It may be difficult to gift your friends and family an intimate one-on-one dinner with their favorite celebrity, but with a little help from audiobooks you can get them (and maybe even yourself) the next best thing. READ MORE
This year, Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 18th and continues for eight nights of candle-lit family gatherings, games, the celebration of miracles…and the celebration of miracle-adjacent fried foods (latkes, jelly doughnuts, more latkes). READ MORE
The trance that good food writing can put me into is what I assume other people feel when they read fantasy novels. I’m transported, fully. READ MORE
If you haven’t heard Walter Matthau read How the Grinch Stole Christmas, there’s no season like snow season to cue up the audiobook, gather your own pack of “Whos from Who-ville” (a.k.a the bedtime story crew) and set your frozen heart-o-meter to “thaw.” READ MORE
There are some stories that TikTok’s book creators just can’t seem to get over…and we don’t blame them. READ MORE
There’s something about Christopher Lee’s voice in Mystery Theater that transforms the simple act of walking into a cold, pre-dawn kitchen and flipping on the coffee maker from a chilly task into a delectable ritual—and that’s exactly the vibe we’re into this holiday season. READ MORE
Claudie Wells is growing up at the height of the Harlem Renaissance: it’s 1922, and she’s surrounded by writers and poets, painters and sculptors, actors and dancers, singers and musicians. READ MORE
Independent heroines, sharp social commentary, and the complicated business of love are all staples of Jane Austen novels that have proven timeless. Oh, alright, and she writes romantic leads who make downright dreamy declarations of love. Perhaps that’s why we often find ourselves with the remote in hand, queueing up one of the many brilliant Austen film adaptations (and debating our friends about which one is the best). READ MORE
In this episode, meet novelist Meg Howrey, author of They’re Going to Love You, and Christian living entrepreneur Jordan Raynor, author of The Word Before Work. READ MORE
Penguin Random House Audio is thrilled to congratulate acclaimed poet Amanda Gorman and comedy icon Mel Brooks, who have earned 2023 GRAMMY® Award nominations for their audiobooks Call Us What We Carry: Poems and All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Showbusiness.
Amanda Gorman is nominated in the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category, newly introduced for the 2023 awards, for her performance of Call Us What We Carry, the luminous poetry collection by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet. Gorman is the youngest presidential inaugural poet in US history, the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, and a committed advocate for the environment, racial equality, and gender justice.
Call Us What We Carry captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing, exploring history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, it features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning.
Mel Brooks is nominated in the Best Audio Book, Narration and Storytelling Recording category (formerly known as Best Spoken Word Album) for his narration of All About Me! Brooks is already an EGOT winner and has previously won 3 GRAMMYs® (in Musical Theater and Music Video categories for The Producers and Comedy category for The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000) and has now been nominated a total of 11 times.
All About Me! includes never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from Brooks, a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny, and offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, as well as details about close friendships and collaborations, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft.
Listen to clips from these extraordinary audiobook productions below, and look for the winners to be announced at the 65th GRAMMY® Awards on February 5, 2023.
“To hear Gorman read is like hearing songwriters play their music as the only people to do their work justice and convey its full meaning…Gorman’s inflections, pauses, and enunciations are integral to her work. Her voice moves the reader to feel in their soul how humans felt like captive animals during the isolation period of the pandemic. Occasionally throughout this work, there are some sound effects: a light breeze, some waves crashing, and in one poem Gorman alters her voice to give it the sound of an old-timey radio. Fear not, these are not gimmicks and are used sparingly. The reader will mainly hear the clear, crisp diction that transfixed the nation during the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden. Gorman ends the collection with the now-famous poem, “The Hill We Climb”. Prime for repeat listening, this is poetry for people who say they don’t read poetry.”—Booklist, Starred Audiobook Review
“Performed with an accessible Midwestern plainspokenness by Gorman herself, the poems in Call Us What We Carry capture the current chaotic moment in American (and human) history in a way that is compelling without being overwrought. Longer than some of the other collections on this list, this listen may be best experienced in small bites, but let that be a draw rather than a deterrent. Gorman’s words are rich enough to fill whatever space you leave between those bites.”—Paste
“Mel Brooks delivers the story of his life in his familiar old-New-Yorker voice, one which has remained vigorous for 95 years—or 2,000, depending on your source…This is an ebullient book, filled with anecdotes, triumphant laughter and asides delivered with perfect timing and an air of festivity.”—Washington Post
“Listening to his spry narration, it’s hard to believe that Brooks is 95 years old. 95!…Brooks’s 40 years with Anne Bancroft has always spelled real Hollywood romance for me—I know, I’m a meshugganah—and getting to hear him speak about their opposites—attract relationship is especially affecting.”—Vulture
“Brooks, of course, is the only one who could have read this memoir, and he does it with gusto. Whether he’s trying to persuade John Wayne to star in Blazing Saddles, working with Alfred Hitchcock on High Anxiety, bursting into song with “it’s Springtime for Hitler, in Germany!” consulting with George Lucas on Spaceballs, or reciting dialogue from Young Frankenstein, Brooks displays his wacky humor and inborn confidence. Movie aficionados will relish his insights into writing, directing, performing, and producing as well as his insider stories. He’s here to entertain, not complain, and if he only remembers the good times, we should all be so lucky.”—Booklist, Starred Audiobook Review
The 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards® will be presented on February 5, 2023. The full list of this year’s nominees can be found here. Penguin Random House Audio titles have previously earned 17 GRAMMYs®, and 49 additional GRAMMY® nominations.
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