Open Culture » Audio Books

Flannery O’Connor was a Southern writer who, as Joyce Carol Oates once said, had less in common with Faulkner than with Kafka and Kierkegaard. Isolated by poor health and consumed by her ferven...

https://www.openculture.com/2024/04/hear-flannery-oconnor-read-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-1959.html

It can seem that the writing of literature and the theory of literature occupy separate great houses, Game of Thrones-style, or even separate countries held apart by a great sea. Perhaps they war...

https://www.openculture.com/2023/10/hear-classic-readings-of-poes-the-raven.html

In Christmases past, we featured Charles Dickens’ hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He did that hand editing for the purposes of giving public readings, a practic...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/12/hear-neil-gaiman-read-a-christmas-carol-just-like-charles-dickens-read-it.html

“Moby-Dick is the great American novel. But it is also the great unread American novel. Sprawling, magnificent, deliriously digressive, it stands over and above all other works of fiction, sinc...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/10/hear-moby-dick-read-in-its-entirety-by-tilda-swinton-stephen-fry-john-waters-many-others.html

Image by Knopper We were looking for a good audiobook. So we asked our friends on Twitter for their audiobook recommendations, and recommendations we got. Good ones, and more than a few.  So we ...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/10/whats-the-best-audio-book-youve-ever-read.html

The CBS Radio Workshop was an “experimental dramatic radio anthology series” that aired between 1956 and 1957. And it started with style–with a dramatized adaptation of Brave New World, n...

https://www.openculture.com/2022/03/hear-aldous-huxley-narrate-his-dystopian-masterpiece-brave-new-world.html

The extended Sherlock Holmes Universe, as we might call it, has grown so vast in the last century (as with other franchises that have universes) that it’s possible to call oneself a fan without...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/08/the-great-christopher-lee-reads-sherlock-holmes-stories.html

Need one go so far in digging out strata of meaning? Only if one wishes to; Finnegans Wake is a puzzle, just as a dream is a puzzle, but the puzzle element is less important than the thrust of th...

https://www.openculture.com/2021/06/hear-an-excerpt-from-the-newly-released-first-unabridged-audiobook-of-james-joyces-finnegans-wake.html

Today, the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of Ray Bradbury’s birthday. And, to mark the occasion, Neil Gaiman, William Shatner, Susan Orlean & many others will host a reading of Bradbury...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/08/watch-a-live-reading-of-ray-bradburys-fahrenheit-451-featuring-neil-gaiman-william-shatner-susan-orlean-more.html

At my home now, we constantly tell stories: to distract, soothe, entertain—telling and retelling, collaboratively authoring over meals, listening to a ton of story podcasts. These activities to...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/stream-16-audio-drama-podcasts-let-stories-get-you-through-the-doldrums-of-covid-19-isolation.html

View this post on Instagram A post shared by New Museum (@newmuseum) on May 14, 2020 at 10:10am PDT Many friends have expressed a sense of relief that their elderly parents passed before the coro...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/05/iggy-pop-david-byrne-and-more-come-together-with-bedtime-stories-for-grownups.html

A heads up to all parents, Audible has announced that they’re providing free stories for kids during this period of social distancing, which inevitably means widespread school closures. They wr...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/03/audible-providing-free-audio-books-to-kids-teens.html

This is a very quick FYI for anyone who happens to be an Audible subscriber. If you’re not, you can start a free trial here. This month, all Audible members can get free access to James Taylor�...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/02/james-taylor-releases-a-new-audio-memoir-and-michael-pollan-a-new-audio-book-on-caffeine.html

In 2009, Princeton philosopher Peter Singer published his practical handbook/manifesto The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. Bill and Melinda Gates called it “a persu...

https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/peter-singers-the-life-you-can-save-available-as-a-free-audiobook-and-ebook-features-narrations-by-paul-simon-kristen-bell-stephen-fry.html

Image by New York Public Library Last Christmas, we featured Charles Dickens’ hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He did that hand editing for the purposes of givi...

https://www.openculture.com/2019/12/hear-neil-gaiman-read-a-christmas-carol.html