Saturday, November 28, 2009

Free audiobooks



Glimpses of the Moon, The



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Glimpses of the Moon, The


Author : Edith Wharton

Performed By : Anna Fields

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 9 hours

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $34.95 $29.95

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"As Wharton tells [the] story, the sharp irony of both her prose and her characters

bleeds into pools of true feeling."Kirkus Reviews


"There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as 'major'and Edith

Wharton is one."Gore Vidal


Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures

of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds.

They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends,

honeymooning in their mansions and villas.



As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than we should hamper each other. We both

know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other mightin the way of opportunities, I mean.

And then we should be a novelty as married people. We're both rather unusually popularwhy not be

frank?and it's such a blessing for dinner-givers to be able to count on a couple of whom neither one

is a blank."



The other part of the plan is that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially,

they're each free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of Eros that will charm

all fans of Wharton's work.



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Hymn: Alan Bennett And The Medici String Quartet
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Hymn: Alan Bennett And The Medici String Quartet

Author : Alan Bennett and George Fenton
Performed By : Alan Bennett
Publisher : BBC Audiobooks Ltd
Runtime : 50 minutes
Categories : Biographical
Music Related
Comedy
Biographical
Non Fiction
Our Price : $7.49
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Recorded live for BBC Radio 4, Hymn is a memoir of music in childhood, written by Alan Bennett and George Fenton

 

'I am one of those boys, state-educated in the Forties and Fifties, who came by the words of Hymns Ancient and Modern by singing them day in, day out in school every morning at assembly. It's a dwindling band... you con pick us out at funerals and memorial services because we can sing the hymns without the book'

To mark their 30th anniversary, the Medici Quartet asked composer George Fenton and writer Alan Bennett to collaborate on a piece for performance at the Harrogate International Festival. The result was Hymn, a meditative piece, by turns funny and
melancholy, in which Bennett looks at the part which music played in his childhood, at his father's doomed attempts to teach him the violin, and at what hymns mean to him now. The illustrative suite for strings, played by the Medici Quartet , draws on a range of musical references including Elgar, Delius and several well-known hymns. Recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Radio Theatre, Hymn is prefaced by an introduction from the author.

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