Creator: Author
Publication date: 2001-08-06
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £7.00
Price: £4.19
Review The Clothes They Stood Up in (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:First published in the London Review of Books in 1996, TheClothes They Stood Up In takes the reader into familiar Bennett territory. Maurice and Rosemary Ransome are a typically dissatisfied, middle-aged, middle-class couple, childless and emotionally withdrawn. "They had no children and but for Mozart would probably have split up years ago. Mr Ransome always took a bath when he came home from work and then he had his supper. After supper he took another bath, this time in Mozart". However, one night, after returning from a performance of Cosi fanTutte, bath, supper, Mozart and everything disappeared. "There is a limit to what burglars can take: they seldom take easy chairs, for example, and even more seldom settees. These burglars did. They took everything". What unfolds is a brilliant account of the ways in which the lives of the Ransomes are subtly but profoundly changed forever, as Rosemary discovers the joys of shopping at the local Pakistani shop and the limits of counselling, and Maurice fantasises about new CD equipment with which to listen to Mozart. [+]However, just as life begins to return to normal, a letter arrives which throws new light on the Ransome's extraordinary burglary. Beautifully observed and written with a masterly economy of style, Bennett's story packs an enormous amount into just over 100 pages, and has not one but two delicious stings in its tail. -Jerry Brotton.
Publication date: 2003-05-05
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.80
Review An Unsuitable Job for a Woman: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Carole Boyd
Publication date: 2008-08-07
RRP: £12.72
Price: £5.97
Review Farther Afield (CD) (Fairacre) / Orion:
Publication date: 2007-02-05
RRP: £12.99
Price: £6.99
Review The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: 'The Maid' and 'Tears of the Giraffe' v. 2 (Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Martin Jarvis
Publication date: 2006-08-14
RRP: £19.99
Price: £12.00
Review A Dicken's Trilogy / CSA WORD:
Publication date: 2008-10-30
RRP: £14.67
Price: £7.00
Review Past Imperfect (CD) / Orion:
Creator: Benedict Cumberbatch
Publication date: 2008-12-04
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.02
Review Artists in Crime / Hachette Audio:
Creator: David Tennant
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2006-09-15
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £14.99
Price: £5.00
Review Whiteout / Macmillan Audio Books:
Creator: etc.
Publication date: 2006-10-16
RRP: £16.99
Price: £13.66
Review Short Stories: The Thoroughly Modern Collection (Csa Word Recording) / CSA WORD:
Creator: Richard Briers
Publication date: 2005-02-21
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.24
Review The Inimitable Jeeves (BBC Radio Collection) / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:With a cast of characters that includes bearded revolutionaries, practical-joking twins, incognito authors, and a pair of confidence tricksters, The Inimitable Jeeves finds our upper-class hero Bertie Wooster in all kinds of hot water. Of particular concern in this collection of short stories-sensitively abridged by Penguin and read by Simon Callow-is Bertie's friend Bingo Little, who falls in love so often that it is impossible to keep track of his romantic entanglements, and who always falls for the most unsuitable women. Unable to refuse to help a friend, Bertie is placed in one difficult situation after another, always under the watchful eye of his butler. Jeeves constantly works in the background, undermining Bertie's autonomy and moving the narrative in unexpected directions. He often fails to let his employer in on his plots, and a large proportion of his schemes turn out to expose Bertie to ridicule. Yet Jeeves also ensures that Bertie's life runs smoothly, steering him through the pitfalls which face a rich young man with too much time on his hands. When in one story Bertie overhears Jeeves describing his employer as "not intelligent", he sets out to disprove the butler's assessment. If it is predictable that things do not go according to plan, then it is Wodehouse's brilliant grasp of comedy which makes the manner in which things go wrong so constantly surprising. And, of course, by the end of the tale Jeeves has proved himself both inimitable and indispensable. -John Oates.
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £11.99
Price: £10.81
Review Ulysses / James Joyce:Ulysses has been labelled dirty, blasphemous and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book-although he found it not quite obscene enough to disallow its importation into the United States-and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession". None of these descriptions, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in its own way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's astonishing command of the English language. Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is "What happens?" In the case of Ulysses, the answer could be "Everything". William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. [+]Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of inforgettable Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, loiter, argue and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream- of-consciousness technique-which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river- we're privy to their thoughts, emotions and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordion-folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism. Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent-that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call "Early Yeats Lite"- will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naïve curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" -James Marcus.
Creator: Toby Stephens
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2008-02-18
RRP: £15.99
Price: £12.89
Review Flashman and the Dragon / HarperCollins Audio:
Creator: Marcella Riordan
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2004-09-30
Dewey code: 808
RRP: £10.99
Price: £5.06
Review The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Trevor White
Edition: Abridged edition
Publication date: 2008-04-01
RRP: £14.99
Price: £8.37
Review Thanks for the Memories / HarperCollins Audio:
Publication date: 2007-11-01
RRP: £14.67
Price: £6.99
Review Prairie Home Christmas / Hodder & Stoughton:
Creator: Toby Stephens
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2004-07-31
Dewey code: 792.102908
RRP: £13.99
Price: £7.94
Review King Lear (Naxos Audio) / Naxos AudioBooks:
Creator: Susan Ericksen
Edition: MP3 Una
Publication date: 2008-11-04
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £15.27
Price: £6.49
Review Ritual in Death (In Death) / Brilliance Corporation:
Publication date: 2008-03-03
RRP: £59.99
Price: £41.80
Review The Complete Barchester Chronicles / BBC Audiobooks Ltd:
Creator: Peter Giles
Edition: Unabridged
Publication date: 2008-10-16
RRP: £24.47
Price: £14.00
Review The Brass Verdict (Unabridged) (CD) / Orion:
Publication date: 2008-07-01
Dewey code: 813
RRP: £29.99
Price: £14.26
Review Little Dorrit / Naxos AudioBooks:
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Models & Brands:
The Clothes They Stood Up in (BBC Radio Collection), An Unsuitable Job for a Woman: BBC Radio 4 Full-cast Dramatisation (BBC Radio Collection), Farther Afield (CD) (Fairacre), The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: 'The Maid' and 'Tears of the Giraffe' v. 2 (Radio Collection), A Dicken's Trilogy, Past Imperfect (CD), Artists in Crime, Whiteout, Short Stories: The Thoroughly Modern Collection (Csa Word Recording), The Inimitable Jeeves (BBC Radio Collection), Ulysses, Flashman and the Dragon, The Life and Poetry of W.B.Yeats (Naxos Audio), Thanks for the Memories, Prairie Home Christmas, King Lear (Naxos Audio), Ritual in Death (In Death), The Complete Barchester Chronicles, The Brass Verdict (Unabridged) (CD), Little Dorrit |
