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Handbook for Drowning
- A Novel in Stories
- Narrated by: Mike Maloney
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
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Handbook for Drowning
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- By David on 03-17-15
By: William Maxwell
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Summer Hours
- A Novel
- By: Amy Mason Doan
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Becc was the good girl. A dedicated student. Aspiring reporter. Always where she was supposed to be. Until a secret affair with the charming Cal one summer in college cost her everything she held dear: her journalism dreams; her relationship with her best friend, Eric; and her carefully imagined future. Now, Becc’s past is back front and center as she travels up the scenic California coast to a wedding - with a man she hasn’t seen in a decade. As each mile flies by, Becc can’t help but feel the thrilling push and pull of memories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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LOVED IT
- By Margaret on 04-30-20
By: Amy Mason Doan
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Stiltsville
- By: Susanna Daniel
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
One sunny morning in 1969, near the end of her first trip to Miami, twenty-six-year-old Frances Ellerby finds herself in a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay. It's the first time the Atlanta native has been out on the open water, and she's captivated. On the dock of a stilt house, with the dazzling skyline in the distance and the unknowable ocean beneath her, she meets the house's owner, Dennis DuValand, a new future reveals itself.
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1 out of 5 stars
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boring, slow, and... who cares?!
- By nursebettyknitting on 05-24-14
By: Susanna Daniel
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The Great Spring
- Writing, Zen, and This ZigZag Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An enjoyable insight
- By Leigh A on 05-22-23
By: Natalie Goldberg
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 561
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 448
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 448
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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In Polite Company
- A Novel
- By: Gervais Hagerty
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 66
Tourists think they see the real Charleston, but Simons Smythe knows there’s more to her hometown than sweet tea and Southern hospitality. Behind the walled gardens, inside the fabled historic homes, live Charleston’s elite. Simons was born into this powerful aristocracy that has quietly ruled the city for centuries.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing
- By Sarah A on 08-31-21
By: Gervais Hagerty
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A Good Country
- A Novel
- By: Laleh Khadivi
- Narrated by: Assaf Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4 out of 5 stars 32
A timely novel about the radicalization of a Muslim teen in California - about where identity truly lies, and how we find it. Laguna Beach, California, 2010. Reza Courdee, a 14-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A very important contribution
- By Mia on 05-29-17
By: Laleh Khadivi
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We Begin at the End
- By: Chris Whitaker
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,184
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,957
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,945
Duchess Day Radley is a 13-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Horrible narrator in this audible book
- By M. patton on 03-03-21
By: Chris Whitaker
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Vacationland
- By: Sarah Stonich
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge - only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather’s care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images "reflected across the mirrors of memory and water", much as the linked stories of Vacationland cast shimmering spells across distance and time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reminded me of home
- By jill on 06-02-13
By: Sarah Stonich
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 220
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 193
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Story4 out of 5 stars 196
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.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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Lady Oracle
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Lorelei King
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4 out of 5 stars 80
From fat girl to thin, from red hair to mud brown, from London to Toronto, from Polish count to radical husband - Joan Foster is utterly confused by her life of multiple identities. She decides to escape to an Italian hill town to take stock of her life. But first, she must organize her own death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Feminist Romp
- By annkpowers on 07-02-22
By: Margaret Atwood
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Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
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The Visiting Privilege
- New and Collected Stories
- By: Joy Williams
- Narrated by: Richard Powers, Emily Woo Zeller, Elisabeth Rodgers, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I sure tried.
- By A.C. CALLOWAY on 01-28-24
By: Joy Williams
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,026
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,759
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,775
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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The Magician's Assistant
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Karen Ziemba
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,343
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,893
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,891
When a gay Los Angeles magician named Parsifal dies suddenly, he leaves behind his heartbroken assistant, Sabine, and a secret past that leads her to Nebraska and a father she never knew he had.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Patchett Has It
- By Pamela Harvey on 06-10-08
By: Ann Patchett
What listeners say about Handbook for Drowning
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- M. Cantos
- 11-10-21
Not quite "in stories"
Some of my disappointment came from misguided expectations; I was hoping that "a novel in stories" meant it would be something like "We The Animals" or "Jesus' Son," two short story collections where the individual stories work on their own but also form a cumulative narrative. The chapters here, though, do not really feel self-contained--in fact, certain scenes or moments in the main character's life get developed a bit at a time across several different chapters . . . which is okay, but not what I was expecting.
I'm actually a big fan of Experimental Fiction, but I didn't feel like the "pointillist" approach here added up to enough when the character's coming of age in the '60's felt so conventional. (Your mileage might differ if you also grew up in that time and want a dose of nostalgia.) There are chapters narrated by Walt and others merely focalized through his experience, but there was no meaningful difference between those approaches.
As for the performance, the narrator mispronounces some words, but he DOES try to inject some personality into his reading . . . though unfortunately his droll tone may be actually too much of a match for the bumbling, uninteresting protagonist.
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