Audiobooks by Geoff Dyer

Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence

Sitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach . . . And yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today. Out of Sheer Rage is a complete one-off, a richly comic study of the combination of bad temper, procrastination and the uncanny power of obliquity.

Geoff Dyer (Author), Tom Hollander (Narrator)

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But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano . . . In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skilfully evokes the embattled lives of the players who shaped modern jazz. He draws on photos and anecdotes, but music is the driving force of But Beautiful and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.

Geoff Dyer (Author), Dion Graham, Dion Graham (Narrator)

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The Missing of the Somme

Geoff Dyer (Author), John Hopkins (Narrator)

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'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy': On Where Eagles Dare

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' by Geoff Dyer, read by Roy McMillan. From the acclaimed writer and critic Geoff Dyer, an extremely funny scene-by-scene analysis of Where Eagles Dare - published as the film reaches its 50th anniversary A thrilling Alpine adventure starring a magnificent, bleary-eyed Richard Burton and a coolly anachronistic Clint Eastwood, Where Eagles Dare is the apex of 1960s war movies, by turns enjoyable and preposterous. 'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy' is Geoff Dyer's tribute to the film he has loved since childhood: an analysis taking us from its snowy, Teutonic opening credits to its vertigo-inducing climax. For those who have not even seen Where Eagles Dare, this book is a comic tour-de-force of criticism. But for the film's legions of fans, whose hearts will always belong to Ron Goodwin's theme tune, it will be the fulfilment of a dream. 'Geoff Dyer's funniest book yet. Who else would work in Martha Gellhorn on the first page of a book on the film Where Eagles Dare?' Michael Ondaatje 'One of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and one of our most original writers' Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine

Geoff Dyer (Author), Roy Mcmillan (Narrator)

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Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It

From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky's Stalker, 'your most cherished desire will come true'. Available for the first time as an audiobook, Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It is read for you by Tom Hollander.

Geoff Dyer (Author), Tom Hollander (Narrator)

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Another Great Day at Sea

From a writer "whose genre-jumping refusal to be pinned down [makes him] an exemplar of our era" (NPR), a new book that confirms his power to astound readers. As a child Geoff Dyer spent long hours making and blotchily painting model fighter planes. So the adult Dyer jumped at the chance of a residency aboard an aircraft carrier. Another Great Day at Sea chronicles Dyers experiences on the USS George H.W. Bush as he navigates the routines and protocols of "carrier-world," from the elaborate choreography of the flight deck through miles of walkways and hatches to kitchens serving meals for a crew of five thousand to the deafening complexity of catapult and arresting gear. Meeting the Captain, the F-18 pilots and the dentists, experiencing everything from a man-overboard alert to the Steel Beach Party, Dyer guides us through the most AIE (acronym intensive environment) imaginable. A lanky Englishman (could he really be both the tallest and the oldest person on the ship?) in a deeply American world, with its constant exhortations to improve, to do better, Dyer brilliantly records the daily life on board the ship, revealing it to be a prism for understanding a society where discipline and conformity, dedication and optimism, become forms of self-expression. In the process it becomes clear why Geoff Dyer has been widely praised as one of the most original - and funniest - voices in literature. Another Great Day at Sea is the definitive work of an author whose books defy definition.From the Hardcover edition.

Geoff Dyer (Author), Jonathan Cowley (Narrator)

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The Missing of the Somme

Geoff Dyer has won fans writing about everything from jazz to D. H. Lawrence, from photography to neurotic enlightenment, from Cambodia to Rome. The Missing of the Somme, his remarkable book on the significance of the First World War, is a gem for Dyer fans and history buffs alike. With his characteristic wit and insight, here Dyer weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and film, poetry and sculptures, graveyards, and ceremonies that illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great War. From one of our most beloved authors, this is a personal meditation on war and remembrance. “The great Great War book of our time.”--Observer (London)

Geoff Dyer (Author), Antony Ferguson (Narrator)

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Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi: A Novel

Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman, a jaded and dissolute journalist, whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly? Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days, he ends up staying for months, and suddenly finds a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story? An irrepressible and wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi is dead-on in its evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment. 'No contemporary writer blends genres better than Geoff Dyer, and his latest novel'a vigorous mash-up of satire, romance, travelogue and existential treatise'is his best yet'Dyer excels at savage comedy'see his tableau of jaded art critics desperately swilling Bellinis'but he's even better on the profound pleasures and indignities of the flesh, which are the forces that unite his novel's two very separate worlds.''Time magazine, 'The Top 10 Everything of 2009'

Geoff Dyer (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

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