A Christmas Story

The Book That Inspired the Hilarious Classic Film

By: Jean Shepherd

Narrated by: Dick Cavett

Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

This audio production of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker's shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father's pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie's duel in the snow with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie's unstoppable campaign to get Santa, or anyone else, to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, "You'll shoot your eye out, kid"?

The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.

©2003 The Estate of Jean Shepherd (P)2004 Random House Inc. Random House Audio, a divison of Random House, Inc.

a great classic

better than the movie, if you can believe that! a must read for any fan

loved hearing this wonderful story again!

this is a must listen for me during the holidays, much like watching the movie version, rudolph, elf. a feel good story with more tales than the movie.

nostalgic look back on depression era

if you've seen the movie, nothing new or left out, but fun to hear if you enjoy this style of writing (which i do)....

Review of A Christmas Story

This is a short audible book for about three hours of listening. It was very entertaining!! the reader did an excellent job telling the story!! The story itself entertained me immensely!! I thought it was fun to hear this original story that the movie is based on. The movie is one of my favorite Christmas movies. Enjoy!!

Good story

The narration was really good and I enjoyed the stories in the book. Very cute for the holidays.

still one of favorite holiday listens

I've listened to this many times and it never gets old. It's so light hearted and warm. A bit different from the movie, obviously, but no less classic and merry. This will forever be a holiday listen for me!

Very Enjoyable

A fun read. Any fan of the movie should read this. It is a collection of short stories that aren't all Christmas stories. Most were woven into the movie though. Dick Cavett was masterful as the narrator.

Disappointed

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this set of stories. Dick Cavet was awful. He was dull and boring. Unlike the movie the stories were disjointed. One can clearly understand why the movie group joined the stories into one. It is much more entertaining. To be honest I long for someone to do a remake that adds more of the books to a movie. But doesn’t lose the overall sense of the original movie. Meaning they don’t get stupid and ruin it like several remakes of classics have done. Examples include the absolute horror show of the Carey version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. His version of a Christmas Carol. There is a cartoon version of The Grinch that while doesn’t follow the original is acceptable. Back to this book Cavet simply ruins a good story with his flat unexcited reading. Look elsewhere for a better narration.

A Christmas Story Doesn't Disappoint

These stories are familiar to anyone who loves the movie of "A Christmas Story", but what's really great about the audio book is that we find out a lot of back story for the characters and situations that were combined for the screenplay to make a 2-hour movie. Some of the original stories take place at times other than Christmas, but the screenwriter did a great job picking situations that could fit into the Christmastime storyline and adapting them; hearing them more fleshed-out enriched our memory of the movie. The long story about the Bumpasses was really fun and rather un-PC. We learn more about the background of the Dad and how he won the Major Award. It was exactly the right length for a drive down from Seattle to Portland on Christmas Day (3 hrs, 20 m), so it was perfect for us. We really enjoyed hearing it and we could run the movie in our heads. Although it's too bad there was no recording of Jean Shepherd reading it, Dick Cavett was a very good substitute.

A must read for fans of the movie

As is usually true, this book is better than the classic movie. This collection of short stories is not what I expected; but, is better than I could have imagined.

The performance is a perfect match of voice and story. But, my rating (3 of 5 stars) reflects my frustration with what is my only negative critique. The audiobook chapters (3) are not matched to the end of each chapter is the book (5). In my opinion, a below-average finished product deserves a below average rating.