B.J. Novak, best known for co-writing and starring in the hit comedy "The Office," says this book developed alongside a series of public readings in front of live audiences. And that explains their accessible audible nature. With occasional help from guest performers, including Lena Dunham and Mindy Kaling, among others, Novak delivers a wide variety of stories ranging from tiny minimalist pieces to longer tales peopled with intriguing characters. Novak's narration is engagingly varied, though unified by an understated humor that matches the work's quirkiness. Beginning with odd "what if" premises--what if the tortoise and the hare had a rematch, the robotic sex toy you ordered fell in love with you, the most talented ambulance driver ever decided to pursue a singing career--Novak spins tales that transport listeners to unexpected places.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
Duration: 6 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780804164740
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
American colleges are favorable locales for ghastly event and hair-tearing circumstance. There is, for instance, a good deal of pleasure to be had out of professor and past-prodigy Grady Tripp's awful life, as portrayed by Michael Chabon in WONDER BOYS. There is a certain amount of slapstick here, but it's balanced by Chabon's superb portrait of a gale-force mid-life crisis, a soul-destroying albatross of an unfinished novel and the mind-numbing inconsequence of writers' conferences. David Colacci sounds a little starved for oxygen in his reading, but that's not exactly out of keeping with Grady Tripp's personal gestalt.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Class lurks in varying degrees behind every great English comedy, its ineffable code being so endlessly conducive to ironic subtlety. QUEEN LUCIA, the first of the great Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, is imbued with it. Nonetheless, social striving rather than class per se gives the novel its real comic force. At its center is Lucia, the regnant, self-appointed social and cultural leader of a genteel, middle-class circle. She’s a schemer and poser of awesome theatricality and self-delusion. Although the narrative is conducted in the third person, the characters’ doings, most especially Lucia’s, are as often as not reported in the light in which the perpetrators hope to be viewed. Still, the true facts and motivations, usually base, shine luminously through. Geraldine McEwen’s reading truly enhances the work, being a model of cultivated discretion and ironic pacing.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 9 hrs
Publisher: ISIS Audio Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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