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The Writer's Library
- The Authors You Love on the Books that Changed Their Lives
- Narrated by: Nancy Pearl, Jeff Schwager, Xe Sands, Dominic Hoffman, Eileen Stevens, Piper Goodeve, Andrew Eiden, Lameece Issaq, Rick Adamson, JD Jackson, Ryan Do, Timothy Andrés Pabon, Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Performed by Nancy Pearl, Jeff Schwager and a multi-cast that includes book contributors Luis Alberto Urrea, Siri Hustvedt, Laurie Frankel, Vendela Vida, and Richard Ford. The Writer’s Library audiobook also features real conversations with Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, and Laila Lalami.
With a foreword by Susan Orlean, 23 of today's living literary legends, including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon, reveal the books that made them think, brought them joy, and changed their lives in this intimate, moving, and insightful collection from "American's Librarian" Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager that celebrates the power of literature and reading to connect us all.
Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In this ebullient book, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted-playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark.
The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors - the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is.
A love letter to books and a celebration of wordsmiths, The Writer’s Library is a treasure for anyone who has been moved by the written word.
The authors in The Writer’s Library are: Russell Banks, TC Boyle, Michael Chabon, Susan Choi, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, Laurie Frankel, Andrew Sean Greer, Jane Hirshfield, Siri Hustvedt, Charles Johnson, Laila Lalami, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Madeline Miller, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Luis Alberto Urrea, Vendela Vida, Ayelet Waldman, Maaza Mengiste, and Amor Towles.
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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.
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
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Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
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So We Read On
- How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
- By: Maureen Corrigan
- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
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Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Origins of The Wheel of Time
- The Legends and Mythologies That Inspired Robert Jordan
- By: Michael Livingston, Harriet McDougal - contributor, Robert Jordan
- Narrated by: Harriet McDougal, Kate Reading, Michael Kramer, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Take a deep dive into the real-world history and mythology that inspired the world of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time®. This companion to the internationally bestselling series will delve into the creation of Jordan’s masterpiece, drawing from interviews and an unprecedented examination of his unpublished notes. Michael Livingston tells the behind-the-scenes story of who Jordan was, how he worked, and why he holds such an important place in modern literature. Origins of The Wheel of Time will provide exciting knowledge and insights to both new and longtime fans.
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Agenda driven ideological bend.
- By Maxwell on 06-19-23
By: Michael Livingston, and others
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The Enchanted Hour
- The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction
- By: Meghan Cox Gurdon
- Narrated by: Meghan Cox Gurdon
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A Wall Street Journal writer’s conversation-changing look at how reading aloud makes adults and children smarter, happier, healthier, more successful, and more closely attached, even as technology pulls in the other direction.
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advice to take to heart
- By Brian on 04-30-20
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Dear Fahrenheit 451
- Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks
- By: Annie Spence
- Narrated by: Stephanie Spicer
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. They remove books that patrons no longer check out, and they put back books they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties - everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly.
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Totally captivating
- By Grace Smith on 03-24-18
By: Annie Spence
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Becoming Duchess Goldblatt
- By: anonymous
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Lyle Lovett, J. Smith-Cameron
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media. Fans around the world are drawn to Her Grace's voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community that's sprung up around her.
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Oh Dear Duchess!
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 07-20-20
By: anonymous
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Salinger
- By: David Shields, Shane Salerno
- Narrated by: Peter Friedman, January LaVoy, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last 56 years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, listeners will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
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Ingenious novel or biography? Hard to tell....
- By Melinda on 09-05-13
By: David Shields, and others
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Paperback Crush
- The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction
- By: Gabrielle Moss
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A hilarious and nostalgic trip through the history of paperback preteen series of the '80s and '90s. Every 20- or 30-something woman knows these books. The pink covers, the flimsy paper, the zillion volumes in the series that kept you reading for your entire adolescence. Paperback Crush dives in deep to this golden age with affection, history, and a little bit of snark.
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A trip down memory lane.
- By Lila Fowler on 11-09-18
By: Gabrielle Moss
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The Memoir Project
- A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text For Writing & Life
- By: Marion Roach Smith
- Narrated by: Marion Roach Smith
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether or not one has lived an exceptional or dramatic life, we inherently understand that writing memoir—whether it’s a book, blog, or just a letter to a child - is the single greatest portal to self-examination. Stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind “writer’s block” and learn how to write with intent. Marion Roach Smith’s disarmingly frank but wildly fun tactics offer you simple and effective guidelines that work. Your legacy beings now.
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amazing what you can learn from brevity
- By Schwartz-Burrill on 09-15-11
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Parfit
- A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
- By: David Edmonds
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.
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Loved it
- By Anna Karenina on 07-05-23
By: David Edmonds
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Manifesto
- On Never Giving Up
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Bernardine Evaristo
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism.
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Glorious performance and inspiring story
- By Maggi Morehouse on 01-25-22
What listeners say about The Writer's Library
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Patti Sprouse
- 07-07-24
A very different angle on good reads
The idea of asking writer's what they read, what they have in their personal libraries produced very intimate and interesting portraits of each author. Hearing about memories from early reading and about books and authors each found inspiring in their lives and careers was enlightening. I discovered many writers and books I want to check out based on descriptions and recommendations I read here.
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- Donald Bullard
- 11-10-23
A real jem
This Audible book has been my buddy. It is a delight to listen to again and again. I found every author having something significant to say about the books they enjoyed. It is a comfort to hear the contradictions on almost everything. I don't mean to spoil anything, but some I still find the interviews interesting to listen to multiple times. Also the more I listened, the more I researched I admired the ability to stay on topic. These interviews are crafted well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Tania
- 05-23-24
Excellent book ruined by the terrible narration
The authors are terrible at narrating their own book and unfortunately the rest aren’t excellent either.
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- Shopaholic
- 07-16-24
I enjoyed the content
If you like autobiographies/biographies, books and writers, this book is for you. It was a different type of book, and it took me a bit to get use to it. Overall I enjoyed it and my favorite thing was learning about the writers.
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- sigrun
- 05-29-22
An experiment with an unfortunate outcome
This book should really not have been read by the authors! Try recording again using professional a reader - please!
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5 people found this helpful
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- Marianne D. Nolte
- 06-10-24
Disappointed
The performance was exactly that, a performance, rather than an interview or better yet a conversation among colleagues. The questions were superficial. I expected more.
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