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On Writers and Writing
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
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Ernest Hemingway on Writing
- Written by: Larry W. Phillips - editor
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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An assemblage of reflections on the nature of writing and the writer from one the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing - that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it”.
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Short and riveting
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Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.
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From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays - funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient - which seek answers to burning questions. In over 50 pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic.
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Witty, touching, thought provoking.
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On Writing
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- Narrated by: Stephen King, Joe Hill, Owen King
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Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy best seller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
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Packed with nothing
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From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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depressing
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Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice
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Dr. Brown defines spirituality as something not reliant on religion, theology, or dogma - rather, it is a belief in our interconnectedness and in a loving force greater than ourselves. Whether you access the sacred through traditional worship, solitary meditation, communion with nature, or creative pursuits, one thing is clear: Rising strong after falling is a spiritual practice that brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.
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She DOES it AGAIN!
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Ernest Hemingway on Writing
- Written by: Larry W. Phillips - editor
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 2 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
An assemblage of reflections on the nature of writing and the writer from one the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing - that it takes off “whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it”.
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Short and riveting
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Written by: Larry W. Phillips - editor
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Pity the Reader
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- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.
Written by: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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Burning Questions
- Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021
- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Naomi Alderman, and others
- Length: 19 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays - funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient - which seek answers to burning questions. In over 50 pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic.
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Witty, touching, thought provoking.
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Written by: Margaret Atwood
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On Writing
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- Narrated by: Stephen King, Joe Hill, Owen King
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
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Immensely helpful and illuminating to any aspiring writer, this special edition of Stephen King’s critically lauded, million-copy best seller shares the experiences, habits, and convictions that have shaped him and his work.
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Packed with nothing
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Written by: Stephen King
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Lady Oracle
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From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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depressing
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She DOES it AGAIN!
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An Excellent Book
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After decades of significant progress, the prospects of women and girls in Afghanistan are once again dependent on radical Islamists who reject gender equality. When the United States announced the end of their twenty-year occupation and the Taliban seized control of the country on August 15, 2021, a steep regression of social, political, and economic freedoms for women in the country began. But just because a brutal regime has taken over doesn't mean Afghan women will stand by while their rights are stripped away.
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Author Scott Dikkers will tell you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, number one New York Times best-selling humor author, professional public speaker, and successful cartoonist. In this definitive joke-writing handbook, he'll teach you comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes.
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In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
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I wish I were your student.
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Part detective novel, part psychological thriller, Surfacing is the story of a talented woman artist who goes in search of her missing father on a remote island in northern Quebec. Setting out with her lover and another young couple, she soon finds herself captivated by the isolated setting, where a marriage begins to fall apart, violence and death lurk just beneath the surface, and sex becomes a catalyst for conflict and dangerous choices. Surfacing is a work permeated with an aura of suspense, complex with layered meanings, and written in brilliant, diamond-sharp prose.
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Hate filled book
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With growing academic responsibilities, family commitments, and inboxes, scholars are struggling to fulfill their writing goals. A finished book - or even steady journal articles - may seem like an impossible dream. But, as Joli Jensen proves, it really is possible to write happily and productively in academe. Jensen begins by busting the myth that universities are supportive writing environments. She points out that academia, an arena dedicated to scholarship, offers pressures that actually prevent scholarly writing.
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Helped me back into writing
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Great music is a language unto its own, a means of communication of unmatched beauty and genius. And it has an undeniable power to move us in ways that enrich our lives-provided it is understood.If you have ever longed to appreciate great concert music, to learn its glorious language and share in its sublime pleasures, the way is now open to you, through this series of 48 wonderful lectures designed to make music accessible to everyone who yearns to know it, regardless of prior training or knowledge.
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genuine, thoughtful, poignant
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Dearly
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- Written by: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Margaret Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognizable and celebrated themes, but distilled - from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend.
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Ended too soon.
- By Tabitha Morrison on 2020-12-27
Written by: Margaret Atwood
Publisher's Summary
What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world?
Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift? Atwood's wide reference to other writers, living and dead, is balanced by anecdotes from her own experiences, both in Canada and elsewhere. The lightness of her touch is offset by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing, and by a deep familiarity with the myths and traditions of western literature.
Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Quebec, Ontario, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College. Throughout her 30 years of writing, Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Hew novel The Blind Assassin won the 2000 Booker Prize for Fiction. She is the author of more than 25 volumes of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include Alias Grace (1996), The Robber Bride (1994), Cat's Eye (1988), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), Surfacing (1972) and The Edible Woman (1970). Acclaimed for her talent for portraying both personal lives and worldly problems of universal concern, Atwood's work has been published in more than 35 languages, including Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic, and Estonian.
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What listeners say about On Writers and Writing
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Katherine
- 2022-04-05
Very inspiring
Loved all of the writing advice and perspectives of other writers provided to accompany her narrative.
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- C.Pom
- 2021-10-18
I thought I would give this a chance.
I was never a big fan of Atwood. I found her more pretentious than insightful, but I thought I would give this a chance. Imagine my surprise in reading this, discovering that it was more pretentious than insightful. Shocking.
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- Anne R.
- 2021-08-21
like a Masterclass.
well done, but you should know your classics and mythology - she quotes a lot of it. also, Ms. Atwood's voice can be a bit "dronish". just would have preferred a livelier reader.
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- Anonymous User
- 2021-03-02
Margaret Atwood Kills It Again in NWTD
I mean it in the best way, of course. What times are these that we may listen to Margaret Atwood's on voice giving us a writer-reader tour of her thoughts and knowledge about writing. As in the subjects of the final chapter, she, a competent guide, takes us on a visit to hell, then gets us out. I would spend more tickets to go on the ride once again. What's hell without a rickety abandoned roller coaster you are compelled to sit down in and hold on tight? Especially with Atwood throwing the switch and jumping in beside you. p.s. Her hair is real.
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- Brandy Ringleb
- 2021-01-11
l just love Margaret Atwood.
I really feel fortunate to get to benefit from Margaret Atwood's years worth of reading, and getting to hear tons of stories, prime and pieces through her lens. She really has a fascia way of looking at things.
23 people found this helpful
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- Anna Forcey
- 2021-09-10
One of the Greats
I read a lot of craft books (books on writing), and this one surprised me with Atwood's simple honesty and gruff charisma. She is very candid, well read, and mixes her thoughts on writing with a multitude of relatable anecdotes. If you write or are a fan of her work, definitely pick this one up. Her narration is also wonderful - it is very special when an author voices their own work.
7 people found this helpful
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- J. S. Harbour
- 2021-06-25
ponderous narration
a professional narrator should have been used. the others monotone voice at half speed is intolerable. if her mind works as slowly as her voice then she must take a very very long time to write a book.
7 people found this helpful
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- Anniken
- 2021-06-19
The thoughts and life of Atwood
This book is a mix of biography for the author as well as thoughts and ideas about the writer and writing. While I found a lot of it thought provoking, I ultimately did myself a disservice by listening to it as an audiobook.
I can't deny that Atwood has a way with words, but it's a way that doesn't quite work for me, unfortunately, and combine that with my general need of being able to flip back and forth in craft books, I found myself being lost more often than not with this book. I even fell asleep at one point.
4 people found this helpful
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- Layne Hood
- 2021-03-04
Enlightened
Atwood's reading voice seems almost monotone & droll. And then very quickly her humor enchants; as does her encyclopedic knowledge of literature & the writing craft. Invaluable!
3 people found this helpful
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- Kirsty
- 2022-02-11
Fantastic!
I have read (almost) all of Margaret Atwood’s fiction, so when I found ‘On Writers and Writing’, I was very excited. I had some expectation of what would happen when I listened. I was wrong. This is a lecture series read by Margaret Atwood. There is a live interview at the end. Each section delves into writing and writers from different perspectives, which is fantastic! Since I came to the text with expectations that were not met I was initially confused and kept expecting something else. When I realized what I was listening to, and that I was an idiot, I started from the beginning again. Thank god. Because this is, as I say, brilliant. Listen, listen properly, stop messing around and dreaming. Wake up and listen to Margaret Atwood because she knows what she’s talking about.
2 people found this helpful
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- Ari
- 2021-09-20
disappointed.
Picked up this audio book because of its title, "on writers and writing". I never read her other work (and, I never will, at this point). the book was not what I expected. I couldn't care less how old she was when Elvis Presley debuted. the first part was pretty much pointless ramblings. I couldn't continue. one thing I learned from this book is, how not to write. that's why I give 2 stars.
2 people found this helpful
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- Ryan Clark
- 2022-11-12
A Gift to Chew Not Imbibe
Reading @therealmargaretatwood’s #OnWritersAndWriting could have threatened the knowing that I am writer though I’m not writing, but I remained largely unscathed. It also could have inspired or grounded the knowing, but I’m not certain it did that either. There were times I hit “huh, I never thought of it that way,” and I am always seeking that out and seldom finding it, so goodie, but I found myself largely just getting through the audiobook. My #adhd tendencies drifted me away from being able to focus more than usual, in part, because it was an intellectual feat to stay on track.
It’s not the kind of book with steps and bullet points and tips and tricks. It’s more of an essay, an attempt, to metatextually embody what is writing, the writer, and the others too. And it does.
Don’t get me wrong. Atwood is brilliant and this work is true to her brilliance. It is inspiring and revealing.
But it’s heavy lifting.
It’s riddled with scholarly references of stories, tales, and works I was largely not familiar with. They may have been minimally obscure works I would have encountered had I been in a situation to go to grad school for literature. She explained them well enough without being condescending, it was very honorable to this ignorant reader. I could still follow and get the gist. But it was work.
I think I would prefer to consume this as a handbook. A little at a time, at my own pace, as needed. It would need be a physical copy. And it would likely sit on my desk for accessibility when the mood struck. I’m certain I would like a paragraph or page at a time more than the unrestrained flow of narration.
And the narration. Atwood was 81 the day this was released. It’s a gift we got to hear this work in her own voice. Yes it’s gravely, more so at times than others. It has the dignified monotone of the high brow, scholarly reciter of their own work. That can be intimidating or grounding or annoying or inspiring. I found it to be a gift.
1 person found this helpful
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- Ella
- 2022-03-12
amazing book
amazing book, I need to reread some of my old books with a new perspective/light
1 person found this helpful
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- Minai
- 2022-12-19
anything on writing
How could I not enjoy Margaret Atwood reading her own work? Great for those, who are interested in writing or publishing their own books.