Yuriri Naka's gentle tones suit the quiet, introspective atmosphere of this comforting collection of interconnected stories set in the coastal town of Mojiko, Japan. The sweetness in Naka's voice conveys the community's awe for the magic of the convenience store called Tenderness. What Naka's narration may lack in vocal resonance, she skillfully makes up for by capturing the emotional undercurrents of each character. This is especially true in the stories of a bullied student named Azusa and a housewife named Mitsuri who works at the store part-time and decides to pursue her artistic dreams. Naka infuses each character with a distinct, consistent voice, allowing smooth transitions between these vignettes. Her understated delivery deepens the emotional resonance of this tender, hopeful collection.
Pub Date: July 15, 2025
Duration: 9 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217076697
Publisher: Penguin 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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