His first apartment in New York, his misadventures in screenwriting, and his romance with a doctor are just a few of the stories that playwright Paul Rudnick relates in his collection of personal essays. His voice is a little thin, but its timbre goes naturally with both his self-deprecating humor and his vocal takes on the family and friends who populate his life. Rudnick adds touches of sentimentality to a blunt, profane, and mischievous narrative, ably steering between the flip and humorous and the deeply personal. The several fictional pieces included are less effective, seeming like interruptions in the audio form. Rudnick's humor isn't gentle, but it can be uproarious. J.A.S. 2010 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2009
Duration: 10 hrs
DD ISBN: 9780061962592
Publisher: Harper Audio
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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