Jonathan Letham's fans won't be disappointed with this listen. The stories' range and the narrators' talent are certain to keep listeners entertained. Each narrator brings their own take to the task. Letham's dry delivery doesn't surprise. Jim Meskimen performs "Vivian Relf" as one would hope--straightforwardly and without sounding overwrought. Pete Simonelli's take on "The Porn Critic" entertains without being too X-rated. Pirhalla delivers "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear" with verve and enthusiasm, and when he's joined by Sophie Amoss, they turn in a not too scary tale of a blog and much more. Lastly, Micky Shiloah gives an emotional narration of "The King of Sentences." These surreal stories are certain to engage listeners.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
Duration: 14 hrs, 45 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063388871
Publisher: Harper 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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