Don’t know what your previous experience with James Thurber is, but he was always one of those writers teachers would have us read…maybe because he’s at the level we were at in terms of language, but I think mostly they just liked him. He’s a smart writer, kind of like a more whimsical HL Mencken, and also like HL Mencken, he’s the kind of writer who rabble-rousing Left-leaning folk like to like.
I happen to like him as well, and it’s not so much that I find him extremely funny, although he is quite funny, and not because I find him shrewd or clever or keen, because he is all of those things. Instead, I happen to like that his prose is playful and fun, but also quite precise. He’s a lot like an American Wodehouse in that way.
So having Keith Olberman read him is well, fraught. You might very hate Olberman, and I won’t blame you, but if you like his voice, or him or can handle it, this is a good collection.
It suffers from one thing in its main: the very best of the whole collection is the very first thing we’re given. And I don’t even mean Walter Mitty — which is fine, but over played, and not even as good as its claimed. No instead, James Thurber reads a French/English phrasebook, which in this case happens to be useful travel phrases. But he reads them with an editing mind so that each little page is a mini-drama or mini-epic.
Watch out for the self-congratulatory Keith Olberman intro if you do get this one.
(Photo:https://www.amazon.com/James-Thurber-Audio-Collection-Selected/dp/B0054S0KZ8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28CEQB0REJS9L&keywords=james+thurber+audiobook&qid=1552147135&s=gateway&sprefix=james+thur%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-1″