Among our recent personal growth audios, quite a few focus on the specific things we can do to be happier and more satisfied with life. Being productive is one of those things, and in OFF THE CLOCK Laura Vanderkam says we’re going about it all wrong. She’s against obsessive time-management and instead offers a graceful invitation to stand back from our to-do lists and take a mindful look at how we can best engage with what needs to be done.
Another recent title, HOW WOMEN RISE, is about overcoming obstacles to personal effectiveness, another component of happiness. Lifted by the refreshing reading of voice pro Suzanne Toren, the audio describes how women can use their strengths to confront workplace gender bias instead of automatically capitulating to it. Read more…
Regardless of individual political allegiance, Americans—and many in Europe, Asia, and Africa, too—are gaining new and more popular awareness of how words can be used to both contract and expand communication. Whether used as singular epithets or strung into carefully designed phrasing, words and the meanings they carry can persuade, enrage, comfort, and signal a lowering or heightening of tension. People who love to read know this as surely as do gossips and clergy crafting sermons. Adding the high-octane fuel of skilled performance of the written words guides listeners through pace, tone, and inflection to burn every spark of available meaning and potential nuance from the written word and bring it to the audiobook reader’s attention. 
