Virginia Sorensen
Pioneering Mormon Author
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Virginia Sorensen
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Carter
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By:
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Stephen Carter
About this listen
In the 1940s, she was a New York Times best-selling author—of Mormon novels. In the 1950s, she won a Newbery Medal, the highest honor in children’s literature. But today, hardly anyone knows her name.
Who is Virginia Sorensen? How did a girl who grew up in a tiny Utah town in the 1920s become a globetrotting, award-winning author? And why has she been forgotten?
Though she wrote them four generations ago, Sorensen’s novels are more urgent today than ever, addressing issues both Mormons and former Mormons grapple with. Her body of work is a treasure trove of insight, compassion, and storytelling waiting to be rediscovered.
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Very insightful
- By Luke B. on 10-27-20
By: Colin Duriez
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Bookworm
- A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- By: Lucy Mangan
- Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The author’s sarcasm
- By Phil B. on 10-01-24
By: Lucy Mangan
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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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Manifesto
- On Never Giving Up
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Bernardine Evaristo
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Glorious performance and inspiring story
- By Maggi Morehouse on 01-25-22
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Process
- The Writing Lives of Great Authors
- By: Sarah Stodola
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 125
Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature's most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world's most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By Davina Rush on 04-10-15
By: Sarah Stodola
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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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1 out of 5 stars
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Agenda driven ideological bend.
- By Maxwell on 06-19-23
By: Michael Livingston, and others
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Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 200
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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5 out of 5 stars
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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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A Life Observed
- A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis
- By: Devin Brown
- Narrated by: Jon Gauger
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
A Life Observed tells the inspiring story of Lewis' spiritual journey from cynical atheist to joyous Christian. Drawing on Lewis' autobiographical works, books by those who knew him personally, and his apologetic and fictional writing, this spiritual biography brings the beloved author’s story to life while shedding light on his best-known works.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A beautifully written remembrance
- By Rob on 02-06-18
By: Devin Brown
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American Philosophy
- A Love Story
- By: John Kaag
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 481
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 425
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Story4 out of 5 stars 426
In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Awesome Book! But..
- By Kye Sonne on 04-02-17
By: John Kaag
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
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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5 out of 5 stars
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Becoming Elisabeth Elliot
- By: Ellen Vaughn
- Narrated by: Connie Shabshab
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 684
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 609
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Story5 out of 5 stars 606
Elisabeth Elliot was a young missionary in Ecuador when members of a violent Amazonian tribe savagely speared her husband, Jim, and his four colleagues. Incredibly, prayerfully, Elisabeth took her toddler daughter, snakebite kit, Bible, and journal...and lived in the jungle with the stone-age people who killed her husband. In this authorized biography, Ellen Vaughn uses Elisabeth’s private, unpublished journals, and candid interviews with her family and friends, to paint the adventures and misadventures God used to shape one of the most influential women in modern church history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book!
- By Dove on 09-27-20
By: Ellen Vaughn
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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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3 out of 5 stars
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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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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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
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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5 out of 5 stars
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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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Pearl Buck in China
- Journey to The Good Earth
- By: Hilary Spurling
- Narrated by: Hilary Spurling
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
The author of the much honored two-volume biography of Henri Matisse unearths the life and work of the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl Buck, whose novels in the 1930's and 40's were the first written for a Western audience to describe ordinary life in the still secret China of the late 19th and early 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very good
- By M. Brandman on 06-15-10
By: Hilary Spurling