4 classic audiobooks

Four recent audiobooks bring new life to titles that should not be forgotten.

3. '1984,' by George Orwell

(Read by Simon Prebble; Blackstone Audio; 11.5 hours; $20.97 at www.audible.com as a download or from www.downpour.com for $20.95)

Originally published in 1949, Orwell's classic dystopian novel is finding new life in today's tumultuous political climate. Thought police, doublethink, Big Brother, constant surveillance, propaganda, and never-ending wars no longer seem so much like fictitious conceits. Winston Smith, our unhappy protagonist, wanders away from Oceania's party line and must face the consequences.  Prebble has a refined, well-trained voice and the ability to express all of those Orwellian nuances woven into a tale rife with paranoia.  He softens his voice for women and manages to make the the Appendix – the Principles of Newspeak – as entertaining as the rest of the novel. This version was released 10 years ago, so expect to download it. Grade: A –

 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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