10 Best Essays, Literary Criticism Books
Essays, Literary Criticism is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Essays, Literary Criticism audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 10 Essays, Literary Criticism audiobooks below.
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He Held Radical Light
- By: Christian Wiman
- Narrator: John Lescault
- Length: 3 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.28(441 ratings)
4.28(441 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDA moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poets What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are theA moving meditation on memory, oblivion, and eternity by one of our most celebrated poets
What is it we want when we can’t stop wanting? And how do we make that hunger productive and vital rather than corrosive and destructive? These are the questions that animate Christian Wiman as he explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known. Seamus Heaney opens a suddenly intimate conversation about faith; Mary Oliver puts half of a dead pigeon in her pocket; A. R. Ammons stands up in front of an audience and refuses to read. He Held Radical Light is as urgent and intense as it is lively and entertaining–a sharp sequel to Wiman’s earlier memoir, My Bright Abyss.
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Against Interpretation, and Other Essays
- By: Susan Sontag
- Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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4.13(6612 ratings)
4.13(6612 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDAgainst Interpretation was Susan Sontag’s first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famousAgainst Interpretation was Susan Sontag’s first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays “Notes on Camp” and “Against Interpretation,” as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, science fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.
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Weightless
- By: Evette Dionne
- Narrator: Evette Dionne
- Length: 7 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: December 06, 2022
- Language: English
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3.94(228 ratings)
3.94(228 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDA poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender–and toward a brighter future–from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding againstA poignant and ruthlessly honest journey through cultural expectations of size, race, and gender–and toward a brighter future–from National Book Award nominee Evette Dionne
My body has not betrayed me; it has continued rebounding against all odds. It is a body that others map their expectations on, but it has never let me down.
In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black woman are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to diagnosis with heart failure at age twenty-nine, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image.
Along the way, she lifts back the curtain to reveal the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control levied at fat women: At the doctor’s office, where any health ailment is treated with a directive to lose weight. On dating sites, where larger bodies are rejected or fetishized. On TV, where fat characters are asexual comedic relief. But Dionne’s unflinching account of our deeply held prejudices is matched by her fierce belief in the power of self-love.
An unmissable portrait of a woman on a journey toward understanding our society and herself, Weightless holds up a mirror to the world we live in and asks us to imagine the future we deserve.
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Bad Feminist
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrator: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 11 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: August 05, 2014
- Language: English
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3.94(96651 ratings)
3.94(96651 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USD“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.” —“Roxane Gay is so great at weaving the intimate and personal with what is most bewildering and upsetting at this moment in culture. She is always looking, always thinking, always passionate, always careful, always right there.” — Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?
A New York Times Bestseller
Best Book of the Year: NPR * Boston Globe * Newsweek * Time Out New York * Oprah.com * Miami Herald * Book Riot * Buzz Feed * Globe and Mail (Toronto) * The Root * Shelf Awareness
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation
In these funny and insightful essays, Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.
Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.
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Where the Stress Falls
- By: Susan Sontag
- Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hours 39 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.89(326 ratings)
3.89(326 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDTwo decades of indispensable work by a great American writer–more than forty longer and shorter pieces that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideas Thirty-five years after her firstTwo decades of indispensable work by a great American writer–more than forty longer and shorter pieces that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideas
Thirty-five years after her first collection, the classic Against Interpretation, America’s most important essayist chose more than forty longer and shorter pieces from the previous twenty years. “Reading,” the first of three sections, includes ardent pieces on writers from Sontag’s own private canon–Machado de Assis, Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Borges, Tsvetaeva, and Elizabeth Hardwick. In the second section, “Seeing,” she shares her passions for film, dance, photography, painting, opera, and theater. And in the final section, “There and Here,” Sontag explores her own commitments to the work (and activism) of conscience and to the vocation of the writer.
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Screen Tests
- By: Kate Zambreno
- Narrator: Mia Barron
- Length: 6 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 23, 2019
- Language: English
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3.84(411 ratings)
3.84(411 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDIn Screen Tests, an astoundingly original and stylish collection, Zambreno has once again created new categories of writing, of vivid and surprising language and thought. In the first half, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatchesIn Screen Tests, an astoundingly original and stylish collection, Zambreno has once again created new categories of writing, of vivid and surprising language and thought. In the first half, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatches from a life lived inside a brilliant mind, meditating on aging and vanity, fame and failure, writing and writers, and the dailiness of a woman and an artist, along with Warholian portraits of everyone from Susan Sontag to Amal Clooney, Maurice Blanchot to Louise Brooks. The series of essays that follow, on figures central to her thinking, from Kathy Acker to Shulamith Firestone, David Wojnarowicz to Barbara Loden, are passionate manifestoes about art, that intersect and chime with the stories that came before them. Throughout these philosophical investigations is the quintessential Zambreno voice, unable to be imitated–witty and morbid, serious and playful, poetic and profane, doubting yet radiant.
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The Writer’s Library
- By: Nancy Pearl
- Narrator: Nancy Pearl
- Length: 11 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 08, 2020
- Language: English
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3.79(802 ratings)
3.79(802 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.005.99 USDPerformed by Nancy Pearl, Jeff Schwager and a multi-cast that includes book contributors Luis Alberto Urrea, Siri Hustvedt, Laurie Frankel, Vendela Vida, and Richard Ford. The Writer’s Library audiobook also features real conversations withPerformed by Nancy Pearl, Jeff Schwager and a multi-cast that includes book contributors Luis Alberto Urrea, Siri Hustvedt, Laurie Frankel, Vendela Vida, and Richard Ford. The Writer’s Library audiobook also features real conversations with Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, and Laila Lalami.
With a Foreword by Susan Orlean, twenty-three of today’s living literary legends, including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon, reveal the books that made them think, brought them joy, and changed their lives in this intimate, moving, and insightful collection from “American’s Librarian” Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager that celebrates the power of literature and reading to connect us all.
Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In this ebullient book, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted-playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America’s most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark.
The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors–the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America’s literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is. A love letter to books and a celebration of wordsmiths, The Writer’s Library is a treasure for anyone who has been moved by the written word.
The authors in The Writer’s Library are:
- Russell Banks
- TC Boyle
- Michael Chabon
- Susan Choi
- Jennifer Egan
- Dave Eggers
- Louise Erdrich
- Richard Ford
- Laurie Frankel
- Andrew Sean Greer
- Jane Hirshfield
- Siri Hustvedt
- Charles Johnson
- Laila Lalami
- Jonathan Lethem
- Donna Tartt
- Madeline Miller
- Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Luis Alberto Urrea
- Vendela Vida
- Ayelet Waldman
- Maaza Mengiste
- Amor Towles
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Ender’s World
- By: Orson Scott Card
- Narrator: Orson Scott Card
- Length: 7 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2013
- Language: English
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3.77(578 ratings)
3.77(578 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDOrson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is a classic of science fiction. Though it began its life as a short story, it was later expanded into a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, served as a springboard for a much larger universe of stories,Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is a classic of science fiction. Though it began its life as a short story, it was later expanded into a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, served as a springboard for a much larger universe of stories, and finally, has been made into a feature film.
In Ender’s World over a dozen writers of science fiction, fantasy, and young adult books offer new perspectives on the 1985 novel, along with insights gleaned from other Ender stories that fit within the Ender’s Game chronology, including Ender in Exile and Ender’s Shadow. In addition, military strategists Colonel Tom Ruby and Captain John Schmitt offer insight into the human-Formic war. Also included is a contribution from Aaron Johnston, the coauthor of the Formic Wars prequel novels.
The collection’s insightful analyses and moving personal essays are rounded out with short pieces answering more technically oriented questions about the Ender universe, including why the Battle Room is a cube and why the military recruited their soldiers as children.
Edited by Orson Scott Card himself, who also provides an introduction to the anthology as well as to the individual essays, Ender’s World is aimed both at readers who have kept up with the many books that came after and at those who simply want to revisit the original novel.
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Coventry
- By: Rachel Cusk
- Narrator: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 7 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.74(1864 ratings)
3.74(1864 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDFrom Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye,From Rachel Cusk, her first collection of essays about motherhood, marriage, feminism, and art
Rachel Cusk redrew the boundaries of fiction with the Outline trilogy, three “literary masterpieces” (Washington Post) whose narrator, Faye, perceives the world with a glinting, unsparing intelligence while remaining opaque to the reader. Lauded for the precision of her prose and the quality of her insight, Cusk is a writer of uncommon brilliance. Now, in Coventry, she gathers a selection of her nonfiction writings that both offers new insights on the themes at the heart of her fiction and forges a startling critical voice on some of our most urgent personal, social, and artistic questions.
Coventry encompasses memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about literature, with pieces on family life, gender, and politics, and on D. H. Lawrence, Francoise Sagan, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Named for an essay Cusk published in Granta (“Every so often, for offences actual or hypothetical, my mother and father stop speaking to me. There’s a funny phrase for this phenomenon in England: it’s called being sent to Coventry”), this collection is pure Cusk and essential listening for our age: fearless, unrepentantly erudite, and dazzling to behold.
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Yestermorrow
- By: Ray Bradbury
- Narrator: Ray Bradbury
- Length: 5 hours 41 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: April 27, 2018
- Language: English
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3.58(106 ratings)
3.58(106 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0015.99 USDEssays discuss Bernard Berenson, Walt Disney, Federico Fellini, the cities of Paris and London, art, literature, history, science fiction, and the design of public places
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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