Those who love the much-lauded work of Jane Austen need look no further than this audiobook for guidance and companionship. Charles Armstrong is a confident narrator of this exhaustive examination of Austen's novels. His voice is pleasant, and he has an appropriately dignified accent. The pace can build until it gets quite fast, and the tone approaches sounding robotic when this happens. Otherwise, Armstrong lends some approachable and welcome personality to this subject matter, especially when delivering the many excerpts from Austen's work. The audiobook may serve newcomers to Austen well, guiding them in appreciating minute details in her work as they read or listen, but it may give too much away about plot. Austen aficionados might enjoy this deeper look at her work and craft.
Pub Date: June 17, 2025
Duration: 10 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781639739110
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Narrator Lisa Flanagan has a wonderful vocal personality--lithe with a broad palette of pitch patterns and a range of believable emotional tones. Her friendly voice works well with this lighthearted overview of how dramatically the Internet has changed the world in the past 30 years. Though being digitally connected has improved life in many ways, the author says we've lost many of the interpersonal experiences that used to sustain us. We have less privacy, don't need all those reference books, and have largely forgotten how to have vocal conversations with other people. The audiobook is entertaining nostalgia for anyone who feels incompetent navigating the World Wide Web, and a soothing reminder that those of us who miss the simplicity of the pre-Internet era are not alone.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
Duration: 5 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9780593418055
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Craig Brown tickled our ear with 99 GLIMPSES OF PRINCESS MARGARET, a brisk, irreverent assembly of tiny chapters that ran a satisfactory 12+ hours. For the Beatles, he adds 51 more glimpses and another eight hours, with a proportionally diluted effect. Brown himself, Kate Robbins, and Mark McGann share the narration, which is interesting, insightful, well performed, and packed with some new and a lot of old information. All of it is shaped by Brown's propensity for "easing sense into nonsense." The self-mocking Beatles are harder to deflate than a pretentious princess, but Brown's accounts of touring Beatles sites in Liverpool and his histories of Beatles contemporaries swept up--and aside--by their spectacular rise will amaze and beguile listeners.
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
Duration: 20 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250770127
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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