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A Sport and a Pastime
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
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Gertrude Stein held a unique position at the center of the modernist movement. She was a novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in America, she moved with her family to Paris where she ran a Paris salon frequented by many famous historical figures, such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henri Matisse, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis.
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Super long anti-novel only for the completionists
- By Kindle Customer on 07-10-22
By: Gertrude Stein
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Oreo
- By: Fran Ross
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb.
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Pretty good.
- By Patrick Barney on 06-01-19
By: Fran Ross
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Dogeaters
- By: Jessica Hagedorn
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo, Mia Katigbak, Rona Figueroa, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Dogeaters follows a diverse set of characters through Manila, each exemplifying the country’s sharp distinctions between social classes. Celebrated novelist and playwright Jessica Hagedorn effortlessly shifts from the capital’s elite to the poorest of the poor. From the country’s president and first lady to an idealist reformer, from actors and radio DJs to prostitutes, seemingly unrelated lives become intertwined.
By: Jessica Hagedorn
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Mumbo Jumbo
- A Novel
- By: Ishmael Reed
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak.
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Interesting for Political & Cultural Influence
- By Tom on 03-01-20
By: Ishmael Reed
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Maud Martha
- By: Gwendolyn Brooks, Margo Jefferson - introduction
- Narrated by: Angela Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Maud Martha Brown is a little girl growing up on the South Side of 1940s Chicago. Amidst the crumbling taverns and overgrown yards, she dreams: of New York, romance, her future. She admires dandelions, learns to drink coffee, falls in love, decorates her kitchenette, visits the Jungly Hovel, guts a chicken, buys hats, gives birth. But her lighter-skinned husband has dreams, too: of the Foxy Cats Club, other women, war. And the 'scraps of baffled hate'—a certain word from a saleswoman, that visit to the cinema, the cruelty of a department store Santa Claus—are always there.
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A beautiful novel
- By Marc E. DiPaolo on 08-25-23
By: Gwendolyn Brooks, and others
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Winter in the Blood
- By: James Welch, Joy Harjo - foreword, Louise Erdrich - introduction
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis, Tanis Parenteau
- Length: 4 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.
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Good version of text
- By Reader_CEM on 06-15-21
By: James Welch, and others
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So Far from God
- By: Ana Castillo
- Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide. Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit.
By: Ana Castillo
What listeners say about A Sport and a Pastime
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jay Quintana
- 01-12-16
Beautiful writing, plot failed to engage
An argument can be made that Salter was one of the greatest stylist in the English language. The words flow vividly and eloquently. But no matter how beautiful the words, if the plot and people aren't intriguing -- heck, forget intriguing, if they aren't interesting -- the listening experience is, well, not a good one.
Ideally, one loses oneself in the narrative and the next thing you know, the story's over. Well, with this book, I had to force myself to listen to the end.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Mariano I. Avila
- 11-15-22
A well-read classic
Jeff Woodman does an excellent job of capturing Salter’s characters and the tone of the story. If you like The Great Gatsby and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this should be next on your list.
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1 person found this helpful
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- John
- 10-25-15
Disappointing
Chris Crowley, author of "Younger Next Year," was a friend of James Salter and wrote a moving tribute to him. Having never heard of Salter--despite his many critical accolades--I decided to get a few of his books. "A Sport and a Pastime" was supposedly Salter's personal favorite and his view of a perfect novel.
The book was disappointing to me. Salter can describe a scene and craft a sentence as well as anyone. He can certainly set a mood. But there is no real story here: Spoiled son of a critic meets attractive young French woman. He has no work or no productive life. He borrows a fancy car and and money from his family and he and the girl go off to French towns on weekends and they have a lot of sex. There's really nothing more to it.
There is no hero. There is no moral. From what I can tell, there is no point. The story is told in the third person by a friend of the male protagonist who somehow is able to relate the protagonist's sex life with the young woman. We are not sure (as we are told) if it is real or fantasy. The narrator--apparently on some vague sort of photography assignment--adds a positively creepy element that serves no apparent purpose.
I'm sure the sex in the book was sensational when it was written, but today it comes across as a crutch because of the lack of a story: Well, they've gone to dinner again, so they have to have more sex.
If this was Salter's idea of the "Great American Novel," it may explain why he never gained much of a popular following. I'm sorry to be harsh, but if I could get the time back, I simply would not bother with this one.
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9 people found this helpful
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- andy
- 08-06-18
Lots of sex but but otherwise quite boring.
Struggled to finish. I get the underlying message of the whole book but it sure took a long time to get there.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Paula McLeod
- 04-05-19
Great audio book!
I enjoyed this book! I gave it a 4 since there are descriptive sex portions and sweat words.
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1 person found this helpful
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- antoine
- 11-08-14
Grace, lust and melancholy
South of France, late 50s…Imagine Dean, a young man a young man dropout of a prestigious university (I immediately thought of James Dean), meeting Marie, a young woman (think of Jean Seberg ) who works as a clerk in a small company. He is rich, reckless, charming and a daydreamer. Drives a luxurious cabriolet, but lives on borrowed money. She is quiet, low profile, modest and passionate. They meet, make love, and travel all over France in his borrowed car. Theirs is affection with sex, probably not love; complicity without true communication, melancholy without dreams. All along there is a lingering sense of disaster inevitably approaching.
James Salter is a wonderful writer: his prose is elegant and delicate and the characters are beautifully sketched out. The sex scenes are explicitly described, but Dean and Marie feelings are portrayed in a fuzzy, tentative way as they were a distant dream. The sense of the passing time –that is so present in all his books- and the magnificent atmosphere of the changing seasons in South of France are a wonderful background to the story.
A great book of a superb author.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Blaise
- 08-06-18
Perfect
James Salter is one of the great American stylists. There is a sensual beauty to his prose that is captured perfectly by the narrator. This is one of the all-time great combos of novel and narrator. Impressionistic details fill short, slice of life chapters, that add up to a story about sex and desire in mid century Paris.
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2 people found this helpful
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- James Link Wilson
- 07-19-17
Poor choice of narrator
Narrator sounds like he is translating French, not an American from New Jersey who is a career fighter pilot. Too soft
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2 people found this helpful
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- Christy Petty
- 10-19-22
Casual racism & pointless.
How is this a classic? It’s an adult screwing a child & the casual racism is too much for me. Hard NO. Did not pass the test of time.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Melanie
- 04-04-21
Skip it
The author is very colorful in his descriptions, however there is seemingly no substance to this book. Three chapters in I gave up.
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2 people found this helpful