57 Results for : tedium

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    The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 926min
    The Infernal Library is a harrowing audiobook tour of "dictator literature" in the 20th century, featuring the soul-killing prose and poetry of Hitler, Mao, and many more, which shows how books have sometimes shaped the world for the worse. Since the days of the Roman Empire dictators have written books. But in the 20th century despots enjoyed unprecedented print runs to (literally) captive audiences. The titans of the genre - Stalin, Mussolini, and Khomeini among them - produced theoretical works, spiritual manifestos, poetry, memoirs, and even the occasional romance novel and established a literary tradition of boundless tedium that continues to this day. How did the production of literature become central to the running of regimes? What do these books reveal about the dictatorial soul? And how can books and literacy, most often viewed as inherently positive, cause immense and lasting harm? Putting daunting research to revelatory use, journalist Daniel Kalder asks and brilliantly answers these questions. Marshalled upon the beleaguered shelves of The Infernal Library are the books and commissioned works of the century’s most notorious figures. Their words led to the deaths of millions. Their conviction in the significance of their own thoughts brooked no argument. It is perhaps no wonder then, as Kalder argues, that many dictators began their careers as writers. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Chris Ciulla. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/aren/003322/bk_aren_003322_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    A Short Guide to a Happy Life , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 34min
    From the New York Times best-selling author of Alternate Side, Anna Quindlen’s classic reflection on a meaningful life. “Life is made of moments, small pieces of silver amidst long stretches of tedium. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves now to live, really live...to love the journey, not the destination.”  In this treasure of a book, Anna Quindlen, the best-selling novelist and columnist, reflects on what it takes to “get a life” - to live deeply every day and from your own unique self, rather than merely to exist through your days. “Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us,” Quindlen writes, “because unless you know the clock is ticking, it is so easy to waste our days, our lives.” Her mother died when Quindlen was 19: “It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason.... I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted.” But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? In A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Anna Quindlen. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/rhau/000004/bk_rhau_000004_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom Is Good , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 519min
    Are we living in an age where we are more boredom-prone? Or are other people boring us? Or could we be those boring people? In our current information age, we are constantly connected to technology and have so many varied ways to spend our leisure time that we should all surely never know what boredom feels like. Yet boredom appears to be on the rise; it seems that the more we have to stimulate us, the more stimulation we crave. In a quest to relieve our boredom, we engage in dangerous risk-taking, from extreme sports to drugs to gambling to antisocial behavior, or we overindulge in shopping or eating. The Upside of Downtime explores the causes and consequences of boredom in the fast-paced 21st century. Parents are desperate to keep their children entertained during every waking moment, the education system is geared towards interactivity, and attention spans are dropping as we use multiple devices at all times. But the world of work can be increasingly repetitive and routine, and we are losing the ability to tolerate this everyday tedium. Using Sandi Mann's own groundbreaking research into boredom, this audiobook tells the story of how we act, react and cope when we are bored and argues that there is a positive side to boredom. It can be a catalyst for humour, fun, reflection, creativity and inspiration. The radical solution to the 'boredom problem' is to harness it rather than try to avoid it. Allowing yourself time away from constant stimuli can enrich your life. We should all embrace our boredom and see the upside of our downtime. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Karen Cass. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/028936/bk_adbl_028936_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    The Graybar Hotel: Stories , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 298min
    In this stunning debut collection, Curtis Dawkins, an MFA graduate and convicted murderer serving life without parole, takes us inside the worlds of prison and prisoners with stories that dazzle with their humor and insight, even as they describe a harsh and barren existence. In Curtis Dawkins' first short story collection, he offers a window into prison life through the eyes of his narrators and their cellmates. Dawkins reveals the idiosyncrasies, tedium, and desperation of long-term incarceration - he describes men who struggle to keep their souls alive despite the challenges they face. In "A Human Number", a man spends his days collect-calling strangers just to hear the sounds of the outside world. In "573543", an inmate recalls his descent into addiction as his prison softball team gears up for an annual tournament against another unit. In "Leche Quemada", an inmate is released and finds freedom more complex and baffling than he expected. Dawkins' stories are funny and sad, filled with unforgettable detail - the barter system based on calligraphy-ink tattoos, handmade cards, and cigarettes; a single dandelion smuggled in from the rec yard; candy made from powdered milk, water, sugar, and hot sauce. His characters are nuanced and sympathetic, despite their obvious flaws. The Graybar Hotel tells moving, human stories about men enduring impossible circumstances. Dawkins takes listeners beyond the cells into characters' pasts and memories and desires, into the unusual bonds that form during incarceration and the strained relationships with family members on the outside. He's an extraordinary writer with a knack for metaphor, and this is a powerful compilation of stories that gives voice to the experience of perhaps the most overlooked members of our society. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Pete Simonelli. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/sans/007984/bk_sans_007984_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    How to Make Your Point Without PowerPoint: 50 Ways to Present Effectively , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 261min
    The art of presenting needs a serious shake-up. Presenters are constantly on the lookout for fresh ideas to get their messages across but mistakenly believe PowerPoint is the right medium to do so. This often results in uninspiring presentations consisting of countless lackluster slides that their audiences are forced to sit through - sometimes at the expense of their own sanity. In How to Make Your Point Without PowerPoint, renowned public speaker and Speakers Hall of Fame inductee Douglas Kruger aims to end the tedium of the PowerPoint medium. He offers 50 practical suggestions to enhance your presentation skills - including the kinds of formats you can use, different methods of delivery, and some alternative visuals - so you and your team can trade in the slides and get brainstorming. This book proves that it is possible to do an excellent job, even a superior one, without slides, by learning to truly engage and persuade. In this way you will stand out every time and, as the presenter, have an entertaining time of it! Douglas Kruger is a business consultant, an author, and a professional speaker and is the only person in Africa to have won the Southern African Championships for Public Speaking a record five times. In 2016, in honor of excellence in his craft, he was inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame by the Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa. He earns his living delivering presentations to audiences in South Africa and around the world. He has published a number of books with Penguin Random House, including the acclaimed Own Your Industry and They're Your Rules Break Them!. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Douglas Kruger. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/dkru/000005/bk_dkru_000005_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    The Colonial Post-Captain: Carlisle and Holbrooke Naval Adventures Series, Book 1 , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 684min
    The Western Mediterranean, 1756. An uneasy peace is about to be shattered as France's greatest living general prepares an invasion force in Toulon, but where is it bound? Captain Carlisle hails from Virginia, a loyal colony of the British Crown. As the clouds of war gather, Carlisle's small frigate - Fury - is ordered to Toulon on a reconnaissance mission. If battling the winter weather in the Gulf of Lions is not a sufficient challenge, Carlisle must also juggle the delicate diplomatic issues in this period of pre-war tension while contending with an increasingly belligerent French frigate. But Carlisle has additional problems unique to his colonial origins: He has no professional or political sponsors and an uninspiring group of followers, both of which are essential to a mid-18th century naval career. How can a penniless second son from Virginia overcome these crippling deficiencies? George Holbrooke, Carlisle's reluctant master's mate, cannot disguise his lack of enthusiasm for the tedium of the peacetime navy. His attitude changes as he experiences combat and personal danger, but can he persuade his captain that he has turned the corner? And can he achieve that vital promotion to commissioned status? And then there is the beautiful Chiara Angelini, pursued across the Mediterranean by a Tunisian corsair who appears determined to abduct her, yet reluctant to shed blood. Can Carlisle solve this mystery and protect Chiara? Fury shadows the French fleet as it sails from Toulon and reveals its true destination. Carlisle and Holbrooke are witnesses to the inconclusive sea-battle, which leads to the loss of Minorca, and engage in a thrilling and bloody final encounter with the French frigate. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Steven Crossley. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/tant/011530/bk_tant_011530_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    A Rumor of War , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 796min
    When it first appeared, A Rumor of War brought home to American readers, with terrifying vividness and honesty, the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on the soldiers who fought there. And while it is a memoir of one young man's experiences and therefore deeply personal, it is also a book that speaks powerfully to today's students about the larger themes of human conscience, good and evil, and the desperate extremes men are forced to confront in any war. A platoon commander in the first combat unit sent to fight in Vietnam, Lieutenant Caputo landed at Danang on March 8, 1965, convinced that American forces would win a quick and decisive victory over the Communists. Sixteen months later, and without ceremony, Caputo left Vietnam a shell-shocked veteran whose youthful idealism and faith in the rightness of the war had been utterly shattered. A Rumor of War tells the story of that trajectory and allows us to see and feel the reality of the conflict as the author himself experienced it, from the weeks of tedium hacking through scorching jungles, to the sudden violence of ambushes and firefights, to the unbreakable bonds of friendship forged between soldiers, and finally to a sense of the war as having no purpose other than the fight for survival. Most troubling, Caputo gives us an unflinching view not only of remarkable bravery and heroism but also of the atrocities committed in Vietnam by ordinary men so numbed by fear and desperate to survive that their moral distinctions had collapsed. More than a statement against war, Caputo's memoir offers readers today a profoundly visceral sense of what war is and, as the author says, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men". ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: L. J. Ganser. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/adbl/001179/bk_adbl_001179_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    Revenge & Restraints: Helen Discovers BDSM the Hard Way , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 139min, (USK 18)
    There was no doubt about it Helen Thompson loved her husband deeply. She had from the first moment she had met him nearly 15 years ago. He was a kind and gentle giant of a man, a good man. But oh my was he boring! When Helen was a teenager she was ambitious, rebellious, and headstrong. Exactly all the traits her straight-laced, church-going father hated in a woman. She craved adventure, excitement, and challenge but her parents had other plans for their only daughter. When Raymond Thompson came a-calling with his Please Sir and Thank You Mr. & Mrs. Miller, he was seen as the antidote to their wayward daughter. When Ray dropped to one knee at a family BBQ, Helen said the only thing she could. Slowly she had stopped fighting and fallen into the dutiful wife role complete piles of laundry and a husband whose idea of foreplay was to spit on it before he adopted the missionary position. The man she was married to had no idea of the passionate, lustful woman that lived inside the hollow shell that she had become. All this was about to change when Helen saw a dangerously curious advert on Craigslist that seemed to promise a release from the monotony, the taste of excitement she craved so much. Deciding she had had enough of the tedium at home and the assholes at work, Helen threw caution to the wind and responded to the advertisement, inviting a train crash of submission, bondage, and sexual ecstasy into her life. Helen Thompson found herself in a 24 hour sexual torment that she was not sure she would survive. But the aftershock of her ordeal would end up violently impacting everything in her life. Cumulating in a blisteringly chilling and long overdue act of revenge for long suffering Helen. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Craig Beck. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/070829/bk_acx0_070829_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    The White Field , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 402min
    The White Field is a fast-paced journey of a man Tom, fresh out of prison and trying desperately to rebuild his life. But he is caught by mysterious, unseen forces beyond his knowledge or control.After his release from prison, he is dropped back into the world in the wastelands of the city. In the menial work afforded the underclass, he begins his new life among characters at the edges of society - dwellers of the netherworld - such as Raphael, a former cop from Mexicali-singing Spanish areas in the mists of the industrial night among drug addicts and crooked cops; Tony, a stoner scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of history based solely on the intricate study of rock and roll; and Larry, the bloated, abusive manager trapped as much as his workers in a world of tedium and repetition and machinesThink, The Three Stooges on acid.Unable to reconnect with what’s left of his family, Tom embarks on a criminal path more harrowing than the one that led him to prison in the first place. Lured in by the nefarious Thane, he slips into a plan that will leave him with no way back. And with no place left in this world to go but prison, he makes one last run for freedom. Will he escape?Praise for the book:“Rarely will a reader find the grittiness and beauty intertwined so compellingly.” (Mark Spencer, winner of the Faulkner Award, The Omaha Prize, The Bradshaw Book Award, and author of several books including Ghost Walking and Trespassers)“[C]arries the awake reader into new terrain and taps on the soul for this journey into the self.” (Jeff Kamen, award-winning journalist and documentary producer for NPR, NBC, CBS, ABC, and author of Warrior Pups)“[H]aunting splendor, illuminating the dreams of the doomed.” (Matthew Dexter, author of The Ritalin Orgy)“[A] taut, well-paced thrill ride rife with keenly observed lyricism, a startling and refreshing addition to the l ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Douglas Cole. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/230961/bk_acx0_230961_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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    No Pirates Nowadays and Other Stories: Three Nautical Tales , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 98min
    Three previously unpublished short stories by the great Patrick O'Brian - Noughts and Crosses, Two's Company and No Pirates Nowadays. Noughts and Crosses: When Sullivan and Ross decide to go shark fishing among the atolls of the Great Barrier Reef little do they know what awaits them. With their schooner beached for cleaning they take a small whaler out to sea, but when the very devil of a storm turns the whole of the sea white, it drives them to the nearest atoll for shelter. It is only when they set out once again that they discover the seas are now filled with sharks, driven to a bloodlust by the smell of their butchered fellows that clings to the whaler. Becalmed and surrounded by the world's most fearsome predators, Sullivan and Ross discover that the hunters and become the hunted.Two's Company: The lighthouse was one of the most lonely in the world, guarding a dangerous reef in the cold northern seas. It therefore seemed a good idea to Sullivan and Ross that they both be its keepers; after all, two's company. But long months of isolation and boredom can test even the stoutest of friendships. So when a great storm deposits the carcass of a huge whale on the rocks, attracting to it flocks of hungry seabirds and packs of deadly sharks, and later the arrival of two unexpected guests, it provides the two friends with a welcome distraction from their tedium. Yet as the months drag on, they find that there is only so long that man can live in peace with his fellow. No Pirates Nowadays: As their schooner inches through the dense yellow fog of the northern Pacific, Ross is beginning to regret agreeing to Sullivan's latest plan. Their search for the island of Sakhalien, to hunt for precious sea-otters, is leading them nowhere. The appearance of a fellow ship should be cause to lift their mood, yet the captain and swarthy Malay crew of the Santa Maria leave Ross feeling all the more uneasy. But when their paths cross once again it is Su ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Robert Hardy. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/hcuk/001879/bk_hcuk_001879_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.
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