What’s the difference between reading a printed book and listening to the audiobook version? Irish novelist Colm Tóibín has compared it to “the difference between running a marathon and watching a marathon on TV.” Yet audiobooks offer opportunities for hands-free reading while doing otherwise boring tasks, and the growing number of high-quality recordings read by talented voice artists. The narration of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (Bookshop|Amazon) by actor Charlie Thurston made a splendid book even more powerful. This is part of a complete episode.
What makes a great first line of a book? How do the best authors put together an initial sentence that draws you in and makes you want to read more? We’re talking about the openings of such novels as George Orwell’s 1984...
To slip someone a mickey means to doctor a drink and give it to an unwitting recipient. The phrase goes back to Mickey Finn of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago, who in the late 19th century was notorious for drugging certain customers and relieving...
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