Living and Dying with Marcel Proust
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Living and Dying with Marcel Proust
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Narrated by:
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John Lee
About this listen
Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime's reading of, reflection on, and love for Proust's masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time.
One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction, Proust's In Search of Lost Time describes a unique journey, combining elements drawn from the timeless narratives of great expectations and lost illusions. In this lively and entertaining book, Christopher Prendergast traces that journey as it unfolds on an arc defined by the polarities in his title: living and dying.
At once a careful contemplation Proust's masterwork and an exploration of the rich sensory and impressionistic tapestry of a lived world, Living and Dying with Marcel Proust addresses such disparate Proustian obsessions as insomnia, food, digestion, color, addiction, memory, breath and breathing, breasts, snobbism, music, and humor.
Entertaining and erudite, Prendergast's book will surely become the companion for all listeners either about to reembark on Proust's three-million-word journey or setting out for the first time.
©2022 Christopher Prendergast (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 50
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Romantic Life
- By David on 05-03-22
By: Lucasta Miller
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Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
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.
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3 out of 5 stars
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 342
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 290
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Story4 out of 5 stars 288
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
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Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
- A Novel
- By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Jull Costa Margaret - translator, Robin Patterson - translator
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredible story from an incredible author
- By Anonymous User on 01-01-21
By: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and others
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The Turn of the Screw
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Emma Thompson, Richard Armitage - introduction
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 5,399
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,897
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,877
Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great, but Mightn't be the Best on Audible
- By Gillian on 03-16-16
By: Henry James
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On Elizabeth Bishop
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
In this book novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences - the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own.
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5 out of 5 stars
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ELIZABETH BISHOP
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 05-19-16
By: Colm Tóibín
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The Mark on the Wall
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Teresa Gallagher
- Length: 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best story ever written
- By Deanna Salles-Freeman on 10-12-24
By: Virginia Woolf
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Reading Like a Writer
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Nanette Savard
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 233
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 150
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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C.S. Lewis
- A Biography of Friendship
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
An Oxford student of C.S. Lewis' said he found his new tutor interesting and was told by J.R.R. Tolkien, "Interesting? Yes, he's certainly that. You'll never get to the bottom of him." You can learn a great deal about people by their friends and nowhere is this more true than in the case of C.S. Lewis, the remarkable academic, author, popularizer of faith - and creator of Narnia. He lost his mother early in life and became estranged from his father, much to his regret.
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5 out of 5 stars
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It's a Great Concept
- By James on 08-13-20
By: Colin Duriez
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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The Birthmark
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Walter Covell
- Length: 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
Hawthorne approached the Romantic notion of the ability of science to destroy art (or beauty) in the form of fictive "horror stories" of biological research out of control. This story is the best of that group. A devoted scientist marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his attempts to remove it via his scientific skills, thus rendering his bride perfect.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Bland uninspired
- By Holcomb on 10-02-12
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Conundrum
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 86
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 77
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 76
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful memoir
- By Gabriel Smith on 07-25-22
By: Jan Morris
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The Book of Disquiet
- By: Fernando Pessoa
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 125
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 123
Assembled from notes and jottings left unpublished at the time of the author’s death, The Book of Disquiet is a collection of aphoristic prose-poetry musings on dreams, solitude, time and memory. Credited to Pessoa’s alter ego, Bernardo Soares, who chronicles his contemplations in this so-called "factless" autobiography, the work is a journey of one man’s soul and, by extension, of all human souls that allow their minds and hearts to roam far and free.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The book that saved my life
- By Hutchinson on 03-09-21
By: Fernando Pessoa
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Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 89
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 81
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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big ideas presented simply
- By Ashton on 01-31-14
By: Umberto Eco
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Uncle Vanya
- By: Anton Chekhov, David Mamet, Vlada Chernornirdik
- Narrated by: Josh Radnor, Stacy Keach, Martin Jarvis, and others
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Adapted by David Mamet from a translation by Vlada Chernornirdik. In this classic of Chekhov’s canon, an overbearing professor pays a visit to his country estate, where Sonya and Vanya, his daughter and former brother-in-law, have slaved to maintain his wealth. But Vanya is enchanted by the professor’s new wife, while Sonya has fallen for the town’s melancholy doctor. Includes a conversation with Rosamund Bartlett, author of Chekhov: Scenes from a Life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Poor American soap
- By tyrone on 10-22-17
By: Anton Chekhov, and others
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