
The English Understand Wool
Storybook ND Series
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Narrated by:
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Lucy Raynor
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By:
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Helen DeWitt
About this listen
A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friendsMaman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified.
Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?
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- Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives
- By: Gretchen Rubin
- Narrated by: Gretchen Rubin
- Length: 1 hr and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The right idea, invoked at the right time, can change our lives. Drawing from her long studies of happiness, and also from the challenges she’s faced herself, writer Gretchen Rubin has discovered the “Secrets of Adulthood” that can help us manage the complexities of life. To convey her conclusions, she turned to the aphorism—the ancient literary discipline that demands that a writer convey a large truth in a few words.
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this is just an audiobook of someone saying phrases that other people have already said.
- By Jaclyn Smith on 04-02-25
By: Gretchen Rubin
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It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
- By: Anne de Marcken
- Narrated by: Jessica Preddy
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.
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The manner of which this book was written
- By Vanessa on 03-31-25
By: Anne de Marcken
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Lightning Rods
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Dushko Petrovich
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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"All I want is to be a success.That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then he fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat hundreds of pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel so sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet his for frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brain storm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top - and to the very heart of corporate insanity.
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Wild tale, enveloping reader
- By Josh on 11-11-11
By: Helen DeWitt
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Brother, I'm Dying
- By: Edwidge Danticat
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning, best-selling author Edwidge Danticat taps her exceptional storytelling gifts for this memoir of the two men who raised her. When the author was only four years old, her parents emigrated from Haiti to New York in search of a better life, leaving their daughter in the care of her uncle Joseph. A peaceful pastor in Port-au-Prince, Joseph raised Edwidge with the love and devotion of a father, despite facing many hardships in politically turbulent Haiti.
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A Superb Reflection
- By Chandra on 12-29-07
By: Edwidge Danticat
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The Transit of Venus
- By: Shirley Hazzard
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson, Shirley Hazzard
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Caro, gallant and adventurous, has been courted long and hopelessly by young scientist, Ted Tice. The milder Grace seeks fulfilment in an apparently happy marriage. But as the decades pass and the characters weave in and out of each other's lives, love, death, and two secrets wait in ambush for them.
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Not my favorite read.
- By Jenny Terry on 05-27-25
By: Shirley Hazzard
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The Easter Parade
- A Novel
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Easter Parade, first published in 1976, we meet sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes when they are still the children of divorced parents. We observe the sisters over four decades, watching them grow into two very different women. Sarah is stable and stalwart, settling into an unhappy marriage. Emily is precocious and independent, struggling with one unsatisfactory love affair after another.
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Interesting storyline and subject matter
- By lm on 05-21-25
By: Richard Yates
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The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Ramey
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Sarah Ramey
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.
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💯 a valuable use of your money AND time. 💯
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-20
By: Sarah Ramey
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Monsters
- A Fan's Dilemma
- By: Claire Dederer
- Narrated by: Claire Dederer
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Highly topical, morally wise, honest to the core, Monsters is certain to incite a conversation about whether and how we can separate artists from their art.
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Adresses my many questions
- By Syd Young on 11-01-23
By: Claire Dederer
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33 Place Brugmann
- A Novel
- By: Alice Austen
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio, Jilly Bond, Nicholas Boulton, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
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A wonderful book
- By iggynut on 04-12-25
By: Alice Austen
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This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
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Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
I’m curious to know whether the author shares the (often unreliable) narrators worship of taste and refinement as an ethical code. I haven’t read The Last Samurai, which many people love. The authors note at the end is odd and intriguing.
Original, funny and biting
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Bad taste is no way to live your life.
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Thought Provoking
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short story
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The wild and crazy story, narrated brilliantly!
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The English understand humor
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