Narrator Phylicia Rashad gives such a vivid portrayal of the characters in this audiobook that you feel you are in the same room with them, only you’ve turned your head and don’t happen to be seeing them. It’s as if she’s known every one of them personally. Ivoe Williams is a capable and determined daughter of early-twentieth-century Jim Crow Texas. As a young woman, she starts an African-American newspaper, JAM ON THE VINE, in Kansas City, Missouri. Barnett’s writing is gorgeous, and Rashad revels in it. The book is a hymn to personal courage, love, and the fourth estate, and you will admire, remember, and care about these characters long after you finish, thanks in no small part to Rashad’s glorious and heartfelt performance.
Pub Date: 2015
Duration: 11 hrs, 15 mins
Publisher: Audible, Inc.
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
As a group of men bring their own emotional baggage to their football-obsessed reunion, R.C. Bray delivers his usual solid narration. He shifts his tones slightly but enough to put the listener in the motel with the men, revealing their foibles as the story progresses. The narrator's role in this book is a descriptive one, and Bray is a good guide. His narration becomes extra important because this is a rare instance when there almost isn't a protagonist. The author's well-written story--which alternates between serious and laugh-out-loud funny--uses quarterback Joe Theismann's 1985 injury, a broken leg, as a McGuffin.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 5 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781681680057
Publisher: HighBridge Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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