
The Housekeeper and the Professor
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Yoko Ogawa
About this listen
He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every 80 minutes), the professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the housekeeper and her young son. The professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities - like the housekeeper's shoe size - and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.
Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.
©2003 Yoko Ogawa. Translation Copyright 2009 by Stephen Snyder. (P)2013 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Avni Doshi
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In vivid and visceral prose, Tibor Jones South Asia Prize-winning writer Avni Doshi tells a story, at once shocking and empathetic, about love and betrayal between a mother and a daughter. A journey into shifting memories, altering identities, and the subjective nature of truth, Burnt Sugar is a stunning and unforgettable debut.
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Wonderful narration - Story is lacking.
- By Anon54fdgnb7 on 02-05-21
By: Avni Doshi
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Sourdough
- A Novel
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
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Read the print version if you are from SF Bay Area
- By Julie on 10-07-17
By: Robin Sloan
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Life Ceremony
- Stories
- By: Sayaka Murata
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, Jeena Yi, Nancy Wu, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
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read if ur autistic
- By Anonymous User on 05-07-25
By: Sayaka Murata
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Visitor
- Transcendence, Book 1
- By: John Triptych
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Years have passed since Earth encountered its first known interstellar object: Oumuamua. Now an even larger one has been discovered, following the exact same trajectory as its predecessor. Scientists around the world theorize that this can no longer be passed off as mere coincidence - the new contact must be an artificial construct of some kind.
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The Story had Potential but Failed in Execution
- By Commander Dave on 12-12-21
By: John Triptych
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Convenience Store Woman
- By: Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori - translator
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Tokyo resident Keiko Furukara has never fit in - neither in her family, nor in school - but when at the age of 18 she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart, she realizes instantly that she has found her purpose in life. Delighted to be able to exist in a place where the rules of social interaction are crystal clear (many are laid out line-by-line in the store's manual), Keiko does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and mode of speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less.
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Am amazing and different story
- By D.R. on 04-10-19
By: Sayaka Murata, and others
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In Praise of Shadows
- By: Junichiro Tanizaki
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In Praise of Shadows is an eloquent tribute to the austere beauty of traditional Japanese aesthetics. Through architecture, ceramics, theatre, food, women, and even toilets, Tanizaki explains the essence of shadows and darkness, and how they are able to augment beauty. He laments the heavy electric lighting of the West and its introduction to Japan, and shows how the artificial, bright, and polished aesthetic of the West contrasts unfavorably with the moody and natural light of the East.
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How to listen
- By Anonymous User on 03-25-18
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The Healing Season of Pottery
- By: Yeon Somin, Clare Richards
- Narrated by: Jennifer Kim
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Burned out by her TV news writing job, Jungmin leaves in an attempt to salvage her life. When she stumbles upon a mysterious pottery studio, she feels immediately at home. The warmth, the smell of clay, and the incredible coffee awaken her senses and make her feel alive for the first time in months. Over the coming year, season by season, pot by pot, Jungmin returns to herself and builds unexpected friendships with the other members of the studio, who are all working through their own trials at the pottery wheel.
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A lovely surprise
- By Sharon on 02-24-25
By: Yeon Somin, and others
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Breasts and Eggs
- By: Mieko Kawakami
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, Jeena Yi
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Breasts & Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own. It tells the story of three women: the 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent.
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Masterful Writing and Performance
- By Noelle on 03-01-21
By: Mieko Kawakami
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Things We Lost in the Fire
- Stories
- By: Mariana Enriquez
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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An arresting collection of short stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortazar, by an exciting new international talent.
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Great short story collection
- By Gatster on 06-15-17
By: Mariana Enriquez
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Dreamland
- By: Kevin Baker
- Narrated by: John Rubenstein
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
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Among the thousands of immigrants who arrive in New York harbor is an Eastern European stowaway called Kid Twist who earns his keep as an enforcer for the ruthless gangster Gyp the Blood. Soon though, Kid brutally splits with Gyp, leaving him bleeding from a shovel wound to the head in a rancid basement on the Lower East Side. His life now in jeopardy, Kid flees to Brooklyn, finding asylum with a Coney Island carny known as Trick the Dwarf.
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Overall, okay...interesting story
- By MT on 03-01-19
By: Kevin Baker
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Briefly, Very Beautiful
- A Novel
- By: Roz Dineen
- Narrated by: Henrietta Meire
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In a land destabilized by unsafe air, wildfires, floods, viruses, supply shortages, and homegrown terror, Cass is raising three small children by herself in the city. Her husband, Nathaniel, has gone all too willingly to serve as a medic in an overseas war. His absence, and Cass's isolation, has brought her into an exhausted but harmonious rhythm with the children; while it's a frightening time, there is also a surprising, quiet tenderness in living on the edge of societal collapse.
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parenting during climate change apocalypse
- By E. Tillema on 09-28-24
By: Roz Dineen
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The Lost Café Schindler
- One Family, Two Wars, and the Search for Truth
- By: Meriel Schindler
- Narrated by: Caitlin Cavannaugh
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck, Austria, and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship but also the truth behind their family history. The Lost Café Schindler recreates the journey of an extraordinary family.
By: Meriel Schindler
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F*ck You, I'm Irish
- Why We Irish Are Awesome
- By: Rasher Tierney
- Narrated by: Gary Furlong
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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From battling oppression and famine in Ireland to overcoming poverty and discrimination in America, we Irish gained our fightin' moniker by standing up for our rights and earning the respect we deserve. Now, the amazing feats, astounding people and incredible facts in this fascinating book of Irish trivia will make you proudly say, “F*ck you, I'm Irish”.
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Overall Great Fun
- By Cheyanne Ramos on 04-06-25
By: Rasher Tierney
This would be one of my top books and it is the type of book that reminds me of Bel Canto in the way you fall in love with the interesting characters
Sweet enduring inserting story
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The Most Beautiful Novel...
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Beautiful merging of generations
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And the audio reading is top notch. I listen to 100+ books per year and am very particular about narrators who let the story shine rather than make distract you with overly dramatic readings or odd accents or cadences.
Math is beautiful
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Along the way, the listener learns about number theory, baseball in Japan, the struggles of a single mother, and how one man's remarkable intelligence and sensitivity have survived a terrible accident. Told from the first person perspective of the housekeeper, this book is warm, honest, and interesting, with no sentimentality. The narration is perfect and Campbell does a great job of giving voice to the young housekeeper.
This is a Gem! Well worth a Listen.
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It was definitely worth the credit.
Charming exploration of math, memory and love
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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If you love math and nonfiction, but have trouble reading fiction, you might somehow be able to read this.What did you like best about this story?
The relationship between Root and the Professor! So cute.Have you listened to any of Cassandra Campbell’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
no. But I love this.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
When the housekeeper was so blue because she could not work for the professor. It made me very sad for her.Any additional comments?
Beautiful math.One of the few fiction books I have read lately.
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Very enjoyable
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The repetitive reintroductions between the housekeeper and the professor felt a bit monotonous and the cyclical nature of their interactions were both endearing and frustrating. I felt that the housekeeper’s character development was somewhat shallow. The story delved deeper into her role as a caregiver than her personal aspirations or struggles. The novel introduced intriguing math concepts, and thankfully did not delve into them extensively. 😀 The story was not about math but about themes of found family and human connection.
3.7 stars🌟🌟🌟💫!
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Because there is so little action, I couldn't help but be nagged by one of my pet peeves: The main female character has no interests of her own and only finds joy in life when living through the pleasures of the males around her. Still, I'll think about the book often as I recall amicable numbers and the strange relationship between 220 and 284.
Bechdel test: Fail — there are two female characters who speak but they don’t speak about anything other than a man.
Overall grade: B
Perfect narration.
Not much happiness but if you like mathematics...
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