Literary Criticism audiobooks

To Save and to Destroy

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Length: 5 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity. Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon... 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

Jane Austen's Bookshelf

By: Rebecca Romney

Narrated by: Rebecca Romney

Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that... 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

Bad Feminist

By: Roxane Gay

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hours 46 minutes

Abridged: No

“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.”  — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR • Boston Globe •... 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

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

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Maya Hawke

Length: 6 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

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

"Didion’s timeless essays shine with Hawke at the helm. This audiobook will bring... Read more

Recognizing the Stranger

By: Isabella Hammad

Narrated by: Isabella Hammad

Length: 2 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Nine days before October 7, 2023, award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University. The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword, written in the early weeks of 2024, together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what seems a turning point in the narrative of... Read more

Committed

By: Suzanne Scanlon

Narrated by: Suzanne Scanlon

Length: 10 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

A raw and masterful memoir about becoming a woman and going mad—and doing both at once.
 
When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
 
After nearly three... Read more

Didion and Babitz

By: Lili Anolik

Narrated by: Lili Anolik

Length: 12 hours 45 minutes

Abridged: No

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Air Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, The Washington Post, and more!

Joan Didion is revealed at last in this “vivid, engrossing” (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography “that reads like a propulsive novel” (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractions—and... 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

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel

By: Jessica Brody

Narrated by: Jessica Brody

Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success.

Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing.... Read more

Authority

By: Andrea Long Chu

Narrated by: Andrea Long Chu

Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

Read by the author, this bold, provocative collection of essays asks one of the most urgent questions of our time: What is authority when everyone has an opinion on everything?

Since her canonical 2017 essay “On Liking Women,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the... Read more

Why We Read

By: Shannon Reed

Narrated by: Paige McKinney

Length: 8 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

A hilarious and incisive exploration of the joys of reading from a teacher, bibliophile, and Thurber Prize Semifinalist

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the... Read more

The Ministry of Truth

By: Dorian Lynskey

Narrated by: Andrew Wincott

Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

"Rich and compelling. . .Lynskey’s account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory.”
--George Packer, The Atlantic 

An authoritative, wide-ranging, and incredibly timely history of 1984--its literary sources, its composition by Orwell, its deep and lasting effect on the Cold War, and its vast influence throughout world culture at every level, from high... Read more

Everything Must Go

By: Dorian Lynskey

Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey

Length: 14 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

A rich, captivating, and darkly humorous look into the evolution of apocalyptic thought, exploring how film and literature interact with developments in science, politics, and culture, and what factors drive our perennial obsession with the end of the world.

As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for... Read more

A Room of One's Own

By: Virginia Woolf

Narrated by: Sara Nichols

Length: 4 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

"A Room of One's Own" began life as a pair of lectures delivered by Virginia Woolf in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's colleges at the University of Cambridge and was published as a stand-alone book in 1929. In this brilliant examination of literature, history and gender discrimination, Woolf posits that the dearth of... Read more

Trauma Plot

By: Jamie Hood

Narrated by: Jamie Hood

Length: 9 hours 34 minutes

Abridged: No

From a rising literary star and the author of how to be a good girl comes a brilliant, biting, and beautifully wrought memoir of trauma and the cost of survival

"Hood descends into the terrifying dark of the unsayable with the dimmest of flashlights and returns bearing verbal gems, treasures, and marvels. Trauma Plot is a glass case of such... 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

The Great War and Modern Memory

By: Paul Fussell

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Length: 15 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a... Read more

How to Read the Constitution--and Why

By: Kim Wehle

Narrated by: Kim Wehle

Length: 9 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

""A must-read for this era.”—Jake Tapper, CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent An insightful, urgent, and perennially relevant handbook that lays out in common sense language how the United States Constitution works, and how its protections are eroding before our eyes—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and parse the... Read more

So We Read On

By: Maureen Corrigan

Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan

Length: 10 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

The "Fresh Air" book critic investigates the enduring power of The Great Gatsby -- "The Great American Novel we all think we've read, but really haven't."

Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know... Read more

The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 - Abridged

By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

Narrated by: Ignat Solzhenitsyn

Length: 21 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: Yes

“BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20TH CENTURY.” —Time“It is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century.” —David Remnick, The New YorkerThe Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one... Read more