-
Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin
- Narrated by: Rachel Music
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Nin's importance as a feminist and visionary is finally revealed. Based on a new examination of long-buried letters, papers, and original manuscripts held at UCLA and found in Nin's Los Angeles home, Spy in the House of Anais Nin takes a penetrating look at Nin's incredible life and famous diary. Firmly placing Nin in her historical context as a feminist and visionary, this collection of essays lifts the lid on the origins of Nin's secrets and lies, gives voice to her husband via an unpublished letter, reveals Nin's real politics, and discloses the truth of Gore Vidal’s feelings for Nin via an unearthed love letter from Vidal to Nin. With this book, author Kim Krizan serves as the ultimate spy, conducting deep background on Anais Nin - the notorious, rule-shattering diarist who was the self-proclaimed Spy in the House of Love.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Henry & June
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Cherie Lunghi
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anais Nin wrote her diary at the end of 1931, at the close of a sexually tumultuous and emotional year as part of a ménage a trois with fellow writer Henry Miller and his beautiful wife June Mansfield. 'I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.' Nin's passionate and consuming relationship with Henry & June transformed a previously monogamous wife into an uninhibited and sexually liberated woman.
-
-
Confusing Narrator
- By Lauren on 07-11-09
By: Anais Nin
-
The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Diary of Anaïs Nin is the published version of Anaïs Nin's own private manuscript diary, which she began at age 11 in 1914 during a trip from Europe to New York with her mother and two brothers. Nin would later say she had begun the diary as a letter to her father, Cuban composer Joaquín Nin, who had abandoned the family a few years earlier.
-
-
Beautiful perspective from an incredible woman, surrounded by difficult and incredible men
- By Richard McKown on 12-11-23
By: Anais Nin
-
The Second Mountain
- How People Move from the Prison of Self to the Joy of Commitment
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
-
-
Pursue meaning, reject hyper-individualism
- By Adam Shields on 05-07-19
By: David Brooks
-
The Road to Character
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, David Brooks
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Looking to some of the world's greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint.
-
-
Rich, textured stories
- By MarkM on 05-25-15
By: David Brooks
-
The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
-
-
A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Henry & June
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Cherie Lunghi
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Anais Nin wrote her diary at the end of 1931, at the close of a sexually tumultuous and emotional year as part of a ménage a trois with fellow writer Henry Miller and his beautiful wife June Mansfield. 'I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.' Nin's passionate and consuming relationship with Henry & June transformed a previously monogamous wife into an uninhibited and sexually liberated woman.
-
-
Confusing Narrator
- By Lauren on 07-11-09
By: Anais Nin
-
The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
- By: Anais Nin
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Diary of Anaïs Nin is the published version of Anaïs Nin's own private manuscript diary, which she began at age 11 in 1914 during a trip from Europe to New York with her mother and two brothers. Nin would later say she had begun the diary as a letter to her father, Cuban composer Joaquín Nin, who had abandoned the family a few years earlier.
-
-
Beautiful perspective from an incredible woman, surrounded by difficult and incredible men
- By Richard McKown on 12-11-23
By: Anais Nin
-
The Second Mountain
- How People Move from the Prison of Self to the Joy of Commitment
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
-
-
Pursue meaning, reject hyper-individualism
- By Adam Shields on 05-07-19
By: David Brooks
-
The Road to Character
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, David Brooks
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Looking to some of the world's greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint.
-
-
Rich, textured stories
- By MarkM on 05-25-15
By: David Brooks
-
The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
-
-
A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Figuring
- By: Maria Popova
- Narrated by: Natascha McElhone
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.
-
-
Stunning
- By Laura on 03-12-19
By: Maria Popova
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
-
Coventry
- Essays
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Françoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential listening for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
-
-
This review is biased
- By Paul on 05-16-21
By: Rachel Cusk
-
Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz
- The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton
- By: Gail Crowther
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introduced at a workshop in Boston University led by the acclaimed and famous poet Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms.
-
-
Good Dual Bio
- By J. on 07-04-21
By: Gail Crowther
-
Something More
- By: Sarah Ban Breathnach
- Narrated by: Sarah Ban Breathnach
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If it appears that you have everything, whether it be a beautiful home, an adoring family, and fulfilling work, why do you secretly harbor a desire for something more? Ban Breathnach, the wise, warm, and compassionate voice of Simple Abundance, takes you on a journey of self-discovery."
-
-
Maximum Information
- By Kerrie on 07-02-12
-
Paradise Lost
- A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- By: David S. Brown
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts.
-
-
The newest definitive Fitzgerald biography
- By Praxia on 01-08-18
By: David S. Brown
-
Passages
- Predictable Crises of Adult Life
- By: Gail Sheehy
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie, Gail Sheehy
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gail Sheehy’s classic bestseller, Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, is available with a new introduction. For decades, Passages has been inspiring audiences to see the predictable crises of adult life as opportunities for growth. She charts the stages between 18 and 50 as unfolding in a pattern of adult development: once recognized, more easily managed.
-
-
A mirror for aspiring grown-ups.
- By Mikey on 10-26-20
By: Gail Sheehy
-
Secrets of the Flesh
- A Life of Colette
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 25 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A scandalously talented stage performer, a practiced seductress of both men and women, and the flamboyant author of some of the greatest works of 20th-century literature, Colette was our first true superstar. Now, in Judith Thurman's Secrets of the Flesh, Colette at last has a biography worthy of her dazzling reputation.
-
-
More than just a biography
- By Phip Herrick on 04-22-21
By: Judith Thurman
-
My Life in Middlemarch
- By: Rebecca Mead
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch,regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage, and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not.
-
-
A Reader's Pleasure!
- By Doggy Bird on 02-17-14
By: Rebecca Mead
-
Goethe
- Life as a Work of Art
- By: Rüdiger Safranksi, David Dollenmayer - translator
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 24 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rüdiger Safranski's Goethe: Life as a Work of Art is the first definitive biography in a generation to tell the larger-than-life story of the writer considered to be the Shakespeare of German literature. Drawing upon the trove of letters, diaries, and notebooks Goethe left behind, as well as correspondence and criticism from Goethe's contemporaries, Safranski weaves a rich tale of Europe in the throes of revolution and of the man whose ideas heralded a new era.
-
-
Academic
- By tpritch on 07-06-19
By: Rüdiger Safranksi, and others
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
Related to this topic
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
-
-
The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
-
Coming Apart
- By: Daphne Rose Kingma, Katherine Woodward Thomas - foreword
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Next to the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship is the most painful experience most people will ever go through. Coming Apart is a first aid kit for getting through the ending. It is a tool that will enable you to live through the end of your relationship with your self-esteem intact.
-
-
Title does not reflect the content
- By NeVi on 04-25-21
By: Daphne Rose Kingma, and others
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
-
-
The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
-
Coming Apart
- By: Daphne Rose Kingma, Katherine Woodward Thomas - foreword
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Next to the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship is the most painful experience most people will ever go through. Coming Apart is a first aid kit for getting through the ending. It is a tool that will enable you to live through the end of your relationship with your self-esteem intact.
-
-
Title does not reflect the content
- By NeVi on 04-25-21
By: Daphne Rose Kingma, and others
-
The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention.
-
-
Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
-
Love and Limerence
- The Experience of Being in Love
- By: Dorothy Tennov
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First released more than 40 years ago, Love and Limerence has become a classic in the psychology of emotion. As relevent today as it was then, this book offers insight into love, infatuation, madness, and all flavors of emotion in between.
-
-
rundown of surveys and stats
- By supermichelle on 12-28-22
By: Dorothy Tennov
-
Romantic Outlaws
- The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
- By: Charlotte Gordon
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charlotte Gordon's new work is a fresh look at the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, who together comprise one of the most illustrious and inspiring mother-daughter pairs in history.
-
-
Tons of info, poor format choice.
- By Gotta Tellya on 02-06-17
By: Charlotte Gordon
-
The Second Mountain
- How People Move from the Prison of Self to the Joy of Commitment
- By: David Brooks
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
-
-
Pursue meaning, reject hyper-individualism
- By Adam Shields on 05-07-19
By: David Brooks
-
The Feminine Mystique
- By: Betty Friedan
- Narrated by: Parker Posey
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The book that changed the consciousness of a country - and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic - these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name", that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since.
-
-
A landmark book of its time and relevant now
- By Anthony on 01-23-15
By: Betty Friedan
-
Philosopher of the Heart
- The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
- By: Clare Carlisle
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most passionate and challenging of all modern philosophers, and is often regarded as the founder of existentialism. Over about a decade in the 1840s and 1850s, writings poured from his pen pursuing the question of existence - how to be a human being in the world? - while exploring the possibilities of Christianity and confronting the failures of its institutional manifestation around him.
-
-
Fatally flawed
- By Citizen M on 02-26-23
By: Clare Carlisle
-
Figuring
- By: Maria Popova
- Narrated by: Natascha McElhone
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries - beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.
-
-
Stunning
- By Laura on 03-12-19
By: Maria Popova
-
What Would Frida Do?
- A Guide to Living Boldly
- By: Arianna Davis
- Narrated by: Marisa Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Revered as much for her fierce spirit as she is for her art, Frida Kahlo stands today as a brazen symbol of daring creativity. She was a woman ahead of her time whose paintings have earned her generations of admirers around the globe. But perhaps her greatest work of art was her own life. What Would Frida Do? explores the feminist icon's signature style, outspoken politics, and boldness in love and art, even in the face of pain and heartbreak.
-
-
I was excited
- By Edgar E Armendariz on 01-14-21
By: Arianna Davis
-
Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.
-
-
Beautiful memoir
- By Gabriel Smith on 07-25-22
By: Jan Morris
-
How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
-
-
A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
-
I Am Dynamite!
- A Life of Nietzsche
- By: Sue Prideaux
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
-
-
Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
-
The Great Work of Your Life
- A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling
- By: Stephen Cope
- Narrated by: Kevin M. Connolly
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To know your true calling - your dharma, as the yogis say - is perhaps the greatest desire within each of us. And yet, few can say we know our purpose with absolute certainty. Fortunately, there is a time-tested guide - an ancient map - for discovering and fulfilling your unique calling. In The Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope walks you through each step of the journey.
-
-
Jungian Zen Psychoanalytical Retired Meditation Teacher
- By Glenn Guillory, SFO on 06-13-20
By: Stephen Cope
What listeners say about Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- TheGoddessDiaries
- 01-20-20
A MUST HAVE to Compliment Your Nin Collection
Equally revered and reviled for her brave commitment to living a life by her own design, Anais Nin was, in many ways, a pioneer. Anais Nin lived a life of her own design in a time when women were expected to fall into very specific roles. Her diaries could be considered ahead of their time -- a template, if you will, for fashion bloggers and Instagram Influencers everywhere who also wish to live a life by their own design.
Nin wrote of taboo subjects, erotica and of her "quest for self" during a time when women writers had nom du plums to get work. And though she was often misunderstood by her contemporaries, her greatest works of art, her personal diaries, now serve to inspire countless dreamers to this day. Indeed, just open Instagram on any given day and you are likely to see Nin's words splashed across the platform in beautifully designed memes.
It goes without saying that Nin lived a complicated life --in a time when divorce was unheard of and families remained intact despite relational issues, Nin's father abandoned his family for a young lover, forcing her mother to uproot and move them to America. This would be the catalyst for Nin's writing as self-exploration.
Later, Nin would support herself by writing erotica (unheard of for women) in the 1920s and 30s. She had multiple affairs with men and women and was even a bigamist for the last 25 years of her life (seemingly "using" one husband's money to finance her self-indulgent lifestyle...) She documented this 60+ year journey in her diaries, which upon publication in the 90s, came under equal acclaim and plausible question. Nin was called a liar after it was revealed she kept two diaries - one of the harsh realities of her life and the other a vision of her "life created."
Have I mentioned that Nin lived a complicated life? Don't get me wrong, I'm a super fan of Nin, but I've often struggled to reconcile my own immense love for Nin's craft against my extreme discomfort over her personal choices. I listened to Kim Kirzan's "Spy in the House of Anais Nin" in the hopes that her analysis of Nin's life would fill in some blanks, and I applaud Kirzan for going deep into the task of dissecting the double life of Anais Nin!
A Spy in the House of Anais Nin brings compassionate inquiry for the underpinnings of Nin's true motivations. For instance, in our modern day, its a (very sad but) common reality that many people suffer from the trauma of abandonment. If one has a perceived personality flaw, we just understand that person is "dealing with abandonment issues."
This was not necessarily the case for people during Nin's childhood and in the chapter, "What to Wear to a Childhood Abandonment," one comes to understand how "ahead of her time" Nin truly was --in all regards. One feels the fullness of Nin's passion for fashion, understanding her lifelong need to beautifully adorn herself was more than a desire to indulge in pretty things, but a "rebuke against her father's disinterest." Fashion was not merely a self-indulgence, but a way to heal her broken heart, a way for Nin to cloak herself in beauty (as she attempted to do with every aspect of her life), and to safeguard herself from possible further rejection.
We also come to understand how deep her psychic wounds of childhood abandonment influenced practically every decision Nin made in life --from what to wear, to how she used fantasy as an escape from her pain, to how she showed up in her relationships.
Kirzan explains that Nin did not want to inflict this same pain onto her husband, Guiler, and so instead of divorcing him, chose to maintain a relationship that felt (by both Nin's and Guiler's accounts) unfulfilling. It was thus she became a bigamist.-- Nin would not leave Guiler and married Rupert Pole (the "love of her life".) She maintained these bi-coastal relationships for 25+ years, mostly in secret!
I also particularly like how Kirzan dispelled the myth that Nin was indulgently vapid as "evidenced" by the lack of accounts of current events in her diaries (such as Kennedy's assassination, for example.) Kirzan uncovered layers of Nin's personality that were previously unexposed in her expurgated diaries, revealing a modern woman who was not only very much into current affairs but who also expressed her passionate political views in letters to her contemporaries and within the pages of her diaries themselves. Unfortunately, these accounts were not originally published, lending to the misunderstanding.
Kirzan uncovers Nin's motivations for creating a life by her own design with an articulation of a depth psychologist, avoiding judgement or shaming, and just laying bare the facts from Anais Nin's diaries, letters and archives. (Oh, to hold these diaries in one's hand, thumbing through the pages, smelling the paper, feeling the texture against forefinger and devouring the words bit by bit... I can only imagine the thrill to be that close to the heart of a woman whose work deserves to be explored more deeply than a mere Instagram quote meme... !)
Anais Nin has inspired countless women everywhere to follow their dreams, no matter the seeming discomfort or suffering involved. Indeed, the suffering is part of the beauty and anyone who has enjoyed Anais Nin's work will definitely appreciate Krizan's analysis of Nin's life and work.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful