
How to Read a Book
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Eileen Stevens
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By:
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Monica Wood
About this listen
"The perfect pick to really light a fire under my book club, and yours....A reminder that goodness, and books, can still win in this world." —New York Times Book Review
"A beautiful, big-hearted treasure of a novel." —Lily King
National Bestseller *
From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…
Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
"A deeply humane and touching novel; highly recommended for book clubs and fans of Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures." — Booklist
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- By: Edgar Lee Masters
- Narrated by: Deaver Brown
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Spoon River has 244 accounts of the lives of people in the town that explain its goings on over a couple of centuries. Each free form verse is presented as an epitaph of one of the citizens delivered themselves, often criticizing the words said about them on their tombstone or the monument or stone left above them. The stories build on one another as well as reference various family members and others mentioned in other stories.
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Surprised this is on Audible
- By Ladybug on 09-14-12
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How to Age Disgracefully
- A Novel
- By: Clare Pooley
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.
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Aging imperfections
- By Susan Love on 08-07-24
By: Clare Pooley
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Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books
- A Novel
- By: Kirsten Miller
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic” books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.
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Small town attitudes
- By Maureen Teague on 08-26-24
By: Kirsten Miller
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Real Life and Other Fictions
- A Novel
- By: Susan Coll
- Narrated by: Jane Oppenheimer
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true.
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Interesting
- By Karenadd on 09-12-24
By: Susan Coll
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The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife
- A Novel
- By: Anna Johnston
- Narrated by: Tim Carroll
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head—as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.
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Somewhat engaging but predictable
- By RSNYC on 10-15-24
By: Anna Johnston
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Sipsworth
- By: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
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A charming antidote for your troubles.
- By Pamela J Wollum on 07-02-24
By: Simon Van Booy
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Spoon River Anthology
- By: Edgar Lee Masters
- Narrated by: Patrick Fraley, Edward Asner
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.
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Magnificent American poetry
- By Admiral Pike on 04-14-05
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The One-in-a-Million Boy
- Booktrack Edition
- By: Monica Wood
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, guitarist Quinn Porter has been on the road, chasing gig after gig, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness records' obsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness for his paternal shortcomings by completing the requirements for one of his son's unfinished Boy Scout badges. For seven Saturdays, Quinn does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the spry 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly. Quinn soon discovers that the boy had talked Ona into gunning for the world record for Oldest Licensed Driver.
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Not even done yet—-listener beware!!!!
- By Amy Jane on 12-30-18
By: Monica Wood
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How to Read Now
- Essays
- By: Elaine Castillo
- Narrated by: Elaine Castillo
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman’s reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy—within ourselves, and with each other.
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Necessary
- By Anonymous User on 01-08-23
By: Elaine Castillo
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The Displacements
- A Novel
- By: Bruce Holsinger
- Narrated by: Austenne Grey
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs.
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3.75 of 5 Stars
- By reader and teacher on 08-06-22
By: Bruce Holsinger
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The Lion Women of Tehran
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”
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Wonderful story Awful Narration
- By Sogol on 08-14-24
By: Marjan Kamali
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The Story She Left Behind
- A Novel
- By: Patti Callahan Henry
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Theo Solomon
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington’s magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother.
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Beautiful Story! Perfect Narration
- By April on 03-26-25
What listeners say about How to Read a Book
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-12-24
Heartfelt realistic fiction!
In large measure predictable it had enough surprises, was full of well-developed characters and a thought provoking story. I enjoyed my listen!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Ev
- 09-15-24
Beautiful writing and story.
Interesting characters. Beautiful writing and story. Diverse characters and lives, wonderfully intertwined. Highly recommend this book as well as her previous one.
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- Ed R.
- 09-13-24
Easy and healthy read about women and birds
I liked this sweet book about the complexities of life and goodness of people through the ultimate forgiveness
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- Maureen D
- 03-05-25
Loved everything about this book!
That’s it- best book I’ve read in a long time.. and I read a lot!
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- jom
- 03-25-25
Great character development
I loved the story and how it was told by three people. The three main characters were flawed, but lovable.
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- ann rudd
- 04-21-25
Great writing
Love this book. Especially loved characters Violet and all her fellow female inmates. Harriet also a great character
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-01-25
Great story
I loved it. Very well written and performed The characters were wonderful and I loved getting to know them.
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- 207Betty
- 08-30-24
Story of redemption and love
Loved the way Monica Wood brought the characters to life! Life can be unfair, and we may make tragic mistakes, but compassionate, caring people can make it so much better.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Raelene Vautrin
- 07-01-24
The characters, I just finished snd I miss them already.
I enjoyed this gentle tale of love and forgiveness. As an older lady I appreciated the romance between Harriet and Frank.
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- WENDY
- 10-05-24
So good!!!
This was my most recent book for book club and it did not disappoint! One of the best fiction books I’ve read in a long time. A great book for contemplating the complexities of life and the beauty woven with the many stories we each experience in life. I highly recommend this book - twists and turns and doesn’t disappoint!
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