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House Mother Normal
- A Geriatric Comedy
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor, Stephen Thorne, Maggie Mash
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
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House Mother Normal
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Publisher's summary
In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde, he became famous for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his unique ways of putting them into practice.
House Mother Normal: A Geriatric Comedy is Johnson's most richly characterised, humane and sympathetic work. Eight residents in a home for the elderly sit down to dinner, along with the House Mother herself, and each takes it in turn to relay the proceedings of the evening from their own individual perspective.
By virtue of the novel's clever structure, the listener's comprehension of events is limited so as to allow them a powerful experience: Johnson's humorous yet deeply compassionate depiction of what it means to live life and grow old.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 140
Dorothy Hare, the dutiful daughter of a rector in Suffolk, spends her days performing good works and cultivating good thoughts, pricking her arm with a pin when a bad thought arises. She does her best to reconcile her father’s fanciful view of his position in the world with such realities as the butcher’s bill. But even Dorothy’s strength has its limits, and one night, as she works feverishly on costumes for the church-school play, she blacks out. When she comes to, she finds herself on a London street, clad in a sleazy dress and unaware of her identity.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Bottom-Shelf Orwell, but still G-D Orwell
- By Darwin8u on 08-11-19
By: George Orwell
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Made in Scotland
- My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country
- By: Billy Connolly
- Narrated by: Gordon Kennedy
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 194
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 193
Billy Connolly may be a citizen of the world, but in his heart he's never been far from his homeland. Made in Scotland is Billy's unique and intimate portrait of his native Scotland, a love letter to the places and people that made him. It's an adventure inspired by a single incident: the moment Billy received his Knighthood and was asked, 'How does it feel to have achieved all this when you came from nothing?' His response was, 'But I did come from something!'
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1 out of 5 stars
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I can't believe I wasted a credit on this blather.
- By J. M. Popa on 01-23-20
By: Billy Connolly
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Coming up for Air
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Richard Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 197
George Bowling, an insurance salesman, hits middle age and feels impelled to “come up for air” from his life of quiet desperation. With seventeen pounds he has won at a race, he steals a vacation from his wife and family and pays a visit to Lower Binfield, the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. But the pool is gone, Lower Binfield has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of Bowling’s holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Orwell Flirts and Fishes w/ Nostalgia & Modernity.
- By Darwin8u on 07-10-12
By: George Orwell
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Dear Fatty
- By: Dawn French
- Narrated by: Liza Tarbuck
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 368
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 286
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 286
With a sharp eye for comic detail and a wicked ear for the absurdities of life, Dawn French shows just how an RAF girl from the west country with dreams of becoming a ballerina/bridesmaid/thief rose to become one of the best-loved comedy actresses of our time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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If you like Dawn French - You will love this book!
- By Pamela on 01-22-09
By: Dawn French
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Pearl in a Cage
- Woody Creek, Book 1
- By: Joy Dettman
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pearl in a Cage
- By Verita on 06-16-17
By: Joy Dettman
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Farnham's Freehold
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 926
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 815
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Story4 out of 5 stars 828
Hugh Farnham is a practical, self-made man, and when he sees the clouds of nuclear war gathering, he builds a bomb shelter under his house, hoping for peace and preparing for war. But when the apocalypse comes, something happens that he did not expect. A thermonuclear blast tears apart the fabric of time and hurls his shelter into a world with no sign of other human beings.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Heinlein of his time...
- By Lisa on 07-03-11
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Staying On
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Paul Shelley
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their imposing landlady threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Pleasant Meander
- By Ian C Robertson on 09-22-14
By: Paul Scott
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Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- By: Jennifer Worth
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,311
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,358
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best book I've listened to this year
- By Richard on 06-12-13
By: Jennifer Worth
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A Clockwork Orange
- By: Anthony Burgess
- Narrated by: Tom Hollander
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,620
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,914
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,908
A vicious 15-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic, a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. In Anthony Burgess' nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, great narration, but not for everyone
- By Steve on 06-28-09
By: Anthony Burgess
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Maeve's Times
- In Her Own Words
- By: Maeve Binchy
- Narrated by: Kate Binchy
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, "senior moments" to life as a waitress, Maeve's Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity - revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A GLIMPSE THROUGH MAEVE'S LOOKING GLASS
- By jstrfic on 08-08-17
By: Maeve Binchy
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Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son Being the Letters Written by John Graham
- Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago
- By: George Horace Lorimer
- Narrated by: Alan Taylor
- Length: 4 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
George Horace Lorimer is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, where he was credited with promoting and discovering authors like Jack London. Lorimer compiled his life advice into the fictional letters from John "Old Gorgon" Graham to his son Pierrepont. John Graham is a Chicago-based pork and finance baron. In the letters Pierrepont receives advice for his different stages of life. Old Gorgon's advice is packed throughout the book, easy to understand, and still rings true today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great but those were the times...
- By Harold on 08-20-18
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Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4 out of 5 stars 83
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
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Among Others
- By: Jo Walton
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,578
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,375
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,377
Startling, unusual, and yet irresistably readable, Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Subtle Character Piece
- By Eoin on 09-15-11
By: Jo Walton
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The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
- By: Fay Weldon
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
In New York Magazine, Rhoda Koenig calls The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, "...a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sweet, brutal, and over the top revenge!!
- By Wayne on 04-10-17
By: Fay Weldon
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Decline and Fall
- By: Evelyn Waugh
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 255
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 222
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 219
Sent down from Oxford after a wild, drunken party, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly surprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at a boys' private school in Wales. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Black Humor, Satire, and the Absurd
- By Gypsi on 06-09-18
By: Evelyn Waugh
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Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 316
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 277
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 277
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
What listeners say about House Mother Normal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Karen
- 03-27-22
Waste of time!
The only good thing about this book were the narrators. Would never recommend it to anyone.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- TiffanyD
- 08-26-20
Super Depressing
In case you thought this really was a comedy, as stated by the subtitle, this is a pretty seriously depressing story. The story, such as it is, is a few hours in the life of some nursing home residents in varying states of mental and physical decline. The same events are narrated by several different characters, including the sadistic house mother. The narration is well done, and the writing is definitely interesting, but the storyline is so depressing I can't really say I recommend it.
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