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Ham on Rye
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Christian Baskous
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
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My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
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Publisher's summary
In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years, and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D. H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.
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Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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Fourth of July Creek
- A Novel
- By: Smith Henderson
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral 11-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face-to-face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times. But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the FBI, putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.
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The Ghost of Tom Joad & the Wrath of Grapes
- By Mel on 06-30-14
By: Smith Henderson
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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The White Boy Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Paul Beatty
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel, The White Boy Shuffle, is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, black surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a "divided, downtrodden people".
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So beautiful
- By mp on 06-15-18
By: Paul Beatty
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Rabbit
- The Autobiography of Ms. Pat
- By: Patricia Williams, Jeannine Amber
- Narrated by: Patricia Williams
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13, she was pregnant. By 15, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive.
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Amazing story but dry reading
- By SpazzyMaggee on 11-03-17
By: Patricia Williams, and others
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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
- Stories
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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With this, his first collection of stories, Raymond Carver breathed new life into the American short story and instantly became both the recognized master of the form and one of our best-loved fiction writers. Carver shows us the humor and tragedy that dwell in the hearts of ordinary people; his stories are the classics of our time.
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Humanity at the Breaking Point
- By Darwin8u on 03-31-19
By: Raymond Carver
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Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
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Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
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The Shadow Year
- A Novel
- By: Jeffrey Ford
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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On New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy spends much of his free time in the basement of his family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with figurines representing friends and neighbors. Their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas... and, unbeknownst to her siblings, moves around the inanimate clay residents.
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Couldn't stop listening!!!
- By Marjory on 12-12-10
By: Jeffrey Ford
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We'll Fly Away
- By: Bryan Bliss
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Best friends since childhood, Luke and Toby have dreamed of one thing: getting out of their dead-end town. Soon they finally will, riding the tails of Luke's wrestling scholarship, never looking back. If they don't drift apart first. If Toby's abusive dad, or Luke's unreliable mom, or anything else their complicated lives throw at them doesn't get in the way. In a format that alternates between Luke's letters to Toby from death row and the events of their senior year, Bryan Bliss expertly unfolds the circumstances that led to Luke's incarceration.
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Great Story Except....
- By Willizz on 05-18-18
By: Bryan Bliss
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Not his best, but still Bukowski
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One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
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Enjoyable
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Women
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Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at 50, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.
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Don't start your Bukowski journey here
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Pulp
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Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Bukowski's own brand of humour and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.
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Bukowskis worst.......still pretty good
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Notes of a Dirty Old Man
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Born from Bukowski's columns, the LA underground press of the 1960s, Bukowski defined his early alter ego, Hank Chinaski, as a self-described dirty old man who eyes his defeatist attitude about himself with his clarity to see humor and holiness in others. Addictive and instructive listening, Bukowski delivers the humanity and intelligence of all the unseen. Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - Notes features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, and his tortured, violent relationships.
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A different voice for different material
- By john in RI on 02-12-18
By: Charles Bukowski
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Hollywood
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Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski, returns, revelling in his eternal penchant for booze, women, and horse-racing as he makes the precarious journey from poet to screenwriter. Based on Bukowski's experiences when working on the film Barfly, the absurdity and egotism of the film industry are laid bare in this deadpan, touching, and funny glimpse into the endless negotiations and back-stabbings of la-la land. Hollywood is an irreverent jaunt that serves up the beating heart of Hollywood with razor-sharp humour.
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Buk Lives!
- By From Texas on 08-18-13
By: Charles Bukowski
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Post Office
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"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than 12 years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers.
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Not his best, but still Bukowski
- By ibillinsly@gmail on 02-05-18
By: Charles Bukowski
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Factotum
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- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
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One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
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Enjoyable
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Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at 50, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.
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Don't start your Bukowski journey here
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Pulp
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Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Bukowski's own brand of humour and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.
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Bukowskis worst.......still pretty good
- By GarageGator561 on 10-29-13
By: Charles Bukowski
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Notes of a Dirty Old Man
- By: Charles Bukowski
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
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Born from Bukowski's columns, the LA underground press of the 1960s, Bukowski defined his early alter ego, Hank Chinaski, as a self-described dirty old man who eyes his defeatist attitude about himself with his clarity to see humor and holiness in others. Addictive and instructive listening, Bukowski delivers the humanity and intelligence of all the unseen. Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - Notes features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, and his tortured, violent relationships.
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A different voice for different material
- By john in RI on 02-12-18
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Buk Lives!
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Tales of Ordinary Madness
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This collection of Buk's grimmest diaries gives an insight into the noir and brutal Los Angeles that Bukowski observed and lived so well. He was a legend in his time: a madman, a recluse, a lover...tender, vicious...never the same. These are exceptional stories that came pounding out of his violent and depraved life - horrible and holy. You cannot listen to them and come away the same again.
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Patton nails this.
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On Drinking
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Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed “dirty old man”, Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments, as well as some of his most joyful and inspired. In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer’s most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff.
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Don't read this sober
- By Lowball on 03-02-19
By: Charles Bukowski
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More Notes of a Dirty Old Man
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Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - More features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured, violent relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry reading circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly-veiled autobiography to purely fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters - climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers.
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Can't get enough.
- By . on 02-22-21
By: Charles Bukowski, and others
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On Cats
- By: Charles Bukowski
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- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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On Cats offers Bukowski's musings on these beloved animals and their toughness and resiliency. He honors them as fighters, hunters, survivors who command awe and respect as they grip tightly on to the world around them: "A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go."
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In the now
- By Sha Osborne on 01-23-21
By: Charles Bukowski
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Hot Water Music
- By: Charles Bukowski
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- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Hot Water Music is a collection of short stories by Charles Bukowski, published in 1983. The collection deals largely with: drinking, women, gambling, and writing. It is an important collection that establishes Bukowski's minimalist style and his thematic oeuvre.
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If you like Bukowski...
- By Amazon Customer on 09-08-19
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South of No North
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South of No North is a collection of short stories written by Charles Bukowski that explore loneliness and struggles on the fringes of society.
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Short Story Paradise
- By Dan_Man on 06-04-18
By: Charles Bukowski
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Charles Bukowski
- Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life
- By: Howard Sounes
- Narrated by: Howard Sounes
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
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The American writer Charles Bukowski (1920-94) developed a cult following for his simple and vivid poems, stories and novels based on his experiences as a hard-drinking postal worker in Los Angeles. His classic books include Post Office, Women and Love Is a Dog from Hell. In this engrossing biography, studded with excerpts from Bukowski's writing, Howard Sounes tells the true story of Bukowski's life in the same punchy style as his subject.
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Great biography
- By Nazariy Telyuk on 01-29-20
By: Howard Sounes
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The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
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- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
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Bukowski's mad immortal origins, surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of audiences who've recognized Bukowski as one of America's greatest realist writers and poets. Audible Studios narrator and OBIE winner Will Patton ( Remember the Titans, The Good Wife, Armageddon) gives a tour de force performance of Bukowski's greatest work in his prime.
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Vulgar - yes.
- By Bornin62 on 05-24-21
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The Most Beautiful Woman in Town
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"The dull ones would never understand Cass. To the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not." Bukowski's alter ego finds himself in a slow dance with the most beautiful girl in town, who also happens to be its saddest; a tale of loss and what might have been.
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Allright story
- By Roman on 11-09-17
By: Charles Bukowski
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On the Road
- 50th Anniversary Edition
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- Unabridged
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Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.
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My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
- By Guillermo on 09-17-09
By: Jack Kerouac
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The Rum Diary
- A Novel
- By: Hunter S. Thompson
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Begun in 1959 by a twenty-two-year-old Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary is a brilliantly tangled love story of jealousy, treachery, and violent alcoholic lust in the Caribbean boomtown that was San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the late 1950s.
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Either a Priest or a Fool
- By Darwin8u on 10-01-15
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A .45 to Pay the Rent
- By: Charles Bukowski
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Buk's vignette, based on conversations between a drug dealer and his young daughter, follows unquestionable childhood logic about family, love, and making ends meet on the other side of the law.
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Will Patton takes Bukowski to tbe next level.
- By Eddie Morra on 03-14-22
By: Charles Bukowski
What listeners say about Ham on Rye
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Men's version of Virginia Woolf
Some of Bukowski's books don't hold up when I revisit them years later, however Ham on Rye is the exception. It is a very blunt, honest tale of fierce aloneness, being anti-social and a struggle to grapple with the madness of the world around him. If you think of True Crime where men's brutality is laid bare and analyzed, Bukowski does this to the American dream and to women's blind pursuit of only the strapping young lads of society. This will irritate some people, and offend plenty, because these opinions aren't tolerated. Anything insensitive or racist by today's standards can be found in this book- not in the author's opinion, but in dialogue other people are speaking.
You'll feel like someone smuggled it under the door to you, and you have to hurry and read it. Then burn it afterwards. It hides under guise of humor sometimes, then certain passages hit you in the gut and last for days.
If I ever met a woman who had read and liked this book, I'd marry her. A woman who could understand this book would understand men. This is why most women are naturally repulsed by it and will never read it. It's our version of Virginia Woolf. And this scares people... for men to have something like that. Ask yourself why?
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- ibillinsly@gmail
- 02-01-18
4.64 stars........ Bukowski keeps it real.
I laughed more listening to this audiobook than all other audiobooks I've heard combined. This is one of the top performances I've heard, and I've heard some really good ones. Christian Baskous is the perfect narrator to read Bukowski's work. I rarely, if ever, literally laugh out loud while listening to an audiobook. This performance caused me to laugh out loud multiple times. The humor is as crude as it comes, so if you are easily offended or do not like foul language, stay away from Ham on Rye. If this type humor is something you enjoy, download this book. The performance is top notch, and while the story isn't a fast paced one, there's always something going on. Be warned: Ham on Rye is rude and crude and socially unacceptable. I loved it.
Overall rating: 4.64 stars
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- Joe Kraus
- 04-10-18
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Loser
I have a vivid memory of discovering Bukowski’s poetry: the poem “Tough Customers” in the volume Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed in the ‘poetry closet’ at Denison University’s library in the summer of 1983. It was an amazing moment, one that opened up for me new possibilities for writing and reading literature. I’ve never found my way to his prose, though. If I started Barfly, I know I didn’t finish it, and he has remained only a poet for me ever since.
This one, though, is worth the wait, even if I am coming to it 35 years late.
Ham on Rye opens with Bukowski’s seemingly autobiographical protagonist, Henry Chinaski, age two, sitting beneath a table and watching the legs of the adults go past. It ends with him gazing uncertainly at the rock-‘em, sock-‘em-robot-like game where his toy boxer has been knocked down for the count by a kid across the way. In between, he resents the world, grows into an ungainly body, and gets into more fights than I can count. Along the way, he tallies up reasons to hate himself, then he more or less shrugs them all off and settles into drinking, reading literature, and drinking some more.
If the arc of the narrative sounds flat, what makes this memorable is Bukowski’s nonjudgmental recording of the world around him. He is, in many ways, a camera, telling us what he sees and sometimes what he feels but never applying philosophy to it. The kids and adults of his world often do cruel things to one another, but he doesn’t spend time assessing others or himself. Life isn’t particularly generous in his case. He has a mean, insecure father and a weak-willed mother. He is awkward as a child and then, just as he finds his strength, he develops what the doctors call the worst case of “acne vulgaris” they’ve ever seen, and he has to deal with the almost disfiguring condition. He’d love to get laid, but he knows it won’t happen.
So, if there’s any drama here, it’s the slow-motion way in which Henry becomes accustomed to himself and to a world that seems always to tantalize him. He’s never going to get what he wants, but he develops a model of masculinity where he’s OK with deprivation. He sees himself as one of life’s losers, as someone destined for skid row, but he refuses to complain and he refuses to take comfort in anything metaphysical. He’s always interested in the world around him, not necessarily in its people, but in the substance of the things he encounters.
As a fan of his poetry, I enjoy that stance because it explains to me how he could write the unsentimental things he did. He’s willing to draw portraits of the forgotten people, the bums or the prostitutes or the alcoholics just this side of developing tuberculosis, but he isn’t interested in celebrating them. His greatness (a limited greatness, I think, but a memorable one) comes in his being so tempted to despair but never giving in. As close to bored as he is with his succession of failures, he can never quite suppress his interest in what makes people – including himself – tick.
It might be nice if there were a clearer structure here, and, for once, I’d be interested in seeing something that presents itself more clearly as a sequel or continuation, but I still admire this for what it is. It’s a fragmented, fractured work about a man whose life is a trail of disappointment. Somehow, throughout it, he never gets too low or too high. He just keeps his word-camera running and shows us a world few others have the combination of misfortune, strength, and fundamental humanity to share without moralizing.
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- Julia McBride
- 03-12-20
Terrible and absolutely pointless.
The writer is wretched and the reader is terrible. Don't waste your time. It's about a sad meaningless life and terrible people.
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- Alison
- 08-15-13
Portrait of the Artist as a Brutalized Child
What did you love best about Ham on Rye?
I love the ugly truth of it. It is a stark description of a time and place in American history that rings true in every line. Some of it is shocking, some of it perilously ennervating, sometimes both at the same time. If you are at all familiar with Bukowski's work, you will love this narrative version because it IS Bukowski. Mr. Baskous's narrative is studied and perfect, capturing the crude as well as the lyrical parts of the novel in what I imagine would be just as Bukowski would have wanted it (though I a pretty sure, knowing what I know about Bukowski, he would have complained).
What did you like best about this story?
The ugly truth of it. It is timeless in its description of despair of the modern world coupled with tiny lights of joy and happiness that extinguish almost the minute they take light. Nobody does it better than Bukowski.
Have you listened to any of Christian Baskous’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I have listened to and really loved some of his other work. I think this series of Bukowski novels will showcase Mr. Baskous's particular talents more than the other work he has done. Mr. Baskous has a feel for this kind of writing, a genuine understanding of its importance and its grace and I look forward to listening to the rest of the series. He knocks this one out of the park, essentially. A truly excellent work of art.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Light and Dark in LA
Any additional comments?
If you have the guts and the time, buy this audiobook but don't try to listen in your car on the way to your day job. Wait until it is dark and you can listen without interruption.
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- Hickupnorth
- 11-01-19
Pass the caffeine please...(yawn)..
I really wanted to listen to this book after I read the description. But from the first 10 words I heard, I realized there was no way I could stand to listen to this narrator. I turned up the speed to see if that helped....nope. He sounds like he 1.) just woke up from a night out partying, 2.) hates his job but has to perform to pay the bills, 3.) is reading this book for the first time!...I highly do not recommend. I tried to push through...but ended up exchanging it after listening for about an hour.
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- sue
- 03-29-20
engaging yet disturbing
It's so American of me to have continued turning pages in hopes of some kind of redemption for the autobiographical main character, but, I think he's really just a nasty a-hole.
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- Kevin
- 08-18-14
**6 Stars!**
Where does Ham on Rye rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
#1
What did you like best about this story?
The candidness of the author
What about Christian Baskous’s performance did you like?
So good I imagined I was listening to Bukowski read the story himself.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The overall writing style was what captured me. I could tell that Bukowski was influenced by Hemingway.
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- Chris C
- 12-22-14
incredible book, great recording
why did I wait so long to check out bukowski, incredible talent and amazing mind. so visceral and raw I felt like I was right there the whole way through.
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- Wayne
- 08-24-20
Really Audible, this is a classic? Not even close!
Well, the narration is excellent. Other than that HAM ON RYE is utterly without redeeming value. I listened to the entire book and now I need to take a shower.
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