Eric

How good it is to have the late David Rakoff reading his own revealing, acidly funny essays. The man was an actor as well as a brilliant, insightful humorist, and there is no better way to be introduced to him and his work than by listening to this priceless recording.

Rakoff is not to be lumped in with Sedaris. His tone is far more dark, and his love of the English language leaps to the fore. People don't write like this anymore; the elegance of his style and the aptness of his observations put one in mind of Robert Benchley.

This was a first for me. I wish he were around to give us more.

It's a collection of unrelated essays, so this question is not germane.

Booth Tarkington yes; Traci Svendsgaard, no.

I wouldn't know what the most memorable moment of ALICE ADAMS is, as I stopped listening after the first ten minutes.

The narrator assumes this story is taking place in the South, and gives all the characters Southern accents, which is ridiculous. Tarkington wrote very specifically about the Midwest, where he was born, raised, lived and died. The narrator destroys the experience by making every character sound like they're out of William Faulkner.

I'll read the book on my own in order to appreciate it properly, without the "improvement" of an utterly misguided narrator. This recording should either be redone with the right narrator or removed from the Audible catalog.

This has it all--humor, gore, great dialogue, characters, and plot.

The reader is fabulous. He is clearly an actor as well, and gets each character's individual voice spot-on.

Roach has a wonderfully dry, witty tone to her writing, and that is perfectly interpreted by the seen-it-all delivery of the narrator. My only quibble is the narrator's repeated mispronunciation of

I haven't heard her before this, but I'll look forward to more.

This is atypical of most of Philip Roth's work. It goes straight to the emotions with its simple story of a fine, promising young man and his run-in with fate or, perhaps, an evil, uncaring Supreme Being. Dennis Boutsikaris does such a magnificent job of reading this that I just cannot image anyone else who could touch him. Bravo.