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- Narrated by: David Rakoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
The inimitably witty David Rakoff, New York Times best-selling author of Don’t Get Too Comfortable, defends the commonsensical notion that you should always assume the worst, because you’ll never be disappointed.
In this deeply funny (and, no kidding, wise and poignant) audiobook, Rakoff examines the realities of our sunny, gosh everyone-can-be-a-star contemporary culture and finds that, pretty much as a universal rule, the best is not yet to come, adversity will triumph, justice will not be served, and your dreams won’t come true.
The audiobook ranges from the personal to the universal, combining stories from Rakoff’s reporting and accounts of his own experiences: The moment when being a tiny child no longer meant adults found him charming but instead meant other children found him a fun target; the perfect late evening in Manhattan when he was young and the city seemed to brim with such possibility that the street shimmered in the moonlight - as he drew closer he realized the streets actually flickered with rats in a feeding frenzy. He also weaves in his usual brand Oscar Wilde - worthy cultural criticism (the tragedy of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, for instance).
Whether he’s lacerating the musical Rent for its cutesy depiction of AIDS or dealing with personal tragedy, his sharp observations and humorist’s flair for the absurd will have you positively reveling in the power of negativity.
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The moment Joan Castleman decides to leave her husband, they are 35,000 feet above the ocean on a flight to Helsinki. Joan's husband, Joseph, is one of America's preeminent novelists, about to receive a prestigious international award, and Joan, who has spent 40 years subjugating her own literary talents to fan the flames of his career, has finally decided to stop.
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A bit of a downer
- By Jody Cox on 08-01-18
By: Meg Wolitzer
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Some Girls
- My Life in a Harem
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser. At 18, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman would pay pretty girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next 18 months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah....
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Boring, Pretentious Book
- By Marcos on 04-23-11
By: Jillian Lauren
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Learning to Die in Miami
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- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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Fury
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- Unabridged
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Road Dog
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Road Dog is comedian, actor, and writer, Dov Davidoff's unflinching memoir told through reflections of twelve months on the road. Davidoff travels across the country from college campuses to local theaters doing stand-up comedy and telling it like it is. He's been known to wax poetic about everything from encounters with large fake breasts, to people who have too many kids, to magnum condoms the size of CD cases. He is hilarious and relatable and will have you laughing at yourself in no time.
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dark, real, & exceptional
- By Luis F Rodriguez on 11-22-17
By: Dov Davidoff
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Sunny's Nights
- Lost and Found at the Bar at the End of the World
- By: Tim Sultan
- Narrated by: Robert Malloch
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it. The first time he saw Sunny’s Bar, in 1995, Tim Sultan was lost, thirsty for a drink, and intrigued by the single bar sign among the forlorn warehouses lining the Brooklyn waterfront.
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Visiting an Era
- By Carolyn on 03-01-16
By: Tim Sultan
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Language Arts
- By: Stephanie Kallos
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space.
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The beauty of the broken
- By SJ Evans on 04-27-18
By: Stephanie Kallos
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams
- My Life in Stories and Pictures
- By: Alan Cumming
- Narrated by: Alan Cumming
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- Unabridged
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Described by the New York Times as “a bawdy countercultural sprite” and named one of the most fun people in show business by Time magazine, Alan Cumming is a genuine quadruple threat - an internationally acclaimed, award-winning star of stage, television, and film, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose real-life vivacity, wit, and charm shine through every minute of his third book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams.
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We would be friends
- By Peg on 11-28-16
By: Alan Cumming
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Wildflower
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Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross-country road trip, saying good-bye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today.
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Hold the shrieking !
- By Dawne on 11-27-15
By: Drew Barrymore
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Great except for an audio glitch
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What listeners say about Half Empty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Adam
- 02-16-15
A wonderful book
Made more incredible and poignant by his untimely death. Hearing this back to back with Love dishonor marry die cherish perish a novel by really hammers home his wit and dark sense of the world
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- ferretk4
- 09-22-13
Witty, insightful, and darkly hilarious
Any additional comments?
I already knew I liked David Rakoff's work from his contributions to This American Life; his essays here are even better. The longer format lets him stretch out with fantastic results. He is an astute observer of the world and a terrific writer, his use of language always inventive and interesting. The essays can be dark, which he addresses head-on in his first essay, about the need to temper the unwarranted optimism that is currently in fashion - but they leave you nodding in agreement and laughing. And example: when a friend asks him, "Don't you like ANYTHING?" he explains "I like EVERYTHING! ...I'm just also afraid of it." He then goes on to explain, among other things, that when he takes the subway under the water he pays attention to when the train passes the midway point in the tunnel, so that if some disaster occurs, "I'll know which direction to swim." Just good sense, really. (I'd compare the dark-but-hilarious tone to David Sedaris and Shalom Auslander; if you don't find them funny, then this probably isn't for you.)
Rakoff visits The Home of the Future (or some such) at Disney Land and scathingly dissects it (e.g. "The kitchen computer, like all omniscient, benevolent, but lacking-decision-making-ability machines, is female"); he visits Salt Lake City and seems unexpectedly charmed by the LDS church. You can't predict where he will go in these essays, but it's always somewhere good.
Audiobook is the ideal format for this book. Rakoff is a fantastic and hilarious narrator, absolutely the best person to read his coruscating sentences. You'll wish this book was longer - and, of course, that Rakoff was still around to grace us with his wit.
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3 people found this helpful
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- nyog
- 04-16-13
Read it, don't listen to it
David Rakoff as a narrator can only be taken in small doses; he is lugubrious, monotonous, boring. His writing, on the other hand, is lovely, challenging, and well worth the time.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bee Mac
- 05-28-12
Great listen!
Would you listen to Half Empty again? Why?
I often listen again to chapters in this audio book. David Rakoff's humor and presentation are priceless!
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- Anonymous User
- 01-28-24
Humor Devine
Nothing, I wish it was longer! I love his voice and wit. I miss him terribly!
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- Lisa
- 11-22-10
Rakoff's best yet!
David Rakoff's writing and narration are delightful. I think this is the best of the three audio books he's published to date. Say yes to the power of negativity!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Fgu
- 11-23-16
File not playing
Can't play this book it's not working . How can I fix this? Thank you, federico
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- Cade
- 09-20-18
Wonderful series of essays read by the author.
He was not not well when this was recorded. He voice is weaker than in some of his earlier work. The
presentation was still very moving.
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- Victoria Rodgers
- 04-22-17
One of the Best
Would you consider the audio edition of Half Empty to be better than the print version?
Absolutely. Rakoff preferred his books be heard out loud. I honestly buy copies of his books too, but just because his imagery is so great I like to go back and re-read certain stories or sentances.
Who was your favorite character and why?
These are autobiograhical essays, so if I wasn't going to choose the author, I'd choose humanity as a whole for being so deplorable all the time.
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- Paul
- 09-10-12
Perfect Narration
It's unusual that works read by the author actually turn out well. Rakoff 's (RIP) reading of Half Empty added and did not detract from the overall enjoyment of the book- a collection of hilarious essays on issues of the day. Rakoff's droll narration matched the witty and enjoyably cynical commentary.
Rakoff is much like the other "David", David Sedaris, who has entertained us for years on NPR.
This is a quick and enjoyable listen.
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