Today's early valentine's edition of the Penguin Podcast features two alternative romance titles.
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For information about any of the authors and books featured in these podcasts, plus features, interviews and news on the best in UK fiction and non-fiction, visit Penguin Books.
Meanwhile, a young girl, hoping to find a cure for her mother's
loneliness, stumbles across a book that changed her mother's life and
she goes in search of the author. Soon these and other worlds collide
in The History of Love, a captivating audio exploring the power of
love, of loneliness and of survival. 
Leo Gursky is a man who fell in love at the age of ten and has been
in love ever since. These days he is just about surviving life in
America, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs
neighbour know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the
milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always like this: sixty
years ago in the Polish village where he was born Leo fell in love with
a young girl called Alma and wrote a book in honour of his love. These
days he assumes that the book, and his dreams, are irretrievably lost,
until one day they return to him in the form of a brown envelope.
When Neil Strauss - a self-proclaimed AFC (average frustrated chump) -
withdraws $500 and signs-up for a workshop with notorious pick-up
artist Mystery, he embarks upon a life-changing journey into the
bizarre underworld of 'players'. Creating their own vernacular and
codes of honour, these are men that have devoted their lives to
perfecting techniques of seduction. In the course of the next two
years Neil transforms himself from a frustrated, insecure journalist
into the quick thinking, smooth talking Style, a character irresistible
to women. Then, as he is voted The World's Number One Pick-up Artist,
he falls for a woman who could beat him at his own game. With guest
appearances from Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, and Courtney Love.
please please please can the (clearly English) guy who reads the extracts stop putting on bad false American / Irish / Eastern European accents. Just read them in your normal voice please! I love the podcasts but it's very annoying to hear a fake noo yoirk or oirish accent. Thanks!
PS Your new studio still has a terrible echo echo echo - are you sure it's not recorded in the Penguin broom-cupboard??????!
Posted by: Kitty | 11/02/2008 at 03:45 PM
I completely agree with Kitty. What a horrible accent! When I read the book "The History of Love" I imagined an accent like that of Woody Allen. A Jewish New Yorker. This accent is half Irish/half East-European and ends nowhere in between.
Posted by: Fedde | 26/02/2008 at 01:42 PM
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Posted by: spob | 10/09/2008 at 06:17 PM