continuous, smooth, regular—is an illusion. Our perception of time is limited and can’t take into account its true nature as a fluctuating, particulate field--“a network of relations that no longer holds together as a coherent canvas.” Step by step, Rovelli’s deconstruction... Read more

Cherry

A novel

By: Nico Walker
Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
Length: 8 hours 5 minutes

“To say that "Cherry" is gritty and raw is an understatement to the nth degree. When I began listening to it on Libro.fm I wasn't sure I could get past the use of the "f" word every other sentence, but this novel keeps you hooked into sticking with the sometimes depressing, sometimes funny and sometimes horrifying story for all 8 hours of... Read more

Gumption

Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

By: Nick Offerman
Narrated by: Nick Offerman
Length: 11 hours 41 minutes

The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the New York Times bestseller Paddle Your Own Canoe returns with a second book that humorously highlights twenty-one figures from our nation’s history, from her inception to present day—Nick’s personal pantheon of “great Americans.”To millions of people, Nick Offerman is America. Both Nick and his... Read more

East of Eden

Penguin Audio Classics

By: John Steinbeck
Narrated by: Richard Poe
Length: 25 hours 18 minutes

The masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a sprawling epic in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. Read more

Irreligion

A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up

By: John Allen Paulos
Narrated by: Dick Hill
Length: 4 hours 11 minutes

A lifelong unbeliever finds no reason to change his mind.

Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? Mathematician and bestselling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into twelve chapters that refute the twelve arguments most often put forward for believing in... Read more

Joe

By: Larry Brown
Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

An ALA Notable Book, Joe has earned critical acclaim nationwide, and Larry Brown has been compared to great Southern writers such as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. In the Mississippi countryside, a friendship between a middle-aged, alcoholic contractor and an abused teen-aged boy becomes a bizarre rite of passage for both of them. The... Read more

Blackwood

By: Michael Farris Smith
Narrated by: Mike McColl
Length: 5 hours 17 minutes

In this timeless, mythical tale of unforgiving justice and elusive grace, rural Mississippi townsfolk shoulder the pain of generations as something dangerous lurks in the enigmatic kudzu of the woods.
The town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, though those who've held on have little memory of when that was. Myer, the county's aged,... Read more

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

And Other Arguments for Economic Independence

By: Kristen R. Ghodsee
Narrated by: Esther Wane
Length: 5 hours 22 minutes

“In Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, Ghodsee argues that unregulated capitalism is bad for women, as well as for everyone else. It goes on to argue that by nature capitalism forces a transactional relationship with sex and relationships between men and women. However, if we were to implement some of the gender equalizing policies of... Read more

Shop Class as Soulcraft

An Inquiry into the Value of Work

By: Matthew B. Crawford
Narrated by: Max Bloomquist
Length: 6 hours 38 minutes

A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands 

“This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving.” —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman

Called “the sleeper hit of the... Read more

The Master and Margarita

By: Mikhail Bulgakov
Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
Length: 16 hours 50 minutes

The Devil comes to Moscow; but he isn’t all bad. Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don’t burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly... Read more