The English Understand Wool
Storybook ND Series
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The English Understand Wool
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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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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 15
The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age. Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A commentary on societies
- By Jrod238 on 11-18-24
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Independent People
- By: Halldór Laxness
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 412
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 372
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 372
This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I am so confused about this introduction
- By George M on 09-10-18
By: Halldór Laxness
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Some Trick
- Thirteen Stories
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell, Emily Sutton-Smith, James Langton, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3 out of 5 stars 16
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 12
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 12
For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Down the Rabbit Hole
- By Billye Kay on 02-15-20
By: Helen DeWitt
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Self-Portraits
- Stories
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 4
In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing.
By: Osamu Dazai
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Lightning Rods
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Dushko Petrovich
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 69
"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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5 out of 5 stars
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Wild tale, enveloping reader
- By Josh on 11-11-11
By: Helen DeWitt
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Sorrow and Bliss
- A Novel
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,297
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,150
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,149
Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Very Disappointed -- 2.75 Stars
- By Sharlotte on 06-07-21
By: Meg Mason
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This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,269
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,901
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,890
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
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On Beauty
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 816
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 373
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 375
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
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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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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 10
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 10
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Story3 out of 5 stars 10
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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5 out of 5 stars
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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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Brother, I'm Dying
- By: Edwidge Danticat
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 317
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 236
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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5 out of 5 stars
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A Superb Reflection
- By Chandra on 12-29-07
By: Edwidge Danticat
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderful book
- By iggynut on 04-12-25
By: Alice Austen
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Ducks, Newburyport
- By: Lucy Ellmann
- Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda. But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate? When are you allowed to start swearing?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stephanie Ellyne really brings the book to life
- By Shashank on 02-27-20
By: Lucy Ellmann
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I Capture the Castle
- By: Dodie Smith
- Narrated by: Jenny Agutter
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,893
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,691
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,691
In this coming of age story, Dodie Smith introduces the visionary and eccentric character of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. The youngest daughter in a family of impoverished artists, it is her imagination and writing that takes us away from the ramshackle old English castle where they live, and towards an intriguing tale of husband-hunting and light-hearted sibling rivalry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well, that was a surprise
- By Matthew on 12-16-13
By: Dodie Smith
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A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,418
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,201
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,192
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
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Brideshead Revisited
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,374
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 3,062
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,042
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated work is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the story mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary
- By Vieux Carré Blonde on 12-12-12
By: Evelyn Waugh
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 363
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 334
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 334
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
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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