The Miss Dennis School of Writing
And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life
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Narrated by:
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Jannie Meisberger
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By:
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Alice Steinbach
About this listen
This first book by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach is an intimate, personal collection of essays, remembrances, and columns that follows in the creative non-fiction tradition of Anna Quindelen and Mary Sarton.
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
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I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
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Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Speak
- A Novel
- By: Louisa Hall
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley, Christopher Ashman, Adrienne Rusk, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human and what it means to be less than fully alive.
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Like nothing else
- By Anonymous User on 06-22-17
By: Louisa Hall
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
What listeners say about The Miss Dennis School of Writing
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Dee
- 03-23-15
A book that must be shared
This collection of her columns were hidden gems. I laughed and cried.
The narrator did an excellent read with expression.
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- mandy
- 01-02-18
Interesting
I really enjoyed this audiobook. It was interesting to experience a different generation of raising children. There was a good amount of humor and great writing!
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. The fact that I was gifted this book had no influence over my opinion of it
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-10-17
Insightful Jaunt!!
Would you listen to The Miss Dennis School of Writing again? Why?
I would listen to it again. The story was a secret glimpse into what and how a woman thinks and perceives the world around her. It explores real scenarios in which Alice, the author, finds herself and the situational humor shines through in glances. It is definitely worth the time.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Alice, of course, was my favorite character. I like her outlook on life and how she sees deals most humorously with situations such as sibling rivalry, and Thanksgiving Dinner at a Day Spa!
Which scene was your favorite?
I can't choose just one! It's a great book and Jannie brought it all to life. She was clear and concise, reading the words as if they were somehow stitched by her tongue with sugary confection. Her accent doesn't hurt.
Who was the most memorable character of The Miss Dennis School of Writing and why?
The story was full of characters, but none more than Alice. Sometimes irrational, sometimes funny and awkward, and sometimes a worry wart, she does not fail to entertain.
Any additional comments?
I really enjoyed listening to this every morning and every afternoon for the last week on the way to and from work! A great way to pass the time and share the story of a woman's life.
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- GoingGoingGone...
- 12-01-17
A Slice of Time
The author came of age in the generation before mine. I don't usually read books like this, tending as I do more to the historical and non-fictional, and I didn't exactly know what to expect, but I figured I'd take a chance on this one given the reputation of the writer. I was not disappointed.
She being a single parent raising sons, it was fascinating to get a woman's-eye-perspective of what it felt like to grow up, and become an adult in the era of the 1960's and 1970's. That was the era that my mother raised me, under similar circumstances. So since the writing covers the span of her life from childhood to adulthood, the things she wrote "rang true", given the experience I had my mother's thoughts.
The author passed on about 5 years ago, just as my mother had. The things they enjoyed seemed similar. And so, it was like listening to my mother's diary being read to me. Steinbach helped me to see more than I otherwise could, the hallmark of a fine writer.
The reader was also quite excellent - and though she had a British rather than a Baltimore accent, it wasn't out of place given the writing style. Well done.
I was given this book at no cost on the condition that I write a review for it.
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