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Making Toast
- A Family Story
- Narrated by: Roger Rosenblatt
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
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Making Toast
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Publisher's summary
“A painfully beautiful memoir…. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.” (E. L. Doctorow)
A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the unforgettable story of the tragedy that changed his life and his family. A book that grew out of his popular December 2008 essay in The New Yorker, Making Toast is a moving account of unexpected loss and recovery in the powerful tradition of About Alice and The Year of Magical Thinking. Writer Ann Beattie offers high praise to the acclaimed author of Lapham Rising and Beet for a memoir that is, “written so forthrightly, but so delicately, that you feel you’re a part of this family.”
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mike B.
- 08-26-22
Disappointing
While I feel terrible that Mr. & Mrs. Rosenblatt suffered the terrible tragedy of losing their daughter, this book was extremely disappointing.
It was difficult to feel any sense of sympathy for any of the characters that were a party to this tragedy as the author’s focus seemed to be mostly on name-dropping and his travels back and forth to Quoge.
Some very cringe-worthy moments in the author’s narration as I felt his focus was more on how great he and his wife were as they helped their widowed son-in-law take care of the kids. Very disingenuous attempts to portray them as being from an almost middle class socio-economic status (couldn’t afford his daughter the wedding he felt she wanted) but could afford a full-time Nanny for the children, etc. His description of his wife’s beauty was also an odd inclusion in this story. Many uncomfortable moments in this book for me as the reader (listener).
This didn’t seem to be a book to be shared with the public but should have remained a private diary type of dissertation. Everyone was portrayed as too perfect.
This was not what I was expecting and feel it could have been so much more to help others encountering a similar situation. Their son-in-law was scarcely developed in this book.
Again, I feel terrible for them as a family, but this book did nothing to develop any sense of sympathy for this situation.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 160
Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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Language Arts
- By: Stephanie Kallos
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4 out of 5 stars 56
Charles Marlow is a Seattle English teacher who instructs his students to expand their worlds through language. Lately, however, with one child off to college and the pressure from his ex-wife to make plans for their severely autistic son who's about to age out of the system, he prefers the company of the ghosts he turns up in the storage boxes in his crawl space.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The beauty of the broken
- By SJ Evans on 04-27-18
By: Stephanie Kallos
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The Nine of Us
- Growing Up Kennedy
- By: Jean Kennedy Smith
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
In this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, offers an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and learned a great deal under one roof.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inside the Kennedy Family~ excellent and funny~
- By Molly on 10-30-16
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 105
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4 out of 5 stars 98
It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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An Available Man
- A Novel
- By: Hilma Wolitzer
- Narrated by: Fred Sullivan
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
When Edward Schuyler - a modest and bookish 62-year-old science teacher - is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. The problem is that Edward doesn’t feel available. He’s still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely book, easy read, wonderful characters
- By Molly-o on 02-17-12
By: Hilma Wolitzer
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4 out of 5 stars 43
Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 364
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Story4 out of 5 stars 327
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Bitter in the Mouth
- By: Monique Truong
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 42
Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her.
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2 out of 5 stars
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"Tasting Words" made this hard to hear!
- By Kate Anderson on 11-06-11
By: Monique Truong
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 712
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 622
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Story4 out of 5 stars 625
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Laughing Without an Accent
- Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 301
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story4 out of 5 stars 172
In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)
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1 out of 5 stars
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Sigh
- By Sara on 01-29-14
By: Firoozeh Dumas
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 107
Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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No Biking in the House Without a Helmet
- By: Melissa Fay Greene
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
When the two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene confided to friends that she and her husband planned to adopt a four-year-old boy from Bulgaria to add to their four children at home, the news threatened to place her, she writes, "among the greats: the Kennedys, the McCaughey septuplets, the von Trapp family singers, and perhaps even Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, gave birth to 69 children in eighteenth-century Russia."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great story of family changes
- By Peter on 02-14-12
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story5 out of 5 stars 79
Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
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A Fine Romance
- By: Candice Bergen
- Narrated by: Candice Bergen
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 550
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 476
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 479
A Fine Romance begins with Bergen's charming first husband, French director Louis Malle, whose huge appetite for life broadened her horizons and whose occasional darkness never diminished their love for each other. But her real romance begins when she discovers overpowering love for her daughter after years of ambivalence about motherhood.
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4 out of 5 stars
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up the speed to 1.5 and Candace sounds way better
- By Susan on 06-03-15
By: Candice Bergen