The Basketball Diaries

By: Jim Carroll

Narrated by: Jim Carroll

Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

In his teens, Jim Carroll roamed the streets of New York, shooting baskets with some of New York's best "playground" stars, and shooting heroin with some of the city's most memorable street characters. The Basketball Diaries is his chronicle of those years. Written while in his teens, it is a literary tour-de-force and a stunning portrait of contemporary urban street life. The characters and incidents are moving and funny and sad, but always very real.

©1963 -1978 by Jim Carroll (P)1994 by Audio Literature

Critic reviews

"At thirteen, Jim Carroll writes better prose than 89 percent of the novelists working today." (Jack Kerouac)

A RAW 1ST PERSON ACCOUNT THROUGH THE AUTHORS EYE'S

Unfortunately this is an abridged version of the book. I would have given it 3☆'s because of that reason alone but the fault is in the hands of someone who's job it is to call those shots @ Audible & not the Author's themselves. The fact Jim Carroll is narrating it is an added bonus & that alone deserves 5☆'s!!
Personally I liked the movie too but in my opinion the book is better,
There are scenes in the screenplay that never took place, for instance (when the guy gets pushed off the roof) this is something he hears through the grapevine about something an old friend went to prison for but Jim wasn't actually there when it happened like the movie suggests and that's just one example. Hollywood Likes to change things or rearrange things for the screen like in the great film / better book "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" The protagonist is the big Indian patient who only has 1 or 2 lines in the movie but you wouldn't know that from watching it.
You have to keep in mind this book was written between the very very young ages of 13-15.
If you enjoyed this then I reccomend his later works & also a kind of sequel to this book called "Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries". He starts working for Andy Warhol & hanging out at "The Factory", "Max's Kansas City" & other notorious underground places in 1960-70's era NYC.
I only wish they took audio from other authors reading their books or gave u the option of a pdf file to read yourself.

a classic

Nothing better than hearing the reading of this book by Jim Carroll. I feel as it is shortened than it should have been, as I have read the book, and there are parts I did not hear in this reading. That being said, Jim read this with great passion and soul, as he always did. I never got to hear him or see him in the flesh, and since his passing., I never will. But, this made it as close as I can ever get. Great listen.

A classic read by Jim Carroll himself!

After this read or listen to the second book from his early 20s 'The Downtown Diaries'. He also performed in an amazing band in the 80s called The Jim Carroll band. His lyrics are amazing poetry with a really tight rocking band. The first album is my favourite, it's called Catholic Boy.

Gritty Story, S#!tty Narration

The story was good, if a bit chaotic but the author should have delegated the narration to a professional, instead of doing it himself. I can understand an author thinking "who better to tell my own story, than me?" and I would normally agree but in this case, the dialogue was stilted, monotone and at times, incorrectly parsed, making it seem as if the first time the narrator had even opened the book was after he sat down to record it. Very distracting...

A better movie....

The audiobook has some good parts and there were two in particular that I most certainly enjoyed and wouldn't even have known about had I not decided to listen to the book. BUT with that said, the ending is bad compared to that of the movei - and overall, I found the narrator's voice to be a tad annoying. (Guess DiCaprio plays him better than he does?)

Relevancy and How!

A new way to read Basketball Diaries. Life lived with the author narrative emotional story.

Classic

Beautiful book and it's nice to hear Jim read it. Classic coming of age story.

Jim Carroll is a punk poet legend.

I am very happy to hear his unique voice.i was lucky to see him in person and miss his writing

I LOVED THIS EXPERIENCE

I wish I were a better writer as this book deserves a better review than my skill level will allow.
To start off, I watch the movie first. I watched it while I was also in the first few years of my addiction. I also used iv opiates and was very addicted. I had a dream that I was lying in a bed with Leo kicking our habit together, it was vivid. so I have a special place in my heart for the movie because it feels like it was a part of my recovery. The audio file itself is high quality and Jim speaks clearly and is easy to understand. He is fairly descriptive and it's easy to Invision the scenes as he describes them. It reads like journal as it is one. it keeps you hanging on every word, everything seems interesting to hear. anyways, that's about all I can think of to say.

Interesting snapshot of time

This provides a pretty comprehensive look at his teenage years and the poor choices that accompanied them.
For me, it never really hooked me or got off the ground, but I’m not sorry I listened to it.