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Diary
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Martha Plimpton
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
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Publisher's summary
Diary is a dark, hilarious, and poignant act of storytelling from America's favorite, most inventive nihilist.
Critic reviews
"...[the author's] last minute switching of gears...can turn a darkly ominous story into a source of heart-tugging inspiration." (The New York Times)
"A creative, unusual tale...the story is fresh." (Publishers Weekly)
Featured Article: 40+ Motivational Quotes to Lift and Rev You Up
Doubting yourself? Need a push to keep on climbing? To give you a surge and get you back up and moving forward, we've collected 40+ quotes from folks who know a lot about motivational ebbs and flows: authors. Their works span a variety of genres, from classic literature to career success, and offer a diversity of perspectives. We're sure you'll find at least a few wise and uplifting words that speak directly to you and will soon have your motivation flowing.
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- By: Robert Pobi
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In this psychological thriller, Jake Cole returns to his childhood home after his elderly father nearly kills himself by setting himself on fire and plowing through a plate-glass window. Jake’s father - a great American painter - is a man whose shadow Jake has tried to outrun since he was a boy. Now a contractor for the FBI who possesses a unique gift for recreating crime scenes, Jake is pulled into a hauntingly familiar double homicide investigation. He recognizes the artistic signature in the slayings from his childhood.
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Cop Out
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By: Robert Pobi
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Lit
- A Memoir
- By: Mary Karr
- Narrated by: Mary Karr
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Lit follows Mary Karr's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness - and her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott" awakens her to the possibility of joy, and leads her to an unlikely faith.
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Finally! One for the "Win" column
- By Kim on 03-22-10
By: Mary Karr
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The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
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Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
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Black & White
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
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Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.
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It was okay
- By Lucy7 on 02-13-19
By: Dani Shapiro
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
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Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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The Good Goodbye
- By: Carla Buckley
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Suzy Jackson, Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
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Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden's parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light.
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I could not stop listening.
- By Amy Davis on 05-29-16
By: Carla Buckley
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Future Home of the Living God
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backward, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.
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“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”
- By Mel on 11-27-17
By: Louise Erdrich
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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 Lost Family
- A Novel
- By: Jenna Blum
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.
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STIMULATES THE HEART, MIND AND IMAGINATION
- By Miss Manners on 07-01-18
By: Jenna Blum
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Palahniuk's New Hit
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From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.
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So weird
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Make Something Up
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For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
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People pass the word only to those they trust most: Adjustment Day is coming. They've been reading a mysterious blue-black book and memorizing its directives. They are ready for the reckoning.
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Hard to listen to
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Invisible Monsters Remix
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Palahniuk’s fashion-model protagonist has it all - boyfriend, career, loyal best friend - until an accident destroys her face, her ability to speak, and her self-esteem. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a bona fide woman.
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Just get the original.
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Stranger Than Fiction
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Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. These pieces from Stranger Than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling.
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Excellent and hilarious
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Burnt Tongues
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This collection of transgressive stories has been compiled through a rigorous nomination and vetting process and hand-selected by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, as the best of The Cult workshop. These stories run the gamut from horrific and fantastic to humorous and touching, but each leaves a lasting impression. Some may say even a scar.
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what the fuck?!
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By: Chuck Palahniuk - editor, and others
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Consider This
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In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
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Poetic Justice
- By Dave Green on 01-20-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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Haunted
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Marc Cashman, Erik Davies, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: 23 of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter, sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months", and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.
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True Horror -- Not for the faint of heart, stomach
- By Dominique on 05-24-05
By: Chuck Palahniuk
What listeners say about Diary
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Benjamin Johns
- 07-10-04
The uninitiated need not apply
Palahniuk has a knack for writing with a kind of obsessive feverishness that bleeds into the novels and, usually, the readers themselves. A trademark of his previous novels (most especially Choke and Survivor) are twisted, alluring central premises that start out too bizarre to wrap your head around and slowly resolve themselves into a satisfying internally consistent logic. Usually, this process leaves a few plot holes and loose ends in its wake, but what the hell, it's a good ride.
Diary is more mature than Palahniuk's former novels: the thematic structure is strong, the trademark gruesomeness is more subtlely and effectively applied, even the phrase repetitions are more significantly placed, if still used a bit liberally for my taste. But the novel still falls into the trap of biting off more than it can chew, and it raises an awful lot of questions, about the protaganist's husband, the town's history, and its own internal logic, that it never gets around to answering. Palahniuk's fans are used to chalking a few up to surrealism and not letting it get to them, but anyone who hasn't read Fight Club should be prepared to have the hell bugged out of them by the niggling questions.
As for the narration, it's competently done, which is saying a lot for the work: epistolary pieces by ANYONE are tough to narrate without infusing an emotion that obfuscates the significance of the words themselves, and lumping the wry sarcasm of the main character on top of that makes for a fairly difficult narration. I would have preferred less colour to it, but it doesn't get in the way. What did bother me (and may bother others who have read Palahniuk before they listen) is the pace: the author often spends pages spooling out a single twist in the plot amongst a bevy of meaningless detail, a device which works well on the page where you're free to rush through it, heart pounding, to get to the end of the segment, but which is simply torturous in audio form.
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Todd
- 12-02-03
What a trip!
While I must admit that I liked Chuck Palahniuk's "Lullaby" more, I was really drawn into this story - especially by Martha Plimpton's wonderful narration. I simply had to know what the heck was at the root of all the chaos. When all was revealed, I was fairly satisfied. Chuck Palahniuk is clearly one of the most creative (if not twisted) minds of my generation and I look forward to his next novel with great anticipation.
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18 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anthony
- 02-08-04
Great Reading of Bizarre Story
Having just finished this story, I must say that this audiobook's greatest strength is it's reading by Martha Plimpton. Although I have read some reviews claiming her monotonous delivery took away from the experience, I feel that it was in line with what to expect from the main character and allowed the listener to delve deeper into her psyche.
Other reviews are correct in saying that the action does not pick up until later into the story. However, once the plot gets up and going, it only gets more and more bizarre as the story continues. Not that this is a bad thing, I just found myself starting to enjoy the narrator's reminiscing and her dark but humorous approach to events that have happened to her more so than the attempts at trying to unravel the mystery that laid before her.
Since the only other Palahniuk novel I have read was "Fight Club", I would be unable to compare this work to his others. However, being familiar with "Fight Club", I'm confident in saying that "Diary" contained the dark humor and bizarre events that one could expect from him. I did read one review that negatively compared this to a soap opera, and as much as I hate to admit it, the story does come across as something you might find on daytime TV, especially after you become familiar with the supporting characters, particularly the mother.
The ending does deliver you a little,"hmmm...that's interesting" feeling, but by no means does it shock you since much of what you've become familiar with leading up to the ending is weird and you know something that is possibly weirder is going to happen in order to wrap the story up.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience despite a few of what I might consider it's shortcomings. I would highly recommend it to someone that is already familiar with Palahniuk's work or is looking to explore something a little different. Since its fairly short (only 8 hours) and it is quite well read, that is almost reason enough to check it out.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- R. Bellerose
- 05-22-05
Misplaced category
First, my tepid praise has something to do with the placement of this novel in the "gay and lesbian" category. It does not belong there. There is no gay character, so this may be why I found the story puzzling for a few hours. (Perhaps the author is gay.) Maybe this is the only reason I am writing a review.
Second, the writing style is as much poetry as prose. The sentences are short or are occasionally only phrases; certain figures of speech are repeated [too] frequently. If Marcel Proust is bel canto, Chuck Palahniuk is rap. Since more people listen to Tupac Shakur than Bellini, who cares what I think! The story is inventive, but it failed to be suspenseful, believable, or mature.
I have no issue with the reader, as others did. I think that her deadpan delivery might have been exactly what the author wrote.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Michelle
- 12-30-04
Haunting
It has been several months since I listened to this story, but it has stayed with me. Like other stories by Palahniuk, you feel a little soiled and a little disturbed after reading it, but only because his characters are so honest that you almost become part of the story. It is dark and melancholy, and tragic. I really liked it.
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Overall
- William
- 05-05-06
Great Author, Lousy Book
I loved Choke and Lullaby but this book is a dog. He broke the cardinal rule in that you don't care about any of the charactors. The book is depressing with a story that just drags on and on. It is not entertaing in the least. His other books are so creative and different. If you are in a great mood, don't read this book because you will feel horrible being made to wallow in the non stop misery of these pathetic creatures.
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Overall
- Mark
- 10-27-03
Not what I expected
I had listened to choke and loved it. Thought this would be similar in style. It's not. It's a little long. Not bad but I thought it was a big investment of time for a mediocre book.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Lizzie Askew
- 06-20-13
I've never been so annoyed by a book.
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
Maybe a person who studies anatomy might enjoy this book. Maybe.
Would you ever listen to anything by Chuck Palahniuk again?
Maybe. I know he's definitely got better work than this out there, but I'm afraid this book might have shown me a side of his writing that turns me off, which I might never be able to unsee if I try to read his other work! Maybe I'll find out if that's true, once I forget about this story enough to come back to him.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
Exasperation and frustration, disbelief...not only were there maddeningly bad examples of the writing techniques he used, but I also wanted to take his lead character and shake her! What a push over she was.
Any additional comments?
The author had the makings of a really cool and creepy story here, but botched it with bad writing. This is an example of a writer overusing a gimmick in a story. At first, when he used the explanation of the anatomical features of a human face to help the main characters "recognize themselves" again, it seemed like heavy detail overkill, though I got the point and acknowledged that this gimmick had some poignancy to it. Later, when Chuck continued to use that same gimmick to describe the expressions on the characters faces in long, laborious detail to show how they felt (in a "deep" way) over and over and over again, it seemed like the whole story was becoming a massive waste of time. Then when the story was wrapping up, the heroine's complete powerlessness and inability to do anything but go along with her own demise complicitly, and her unwillingness to recognize that her daughter was a complete sociopath and have her thrown into a mental institution so she wouldn't hurt anyone else, well; those things just made the whole book even more soggy for me. It's not that I need or rely on all my heroines to be the newly stereotypical "strong female role model". It's just that this particular heroine was so completely subdued and resigned that she wouldn't lift a finger to help herself out of an increasingly bad situation. The story just continued to play out all around her, while she passively accepted it all. It all seemed highly contrived and was boring and frustrating. Waste of time!
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Overall
- Scott
- 09-18-06
Loved it
The story was fast-paced, interesting, and definitely unusual. I, at least, also thought it was a lot of fun, but in that regard I'm a minority--see other reviews for conflicting opinions about the story's level of grimness.
Palahniuk's distinctive narrative voice was brought out nicely by Martha Plimpton's reading. Last but not least, his talent for ferreting out interesting trivia was particularly on display in this book.
Highly recommended.
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Overall
- Danielle
- 02-21-06
Martha Plimpton is excellent.
As narrator, Martha Plimpton is wonderful. The story itself is eerie and interesting, but the end disappoints.
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