-
The Sportswriter
- Frank Bascombe, Book 1
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 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
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Be Mine
- A Frank Bascombe Novel
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway.
-
-
Frank 4
- By lorraine kennedy on 08-03-23
By: Richard Ford
-
Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
-
-
Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
-
Sorry for Your Trouble
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....
-
-
Beautifully conceived collection
- By Tom on 10-15-20
By: Richard Ford
-
The Big Sleep
- Philip Marlowe, Book 1
- By: Raymond Chandler
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.
-
-
I miss Ray Porter
- By Kindle Customer on 03-22-22
By: Raymond Chandler
-
Deliverance
- By: James Dickey
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state's most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.
-
-
"A river runs through it..."
- By karen on 11-01-13
By: James Dickey
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
"Grandly Entertaining"? Really?
- By Georgia Burns on 10-08-13
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Be Mine
- A Frank Bascombe Novel
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway.
-
-
Frank 4
- By lorraine kennedy on 08-03-23
By: Richard Ford
-
Nobody's Fool
- By: Richard Russo
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, saddled with a bum knee and friends who make enemies redundant, Sully now has one new problem to cope with: a long-estranged son who is in imminent danger of following in his father's footsteps. With its uproarious humor and a heart that embraces humanity's follies as well as its triumphs, Nobody's Fool, from Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Richard Russo, is storytelling at its most generous. Nobody’s Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, and Melody Griffith.
-
-
Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
- By Marsha on 04-27-05
By: Richard Russo
-
Sorry for Your Trouble
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....
-
-
Beautifully conceived collection
- By Tom on 10-15-20
By: Richard Ford
-
The Big Sleep
- Philip Marlowe, Book 1
- By: Raymond Chandler
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.
-
-
I miss Ray Porter
- By Kindle Customer on 03-22-22
By: Raymond Chandler
-
Deliverance
- By: James Dickey
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state's most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.
-
-
"A river runs through it..."
- By karen on 11-01-13
By: James Dickey
-
The Corrections
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Corrections is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century--a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost 50 years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of their own lives. Enid has set her heart on an elusive goal: bringing her family together for one last Christmas at home.
-
-
"Grandly Entertaining"? Really?
- By Georgia Burns on 10-08-13
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Love in the Time of Cholera
- By: Gabriel García Márquez
- Narrated by: Armando Durán
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds two people's lives together for more than half a century. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career, he whiles away the years in 622 affairs - yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral....
-
-
When love is sick
- By Vira on 09-02-13
-
To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
-
-
A gift to be treasured
- By David Shear on 07-09-14
By: Harper Lee
-
Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 49 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....
-
-
not to miss audible experience
- By dallas on 12-08-09
-
The Rachel Incident
- A Novel
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Tara Flynn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
-
-
Best narration
- By LG on 01-12-24
-
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
-
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 Goldfinch
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 32 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity. It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
-
-
Boy, am I in the minority on this one.
- By Bonny on 11-04-13
By: Donna Tartt
-
The Handmaid's Tale: Special Edition
- By: Margaret Atwood, Valerie Martin - essay
- Narrated by: Claire Danes, full cast, Margaret Atwood, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.
-
-
Wait! It Mightn't Be What You Think--
- By Gillian on 04-05-17
By: Margaret Atwood, and others
-
Alias Emma
- A Novel
- By: Ava Glass
- Narrated by: Sophie Colquhoun
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nothing about Emma Makepeace is real. Not even her name. A newly minted secret agent, Emma's barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. Eager to serve her country and prove her worth, she dives in headfirst. Emma must covertly travel across one of the world’s most watched cities to bring the reluctant—and handsome—son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the Motherland don’t find him first.
-
-
Shallow
- By J A Fowler on 03-08-23
By: Ava Glass
-
Dark Matter (Movie Tie-In)
- A Novel
- By: Blake Crouch
- Narrated by: Jon Lindstrom
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
“Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man he’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife.
-
-
Another Book Where the Ratings Lie
- By Matthew on 08-05-16
By: Blake Crouch
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
What a rare pleasure
- By Lisa Braden on 09-27-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
This Other Eden
- By: Paul Harding
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.
-
-
Painfully overwritten
- By WPH on 02-24-23
By: Paul Harding
Publisher's summary
In this first volume of his Frank Bascombe trilogy, Bascombe is a sportswriter attempting to cope with his failed marriage and the death of his son. Unable to establish true connections with people, Bascombe drifts into and out of various relationships, but retains an introspective eye that allows him to transcend life's obstacles.
Critic reviews
"Among the best realist American writers today." ( Publishers Weekly)
More from the same
Narrator
Related to this topic
-
Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
-
A Flash of Green
- A Novel
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A Flash of Green tells the gripping story of small-town corruption and two people brave enough to fight back, featuring many of the themes John D. MacDonald explored better than anyone in his legendary career as a leading crime novelist. The opportunists have taken over Palm City. Silent and deadly, like the snakes that infest the nearby swamps, they lay hidden from view, waiting for the right moment to strike. Political subterfuge has already eased the residents toward selling out.
-
-
Disjointed depressing
- By Carol I. Meeds on 11-18-22
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Clara Callan
- By: Richard B. Wright
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey, Joanna P. Adler
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
-
-
charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04
-
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
-
The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
-
-
Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
-
Young Hearts Crying
- By: Richard Yates
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Yates movingly portrays a man and a woman from their courtship in the 1950s to their divorce in the '70s, chronicling their heartbreaking attempts to reach their highest ambitions. Michael Davenport dreams of being a poet after returning home from World War II, and at first he and his new wife, Lucy, enjoy their life together. But as the decades pass and the success of others creates a fear of failure in both Michael and Lucy, their once bright future gives way to a life of adultery and isolation.
By: Richard Yates
-
A Flash of Green
- A Novel
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. A Flash of Green tells the gripping story of small-town corruption and two people brave enough to fight back, featuring many of the themes John D. MacDonald explored better than anyone in his legendary career as a leading crime novelist. The opportunists have taken over Palm City. Silent and deadly, like the snakes that infest the nearby swamps, they lay hidden from view, waiting for the right moment to strike. Political subterfuge has already eased the residents toward selling out.
-
-
Disjointed depressing
- By Carol I. Meeds on 11-18-22
-
Our Story Begins
- New and Selected Stories
- By: Tobias Wolff
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wolff here returns with fresh revelations - about biding one's time, or experiencing first love, or burying one's mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary. A retired Marine enrolls in college while her son trains for Iraq. A lawyer takes a difficult deposition. An American in Rome indulges the Gypsy who's picked his pocket.
-
-
Great
- By chris on 04-11-08
By: Tobias Wolff
-
Clara Callan
- By: Richard B. Wright
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey, Joanna P. Adler
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
-
-
charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04
-
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
-
The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
-
-
Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Night Listener
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.
-
-
Wheels within wheels
- By Naomi on 07-06-03
By: Armistead Maupin
-
Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
-
-
Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
-
Liberating Paris
- A Novel
- By: Linda Bloodworth Thomason
- Narrated by: Cynthia Darlow
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Woodrow McIlmore, the town's golden boy and local gynecologist, is married to his beautiful high school sweetheart, Milan, and seems by all appearances to be leading the perfect life with his two children and extended family and friends. But when Wood's daughter announces that she is smitten with a college classmate and intends to marry him, her parents are stunned.
-
-
Deeply moving, a great listen
- By Cynthia on 11-27-05
-
Boy, Snow, Bird
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Susan Bennett, Carra Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white.
-
-
For Literary Lovers
- By M. Shipe on 04-25-14
By: Helen Oyeyemi
-
All My Friends are Going to be Strangers
- By: Larry McMurtry
- Narrated by: John Randolph Jones
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Danny Deck - Emma's friend from Terms of Endearment - is a promising young writer losing touch with his talent and drifting from Texas to California because "that's where all the writers are." Set in the early 60s, this is a very funny (and raunchy) satire of life in Texas and California and a true and American portrait of an artist as a young man.
-
-
Favorite audio book ever
- By melanie christner on 06-01-16
By: Larry McMurtry
-
The Wednesday Sisters
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 35 years, Frankie, Linda, Kath, Brett, and Ally have met every Wednesday at the park near their homes in Palo Alto, California. Defined when they first meet by what their husbands do, the young homemakers and mothers are far removed from the Summer of Love that has enveloped most of the Bay Area in 1967.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Denise Wallace on 06-26-09
-
Love Walked In
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
-
-
Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
-
Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
-
-
I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Be Mine
- A Frank Bascombe Novel
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway.
-
-
Frank 4
- By lorraine kennedy on 08-03-23
By: Richard Ford
-
Rock Springs
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these 10 exquisite stories, first published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1987 and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Richard Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there: a refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter and an unhappy girlfriend in a stolen, cranberry-colored Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence.
-
-
Superb, Picturesque Stories in Wyoming & Montana
- By W Perry Hall on 03-06-15
By: Richard Ford
-
Sorry for Your Trouble
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....
-
-
Beautifully conceived collection
- By Tom on 10-15-20
By: Richard Ford
-
Canada
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 15-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed. His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border.
-
-
After the last word, went right back to beginning
- By Susan C. S. on 06-08-12
By: Richard Ford
-
Drop City
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
T.C. Boyle is hailed as "America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" ( Newsweek). In 1970, a California commune pulls up stakes and moves to the harsh interior of Alaska. The members establish Drop City, a back-to-the-land town, on a foundation of peace and free love. But their idealism cannot prevent tension from rippling through the group. The results are anything but predictable in this honest, surprising evocation of a time period and its enduring beliefs.
-
-
Dig this...
- By Lynne on 03-15-04
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Quick and engaging, well-read
- By Bronwen on 12-28-11
By: Ian McEwan
-
Be Mine
- A Frank Bascombe Novel
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway.
-
-
Frank 4
- By lorraine kennedy on 08-03-23
By: Richard Ford
-
Rock Springs
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these 10 exquisite stories, first published by Atlantic Monthly Press in 1987 and now reissued as a Grove Press paperback, Richard Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West - and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there: a refugee from justice driving across Wyoming with his daughter and an unhappy girlfriend in a stolen, cranberry-colored Mercedes; a boy watching his family dissolve in a night of tragicomic violence.
-
-
Superb, Picturesque Stories in Wyoming & Montana
- By W Perry Hall on 03-06-15
By: Richard Ford
-
Sorry for Your Trouble
- Stories
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Sorry for Your Trouble, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Richard Ford enacts a stunning meditation on memory, love, and loss. “Displaced” returns us to a young man’s Mississippi adolescence, and to a shocking encounter with a young Irish immigrant. “Driving Up” follows an American woman’s late-in-life journey to Canada to bid good-bye to a lost love now facing the end of this life. “The Run of Yourself”, a novella, sees a New Orleans lawyer navigating the difficulties of living beyond his Irish wife’s death....
-
-
Beautifully conceived collection
- By Tom on 10-15-20
By: Richard Ford
-
Canada
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 15-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed. His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border.
-
-
After the last word, went right back to beginning
- By Susan C. S. on 06-08-12
By: Richard Ford
-
Drop City
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
T.C. Boyle is hailed as "America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" ( Newsweek). In 1970, a California commune pulls up stakes and moves to the harsh interior of Alaska. The members establish Drop City, a back-to-the-land town, on a foundation of peace and free love. But their idealism cannot prevent tension from rippling through the group. The results are anything but predictable in this honest, surprising evocation of a time period and its enduring beliefs.
-
-
Dig this...
- By Lynne on 03-15-04
By: T. C. Boyle
-
Amsterdam
- By: Ian McEwan
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Atonement and Enduring Love, Ian McEwan is known as one of contemporary fiction’s most acclaimed writers. This Booker Prize-winning novel by McEwan finds two men connecting at the funeral of their ex-lover. Distressed by how she was slowly destroyed by an illness, the two make a pact to save each other from enduring such a fate.
-
-
Quick and engaging, well-read
- By Bronwen on 12-28-11
By: Ian McEwan
-
Rabbit, Run
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
-
-
A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
-
Wildlife
- By: Richard Ford
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Joe Brinson was 16, his father moved the family to Great Falls, Montana, the setting for this harrowing, transfixing novel by the acclaimed author of Rock Springs. Filled with an abiding sense of love and family, and of the forces that test them to the breaking point, Wildlife is a book whose spare poetry and expansive vision established it as an American classic.
-
-
Beautiful Wildlife
- By Stefahn on 01-02-19
By: Richard Ford
-
The Tortilla Curtain
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacker lead an ordered, sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: He is a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine.
-
-
What a talented author & narrator!
- By Julie on 09-13-06
By: T. C. Boyle
-
The Moviegoer
- By: Walker Percy
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A winner of the National Book Award, The Moviegoer established Walker Percy as an insightful and grimly humorous storyteller. It is the tale of Binx Bolling, a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a "search" for something more important, some spiritual truth to anchor him.
-
-
Percy's Prose Dances with Grace, Charm and Style
- By Darwin8u on 10-11-12
By: Walker Percy
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
- By Darwin8u on 05-09-12
By: Saul Bellow
-
Martin Dressler
- The Tale of an American Dreamer
- By: Steven Millhauser
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martin Dressler, son of an immigrant cigar maker, believes he can achieve anything if he works hard enough. At the turn of the century, he rises from the shadows of his father’s shop in New York City to become a powerful entrepreneur and builder of hotels. But, as he contemplates this land of almost limitless opportunity, his plans grow impossibly grand. Through the curve of Martin’s spectacular rise and eventual downfall in the business world, his tale remains a uniquely American one. Martin may not always control an empire, but he will always be able to dream.
-
-
It Builds a Great Foundation
- By Joe Kraus on 03-26-13
-
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
- By: Flannery O'Connor
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The collection that established O’Connor’s reputation as one of the American masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive "The Misfit", as well as “The Displaced Person” and eight other stories.
-
-
Meater story teller
- By Gary Hunt on 02-04-20
-
The Ghost Writer
- The Nathan Zuckerman Series, Book 1
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ghost Writer introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer infatuated with the great books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his idol, E. I. Lonoff. At Lonoff's, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background who turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's and who may also have been his mistress.
-
-
Turning Sentences Around
- By Darwin8u on 01-28-17
By: Philip Roth
-
In the Distance
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
-
-
Hard to characterize
- By Susan on 11-17-18
By: Hernan Diaz
-
The Unconsoled
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of The Remains of the Day, here is a novel that is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past.
-
-
Torturous trip to nowhere
- By Deborah on 06-30-18
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
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
-
Antelope Woman
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Klaus Shawano abducts Sweetheart Calico, the seductive Indian woman who has stolen his heart, and takes her far from her native Montana plains to his own Minneapolis home, he cannot begin to imagine the eventual ramifications his brazen act will entail. Shawano’s mysterious Antelope Woman has utterly mesmerized him - and soon proves to be a bewitching agent of chaos whose effect on others is disturbing and irresistible, as she alters the shape of things around her and the shape of things to come.
-
-
Longing
- By LARA BIRCHLER on 01-03-24
By: Louise Erdrich
What listeners say about The Sportswriter
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- chetyarbrough.blog
- 03-07-16
WANDERING THROUGH LIFE
Selecting books from book lists like Random House’s Modern Library is not a full proof method for making good choices. The decision to listen to “The Sportswriter” came from one of those lists.
The initial impression of "The Sportswriter" is that it is a story about wandering through life. But as it progresses, the listener begins to realize that Richard Ford is writing about men and how some view life.
This is not a story that makes one proud to be a man but it offers insight to why the cliché “men are from Mars” has some truth. Ford’s main character is a guy’s guy named Frank Bascombe. He is a traveling sports writer and a divorcée of his own making, a fool that fails to understand what is important in life. After his marriage break up, he is cast adrift to find the next best thing which never turns into anything important.
The irony of a guy’s guy skill to seduce is that it leads to a lonely and empty life. In Ford’s story, “The Sportswriter”, Bascombe drifts through life from relationship to relationship to nowhere. He never comes to grips with what is wrong with his life. He drifts to Retirementville, Florida to think about the next best thing. That is how the story ends. It is a rather depressing exploration of how vacuous life can be.
This is a book that gives a concrete explanation of what some men are looking for in life. When listening to The Sportswriter, you may find someone you know; hopefully not you.
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
- Kelly
- 08-30-21
a bit reminiscent of Updike's Rabbit
I enjoyed this book more than I expected, despite the hateful main character, Frank Bascombe. He is an unhappy, unmotivated man. I've seen comparisons to Updike's Rabbit, but I found this character less hateful. But that also meant that I cared less.
The Sportswriter is the tale of a man named Frank Bascombe. He isn't quite miserable, but is certainly unhappy. Frank was working as a novelist, but he quits and becomes a sports writer. He is boring, dull and lifeless. He has also lost everything. His son died, and his wife left him taking the other children with her. Although the book doesn't allude to much introspection on Frank's part, it was still obvious that he was swamped by grief. And, for me, that made him a bit more relatable.
The story is told in a way that makes it feel more intimate and voyeuristic. Frank's internal monologue about all the people he meets up with over one weekend make the book feel like you are a fly on the wall. The book is well-written, but in no way happy or light. Be prepared for a dark, quiet book about a joyless man.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Puddin Tame
- 12-12-18
Perfect Narrator; Imperfect Novel
If this book were half as long, my tolerance for Frank’s incessant musings would increase. He describes and describes to the point that the book feels stagnant, and perhaps that is the point. He is stuck. Unfortunately he is so unlikeable and so truly unaware of himself, I didn’t care what happened ti him.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mark in the Midwest
- 04-09-21
Great Story and Narration
I would highly recommend listening to the entire 'Frank Bascom' series. There are 4 books in total.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ned
- 02-04-15
Listen to the last 15 minutes
Tedious day by day story. Will try another Richard Ford book to see if there is more to them. Only OK.
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
- John
- 11-14-15
Excellent. Spot on narration.
Does a rather average, ho-hum life offer insight and a glimpse of truth? Richard Ford answers that question here.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Glenn A. Douglas
- 03-15-22
I'm torn....
I am torn as to whether to continue this series. As a middle aged man trying to figure out how to continue to be happy in a world where everything around him is changing, I searched out books that might include people/characters going through the same thing (you'd be amazed what a search for "mid-life crisis" turns up).
I sympathized with Frank's lack of clarity, direction, etc. I certainly understood his trying to grasp on to clearly dysfunctional things in order to try and find happiness. But, I didn't find him particularly likable or compelling. I found myself wanting him to take bolder steps, to take himself out of bad situations, to take more control of his life.
The book is very well written. I did find the overt racism in the book jarring, a bygone of a worse time in our history. It took me out of the story quite often. The narration is spot on and very compelling.
Still can't decide whether to give the second book a shot......
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cheryl
- 06-25-23
Depressing story
I wanted to like the main character, however, to me he was not a caring good person. The story never got better.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- IH
- 11-26-23
Great writing but difficult to engage
Good writing but story drags and characters seem distant. Seemed like an introduction to the series.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
- chris
- 03-22-08
wonderful
This is one of the best audiobooks I have purchased. For one, the narration is perfect. My only exposure to Richard Ford was short stories. I liked this book very much and I can say I don't know any other writer who writes like him. He slows down to lay out the history and his philosophy on every character and event. It's like watching someone crack a hardboiled egg and pull off a tiny shell fragment at a time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
26 people found this helpful