This audio collection of essays and sketches is a marriage of good storytellers. Author John McPhee has the ability to make topics like plate tectonics, commercial shipping, and life under Covid lockdown interesting, as well as informative. Combine that with the mellow voice of Grover Gardner, and you have a work that nearly any listener will enjoy. The audiobook is a collection of McPhee’s ideas that never came to fruition as books or magazine articles—topics such as his mother’s autobiography, blind skiers, and lessons in geology. They’re interesting and engaging. Gardner slows things down a bit when a passage is technical, such as a description of geomorphology. Otherwise, he carries the work along with an even pace and pleasant voice.
Pub Date: July 11, 2023
Duration: 6 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781705097847
Publisher: Recorded Books Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Inspiring collections of Angelou reading her poetry. These selections showcase Angelou's smooth, lyrical voice and her warm vitality. Her innate rhythm celebrates her verse and offers the poems to listeners as they should be remembered. Occasionally Angelou comments between the selections, and occasionally she interjects a resonant laugh.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: N/A
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
An audiobook that’s best experienced one chapter at a time, each essay like a daily letter from a friend visiting home.
A series of reflections on Venezuela’s past, present, and future, combined with a travelogue of the Venezuelan author’s visits there after fleeing to Canada. Gustavo Rex’s narration is clear and listenable. His performance has a momentum that propels listeners from sentence to sentence, though his tone, pitch, and style throughout are so consistent that most scenes and chapters are not audibly distinct from one another. This matches the prose, which meanders without a traditional narrative and doesn’t have strong peaks or valleys of emotion.
An audiobook that’s best experienced one chapter at a time, each essay like a daily letter from a friend visiting home.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
Duration: 8 hrs, 12 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668660508
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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