Joyce Bean's warm, friendly voice is by turns serious and smiling in her excellent narration of Margaret Renkl's insightful new essay collection. Drawn from Renkl's weekly NEW YORK TIMES column, the 60 pieces in this audiobook cover all manner of life in the American South, including animals, culture, plants, and politics. Renkl, who lives in Tennessee, is a detailed observer whether she's watching a flock of sheep "mow" a lawn, considering John Prine's music, or writing an open letter about racism to her fellow white Christians. She blends her private life throughout, giving listeners personal involvement with the essays. Bean's clear, straightforward, and welcoming performance is perfectly in tune with Renkl's mix of intimacy and objectivity.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2022
Duration: 8 hrs
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
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
Hakimi does his best to keep this encyclopedic history of film moving.
Aden Hakimi possesses a classic narrator’s voice, polished and mellow, adaptable to a wide range of subjects. His accomplished performance and steady pacing anchor a narrative that is more a roll call than a history. In this vast assembly of movie titles and synopses, Hakimi’s skilled voice is the unifying element. The author is expansive, perceptive, and highly versed, and listeners may well find that his taste in films is matchless. But while his narrative proceeds more or less chronologically, it doesn’t supply its narrator with a discernable theme or thread—or anything distinctly revisionist, for that matter.
Hakimi does his best to keep this encyclopedic history of film moving.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
Duration: 11 hrs, 57 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668141717
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2026
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