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
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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
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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 Austenāand 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 ⢠āFrom The New Yorkerās beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.āāEsquire
Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times ⢠āA whip-smart, challenging book.āāZadie Smith ⢠āJia... Read more


Bad Feminist
By: Roxane Gay
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 46 minutes
Abridged: No
āRoxane 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.āĀ Ā āĀ Sheila Heti, author ofĀ How Should a Person Be?A New York Times BestsellerBest Book of the Year: NPR ⢠Boston Globe ā¢... Read more
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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 Prizeāwinning 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 ourselvesāand 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, Hawkeās unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."āThe Orange County Register
"Didionās 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 Hammadās 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
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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 madāand doing both at once.
Ā
When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her motherāfeeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable paināshe made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Ā
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, Harperās Bazaar, The Washington Post, and more!
Joan Didion is revealed at last in this āvivid, engrossingā (Vogue), and outrageously provocative dual biography āthat reads like a propulsive novelā (Oprah Daily) revealing the mutual attractionsāand... Read more


Monsters
By: Claire Dederer
Narrated by: Claire Dederer
Length: 8 hours 14 minutes
Abridged: No
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK ā¢Ā 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 āOn Liking Women,ā the Pulitzer Prizeāwinning 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. . .Lynskeyās account of the reach ofĀ 1984Ā is revelatory.ā
--George Packer, The AtlanticĀ
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, āPeople 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
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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 ā¢Ā NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER ⢠ONE OF TIMEāS 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE ā¢Ā A ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness
āBrilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.āāClaudia 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
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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.āāJake Tapper, CNN Anchor and Chief Washington CorrespondentĀ An insightful, urgent, andĀ perennially relevant handbook that lays out in common sense language how the United States Constitution works, and how its protections are eroding before our eyesāessential reading for anyone who wants to understand and parse the... Read more
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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
āBEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE 20THĀ CENTURY.ā āTimeāIt is impossible to name a book that had a greater effect on the political and moral consciousness of the late twentieth century.ā āDavid Remnick,Ā The New YorkerThe Nobel Prize winnerās towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one... Read more
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