-
The Broom of the System
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $30.41
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Consider the Lobster
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- Essays and Arguments
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Paul Garcia
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.
-
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Underworld
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 31 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
-
-
CYBEX burned into my eyes
- By Ruth Ann Orlansky on 07-01-12
By: Don DeLillo
-
Inherent Vice
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - Private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the '60s, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with.
-
-
Fun Pynchon, don't be afraid
- By Darryl on 08-21-09
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
- A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
- By: David Lipsky
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain, Danny Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.
-
-
Leapin' Over That Wall of Self
- By Darwin8u on 08-27-12
By: David Lipsky
-
Against the Day
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 53 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel spans the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
-
-
brilliant!
- By Rebecca Lindroos on 01-28-07
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
11-22-63
- A Novel
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
-
-
I Owe Stephen King An Apology
- By Kelly - Write Well Academy on 04-16-12
By: Stephen King
-
The Stand
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 47 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
-
-
My First Completed Stephen King Novel
- By Meaghan Bynum on 02-20-12
By: Stephen King
-
Fall of Giants
- Book One of the Century Trilogy
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 30 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
-
-
Loved it and learned alot.
- By Louis on 10-19-10
By: Ken Follett
Publisher's summary
The "dazzling, exhilarating" (San Francisco Chronicle) debut novel from the best-selling author of Infinite Jest, available for the first time as an audiobook.
At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau (and boss), editor-in-chief Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous. And her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psychobabble, Auden, and the King James Bible, which may propel him to stardom on a Christian fundamentalist television program.
Fiercely intelligent and entertaining, this debut novel from one of the most innovative writers of our generation explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
-
-
Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
-
Nappily Ever After
- A Novel
- By: Trisha R. Thomas
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Venus Johnston has a great job and a long-term, live-in boyfriend who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date to keep her long, nappy hair slick and straight. But the tedious hours and harsh chemicals in the salon have long grated on Venus. One frustrating day, she trades in the long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends her commitment-balking boyfriend packing. It's a bold declaration of independence and one that has effects she never could have imagined.
-
-
Great
- By Laura K. on 08-21-09
By: Trisha R. Thomas
-
The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
-
-
Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
-
Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
-
-
Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
-
The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
-
-
Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
-
Nappily Ever After
- A Novel
- By: Trisha R. Thomas
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Venus Johnston has a great job and a long-term, live-in boyfriend who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date to keep her long, nappy hair slick and straight. But the tedious hours and harsh chemicals in the salon have long grated on Venus. One frustrating day, she trades in the long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends her commitment-balking boyfriend packing. It's a bold declaration of independence and one that has effects she never could have imagined.
-
-
Great
- By Laura K. on 08-21-09
By: Trisha R. Thomas
-
The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
-
-
Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
-
She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
-
Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
-
-
Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
-
Tiger, Tiger
- A Memoir
- By: Margaux Fragoso
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One summer day, Margaux Fragoso meets Peter Curran at the neighborhood swimming pool, and they begin to play. She is seven; he is 51. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child’s paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice.
-
-
a weirdly loving diatribe against pervs.
- By Dane Flakeman on 05-21-11
By: Margaux Fragoso
-
Domestic Violets
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Norman
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned 35, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day. The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords....
-
-
What a rollicking ride!
- By Pamela Harvey on 08-13-11
By: Matthew Norman
-
Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
-
-
Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
-
Bullet in the Brain
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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....
-
-
The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Double Feature
- A Novel
- By: Owen King
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family’s friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Feature is about letting go of everything - regret, resentment, ambition, dignity, moving pictures, the dead - and taking it again from the top. Combining propulsive storytelling and mordant wit against the backdrop of indie filmmaking, Double Feature brims with a deep understanding of the trials of ambition and art, of relationships and life, and of our attempts to survive it all.
-
-
Worst book ever! Well maybe.
- By Randall on 08-11-17
By: Owen King
-
Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
-
-
Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
-
Kissing Games of the World
- By: Sandi Kahn Shelton
- Narrated by: Myra Platt
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if the one person you can't bear to be with is also the one person you can't bear to be without? Jamie McClintock is a free-spirited artist and single mother who has at last found peace and freedom sharing a farmhouse with an elderly man and his young grandson. But when the old man dies suddenly her idyllic country life comes to a halt as the old man's estranged son, Nate, returns to claim the house and his child.
-
-
Great Writer, Great Narrator ! Loved it!
- By Ms. Critic on 05-30-09
-
Falling Together
- A Novel
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them. Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat - the bewitching, charismatic center of their group - e-mails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse.
-
-
Narrator's breathy voice a turn off
- By Amy on 10-16-11
-
Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
-
-
STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Wonder Boys
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A wildly successful first novel made Grady Tripp a young star, and seven years later he still hasn't grown up. He's now a writing professor in Pittsburgh, plummeting through middle age, stuck with an unfinishable manuscript, an estranged wife, a pregnant girlfriend, and a talented but deeply disturbed student named James Leer.
-
-
A strong, early Chabon (sounds like grading wine)
- By Darwin8u on 03-09-14
By: Michael Chabon
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
Consider the Lobster
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
Consider the Lobster
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- Essays and Arguments
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Paul Garcia
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
This Is Water
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Amy Wallace-Havens
- Length: 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? This audiobook version of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, read by his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens, captures his electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
-
-
Too short for what you pay for!
- By Adryan on 05-14-09
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.
-
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Bleeding Edge
- By: Thomas Pynchon
- Narrated by: Jeannie Berlin
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics - carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people's bank accounts - without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom - two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst - till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm....
-
-
A fine wine in a dirty and cracked glass
- By Robert S. on 09-18-13
By: Thomas Pynchon
-
On Tennis
- Five Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
-
-
Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform
- By Darwin8u on 01-27-17
-
White Noise
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.
-
-
Designed to be analyzed by an English class
- By RI in Canada on 10-15-16
By: Don DeLillo
-
Underworld
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 31 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
-
-
CYBEX burned into my eyes
- By Ruth Ann Orlansky on 07-01-12
By: Don DeLillo
-
Consider the Lobster
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long renowned as one of the smartest writers on the loose, David Foster Wallace reveals himself in Consider the Lobster to be also one of the funniest. In this program, he ranges far and farther in his search for the original, the curious, or the merely mystifying. He discovers the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the Maine Lobster Festival and confronts the inevitable question just beyond the butter-or-cocktail-sauce quandary.
-
-
David Foster Wallace...a good place to start
- By Rick on 11-25-08
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
-
-
"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
-
-
Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
What listeners say about The Broom of the System
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Darwin8u
- 04-18-12
Evidence I WASTED my College years.
I sure wasted a lot of time in college is all I can say. All in all, not a bad PoMo novel from a undergraduate senior thesis. Some ideas didn't seem to be finished, or put away, but that also seems to be a familiar theme in DFW's work. Not my favorite DFW, but I'd still prefer most days to read mediocre DFW to good/great anyone else.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Allan
- 06-13-11
what just happened
This is one of the few audiobooks that had me laughing out loud again and again, yet if I had to explain the story as a narrative and the ultimate meaning of it, I would feel like I was wrong in some way. The relentlessly articulate language is refreshing and enjoyable much of the time but it took some time for me to figure out the essence of the story. The characters are in some ways extremely sad but often hilarious, and again, relentlessly articulate. The book seems saturated with social commentary, some of which is hilarious and some of which is somewhat biting and perhaps melancholy. The setting seems to be a parallel present day in an Ohio of an alternate universe. I highly reccomend this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
18 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lauren
- 12-04-11
Wallace = Hard to Follow
David Foster Wallace...what a strange dude he was. If you like books that jump around from character to character and year to year then you will really like this. I generally like that format but for me there was a little too much, 'wait what's going on?' with each jump. The narrator is very good though.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Frank
- 12-15-13
A pretty good book, but still something missing
This is a really funny book, and there were some really beautiful moments in it, and really, really good characters. I liked it, for the most part, but I really did become invested in Lenore and the whole plot of the book, and I felt really disappointed with such an unclear ending.
David Foster Wallace seems like a wonderful and talented writer, especially for a dude of his age when he wrote this book, but I wish, for a book that has such a wonderful plot and compelling characters, there was just a little less philosophizing and intentional ambiguity and just a little more plot development / resolution.
The narrator, though, does a wonderful job. His reading really brings out the magic of David Foster Wallace's text. When you're just reading the language alone on the page, it's easy to miss how overtly funny lines are like, "'...' said Candy Mandible."
Robert Petkoff really brings all the characters to life really well. Over the last week while I've been reading / listening to the book, I've been quoting different things over and over to myself like, "Jesus shall not want," or, "Special-wecial food," and saying character names like, "...said Peter Abbot," and besides the extremely well named characters, I feel like it's the narration that really makes the book come alive and brings out all the best parts of it.
This is especially true with lines that get repeated throughout the book. I'm not nearly as visually oriented as I am auditory, so when things come up like Dr. Jay saying, "Batter," and "Batter," over and over and over while he's wearing the gas mask, or while Lenore is reading to her regular Grandmother, and she keeps saying, "Roughage," again and again, the narration lets me get so much more into the rhythm of the story and made it very much more enjoyable.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Karen M. McGrady
- 03-11-12
Confusing and Boring
The only redeeming quality about this book was the narrator, some interesting character names (like Peter Abbott...which sounds like Peter Rabbit, and Judith Prieth - Judas Priest, etc), and a parrot who starts repeating everything it hears. Other than that, it's not worth the many hours it takes to listen to it. I finally got through Part 1 and into Part 2 and have thought about giving up several times. This book jumps around so much that I have trouble following it and I'm wondering "what's the point?". I thought it was supposed to be about the disappearance of a bunch of elderly people from a nursing home. So far a minimal amount of time has been spent on that. It's mentioned periodically so you don't forget completely.
I haven't finished this recording yet...I'm forcing myself to listen. Six chapters to go... I think I can... I think I can! But I don't really want to!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Annie
- 12-07-11
Awk!
What made the experience of listening to The Broom of the System the most enjoyable?
Robert Petkoff did a spectacular job. I even liked the singing. Wonderful.
What did you like best about this story?
Listening.
Which scene was your favorite?
That it lingers like one big long scene in my mind.
If you could take any character from The Broom of the System out to dinner, who would it be and why?
The author, may he rest in peace.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Donald A. Thompson III
- 09-01-22
the music break throughs are awful!
pretty good book by David author Wallace but the story is interupted hourly with loud whimsical music.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- karen
- 05-12-21
Did not enjoy
Description of the book outlined an interesting scenario of elder people escaping from a nursing home. However, the book just touches this plot briefly once in a while. The rest is filled with neurotic people involved in some very strange circumstances that are neither coherent or interesting. I would not recommend this book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- SoCalWizard
- 11-08-18
What Am I Missing???
Except for a chuckle here & there I found nothing worthwhile in this book. Sorry David. I still might give Infinite Jest a whirl; you can thank SHAMELESS for that.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- STEPHEN
- 04-04-16
Stupid intermission music!
Everything is good except the intermission music is the worst thing I have ever heard. That is all
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful