All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics - Carson Holloway - Audio Book

All Shook Up: Music, Passion, and Politics - Carson Holloway : The national debate over popular music's effect on character is both furious and confused. Conservatives complain primarily about lyrics, appealing to public decency and safety. Liberals, swift to the defense of any self-expression, simultaneously celebrate rock's liberating ethos and deny its cultural influence.
Carson Holloway is out to shatter the assumptions of pop's critics and defenders alike, showing that music is more beneficial than we think.

Plato and Aristotle, Holloway finds, were aware that music can either inflame the soul with passion or can awaken it to reason and help to cultivate temperance. What Holloway
proposes a rediscovery of the musical wisdom of Plato and Aristotle will completely change
the way we think about music.

Another way of trying to understand Music! This audio book help us to have an idea of the
kind of music which pleases us and why.

Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years - Michael Palin - Audio Book

Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years - Michael Palin : MICHAEL PALIN's diaries begin in the late 1960s and tell how Python emerged and triumphed. Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the group then proceeded to tour in the United States and Canada, appearing, like pop stars, at sold-out stadiums coast to coast and on national chat shows. They even stayed in hotels newly trashed by Led Zeppelin, later investors in Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
With this growing fame in the United States came the move from local public broadcasting to national television there and battles over censorship followed as up to one line in four was cut from the Python sketches, rendering them incomprehensible.

A perceptive and funny chronicle, the diaries are a rich portrait of a fascinating period.

What else to say apart : listen to this audio book

Michelangelo Buonarroti - George Bull - Audio Book

Michelangelo Buonarroti - George Bull : This great Italian artist who lived from 1475 to 1564 was allready during his lifetime acclaimed as the greatest living artist, creator of a succession of masterpieces in sculpture, fresco painting, and architecture. In restrospect one can say Michelangelo was a true genius!

In all his work, Michelangelo impressed his contemporaries as a forceful personality, a divine genius endowed with an intense emotional power and a great mind. Often portrayed as a solitary and austere figure, he in fact enjoyed a remarkable range of friendships, and those he loved and hated, served or resisted, are presented in this audiobook. His contacts range from his family and fellow artists to the popes, nobles, and rulers of Europe.

To read books about Michelangelo, and god knows there are plenty, is one thing, but to listen to this audio book with plenty more details about him is like having him in "front of you".

A Child's Christmas In Wales - Dylan Thomas - Audio Book

A Child's Christmas In Wales - Dylan Thomas : A Child's Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago-Christmas.Thomas's wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five other selected poems read by Dylan Thomas, including his well-known Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

The pleasure of hearing this audio book is great and the sroties which are told beautiful. Ther si no better narrator for these poems.

Rodin - Frederic V. Grunfeld - Audio Book

Rodin - Frederic V. Grunfeld : Augustus Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. Frederic V. Grunfelds exhaustive biography, the first in over fifty years, documents a lifetime of both artistic and personal struggle against poverty, against the conservative Salon, and against an art establishment that for years denied him recognition. Rodins crucial love affair with his pupil, Camille Claudel, emerges here in all its tragic complexity, as do his relationships with the British painter, Gwen John, and the American-born duchess, Claire de Choiseul. Grunfeld also sheds new light on Rodins friendships with some of the most gifted writers and artists of the day from Robert Louis Stevenson and George Bernard Shaw to Emile Zola and James McNeill Whistler.

A very absorbing story very well explained in this audio book.

The Canterbury Tales - Volume I - Geoffrey Chaucer - Audio Book

The Canterbury Tales - Volume I - Geoffrey Chaucer :

The Prologue
The Knight's Tale
The Miller's Tale
The Pardoner's Tale
The Merchant's Tale
The Franklin's Tale

Chaucer's greatest work, written towards the end of the fourteenth century, paints a brilliant picture of medieval life, society and values.

Chaucer imagines a group of twenty-nine pilgrims who meet in the Tabard Inn in Southwark, intent on making the traditional journey to the martyr's shrine of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. Harry Bailly landlord of the Tabard, proposes that the company should entertain themselves on the road with a story telling competition. The teller of the best tale will be rewarded with a supper at the others' expense when the travellers return to London.

The stories range from the romantic, courtly idealism of The Knight's Tale to the joyous bawdy of The Miller's. All those stories are told with a freshness and vigour in this modern verse translation that make them a delight to hear.

Helen Hayes: My Life in Three Acts - Helen Hayes with Katherine Hatch - Audio Book

Helen Hayes: My Life in Three Acts Helen Hayes with Katherine Hatch : Helen Hayes, acclaimed First Lady of the American Theatre, has been on stage, screen and television for more than fifty years. In that time she moved among the worlds most famous and talented: actors, film stars, writers, businessmen. She speaks with wit, wisdom, and candor on topics both public and private. She offers deft behind-the-sceens portraits of such personalities as Joan Crawford,
William Randolph Hearst, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Richard Burton, Lillian Gish, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Gloria Swanson.

She expresses her strong views on what is wrong with the American theatre today and what has always been wrong with Hollywood. An engrossing account of a rich and productive life.

A very interesting audio book who tells a lot about the so called "star system" either from
yesterday as for todoy and the fragility of it all.

Guitar: An American Life - Tim Brookes - Audio Books

Guitar: An American Life - Tim Brookes : One man's quest for his dream guitar inspires him to explore the instrument's largely untold history.

What was it about a small, humble folk instrument that allowed it to become an American icon? The guitar represents freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality. The guitar was picked up by everyone, miners and society ladies, lumberjacks and presidents' wives, Hawaiians, African-Americans, Cajuns, jazz players, spiritualists, cowboys, and teenagers. In time, it became America's instrument, its soundtrack.

Who in his childhood or as well in his adolescence, was not fascinated by this instrument: the guitar! This audio book bring back not only magnificent memories but also allows to learn even more about the making of this instrument.

Ustinov at Eighty - Peter Ustinov - Audio Book

Ustinov at Eighty - Peter Ustinov : Peter Ustinov has an astonishing range of accomplishments and credits to his name. He has written 23 plays and 13 books, appeared in 50 films, and has in his time collected two Oscars, three Emmys and a Grammy. He is also a director, producer, graphic artist, photographer, raconteur and the recipient of many humanitarian awards.

In this interview with John Bird, conducted on the approach to his 80th birthday, Ustinov recounts scenes from his childhood (including performing cabaret for Hailie Selassie at the age of three) and describes the changing relationship he had with his mother and father.

If you ever had the chance to listen to Peter Ustinov when he was still alive you know how witty, clever and engaged he was. In this audio book, when he talks about his life it's exactly as if he was just sitting near you. A real delight.

The Allen Ginsberg Audio Book - Allen Ginsberg

The Allen Ginsberg Audio Book - Allen Ginsberg : Upon the release of his first published work, Howl and Other Poems, in 1956, Allen Ginsberg became the unlikely force of a movement that would change a generation. Literature, art, sex, love, family, politics; nothing would ever be the same. The Beat Generation was born through Ginsberg and his friends.

This collection of more than two dozen poems in verse and song is the best of the best, celebrating someone who was of his time, ahead of his time, and whose legacy will transcend time.

Allen Ginsberg is a name which I had somewhere in my memory. When I saw that the collection of his work was now available in audio books I just went for it and it's worth listening to it.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - Audio Book

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain : 'Cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle, and lawless, vulgar, and bad and because all their children admired him so', Huckleberry Finn, the fourteen-year-old son of the town drunkard,
joins runaway slave Jim on an exciting journey down the mighty Mississippi River on a raft.

"It's the best book we've had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." ERNEST HEMINGWAY

What else to say after that? Anything except that to listen to the audio book will strengthen this Ernest Hemingway's comment. Close your eyes and enjoy !