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Boomer Tales
- Hula Hoops, Hippies, Hemp, and Hijinks
- Narrated by: Diane Moca
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
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Boomer Tales
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Publisher's summary
Author LaRue Agresti captures the essence of a generation in this vivacious memoir.
As related in Boomer Tales, LaRue was born in Chicago in 1949. Her whimsical narration describes growing up in a wacky Italian family, complete with intriguing background material on her parents and their families, and speaks candidly of her mother's battle with mental illness.
After chronicling her early years in Chicago, Boomer Tales goes on to provide a window into the Windy City's turbulent social and political climate during the 1960s.
LaRue offers a vivid time capsule of the pot-infused 1970s hippie culture in the form of original letters sent from the Florida Keys to her sister back home in "Bummer City".
But life brings her back to Chicago, and the 80s usher in an emotional time, as she contends with the difficulties of parents afflicted with cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
Throughout the book, LaRue provides rich descriptions of her lively hometown, and her inclusion of the music that resonated with her peers helps bring her portrait of a baby boomer vibrantly to life.
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-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 368
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 331
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Story4 out of 5 stars 330
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
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3 out of 5 stars
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It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 63
By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 422
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 260
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 260
At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
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Born Bright
- A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America
- By: C. Nicole Mason
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Born Bright, C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Solid Book
- By Daryl on 11-06-16
By: C. Nicole Mason
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All Souls
- A Family Story from Southie
- By: Michael Patrick MacDonald
- Narrated by: Michael Patrick MacDonald
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
The anti-busing riots of 1974 forever changed Southie, Boston's working-class Irish community, branding it as a violent, racist enclave. Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in Southie's Old Colony housing project. He describes the way this world within a world felt to the troubled yet keenly gifted observer he was even as a child. But the threats - poverty, drugs, a shadowy gangster world - were real. All Souls is heartbreaking testimony to lives lost too early, and the story of how a place so filled with pain could still be "the best place in the world".
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5 out of 5 stars
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this book broke me in the best way
- By anon on 02-14-23
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,224
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 862
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Story4 out of 5 stars 864
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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5 out of 5 stars
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Learning to Die in Miami
- Confessions of a Refugee Boy
- By: Carlos Eire
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Carlos Eire's story of a boyhood uprooted by the Cuban Revolution quickly lures us in, as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother Tony touch down in the sun-dappled Miami of 1962 - a place of daunting abundance where his old Cuban self must die to make way for a new, American self waiting to be born. In this enchanting new work, narrated in Eire's inimitable and lyrical voice, young Carlos adjusts to life in his new country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent memoir of a forgotten time in history
- By BRB on 03-23-15
By: Carlos Eire
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Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels
- By: Justin Vivian Bond
- Narrated by: Justin Vivian Bond
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that V's first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Justin Vivian Bond Knocks It Out of the Park
- By Susie on 01-15-14
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I Can Barely Take Care of Myself
- Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids
- By: Jen Kirkman
- Narrated by: Jen Kirkman
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 539
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 488
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Story4 out of 5 stars 489
"You'll change your mind." That's what everyone says to Jen Kirkman - and countless women like her - when she confesses she doesn't plan to have children. But you know what? It's hard enough to be an adult. You have to dress yourself and pay bills and remember to buy birthday gifts. You have to drive and get annual physicals and tip for good service. Some adults take on the added burden of caring for a tiny human being with no language skills or bladder control.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Funny. Not fall down laughing funny, but funny
- By david on 05-22-13
By: Jen Kirkman
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If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother
- By: Julia Sweeney
- Narrated by: Julia Sweeney
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Story4 out of 5 stars 175
Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character "Pat", Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say.
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4 out of 5 stars
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I Love Julia Sweeney
- By Lisa on 04-05-13
By: Julia Sweeney
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There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say
- By: Paula Poundstone
- Narrated by: Paula Poundstone
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 577
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 362
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Story4 out of 5 stars 357
What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.
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5 out of 5 stars
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More!
- By Evelyn on 02-11-07
By: Paula Poundstone
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Chelsea Girls
- A Novel
- By: Eileen Myles
- Narrated by: Eileen Myles
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.
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5 out of 5 stars
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fascinatingly skanky
- By Megon J. Walker on 07-15-16
By: Eileen Myles
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 201
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 180
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 179
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Stories I'd Tell in Bars
- By: Jen Lancaster
- Narrated by: Jen Lancaster, John Fletcher
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 365
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 325
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Story4 out of 5 stars 322
Unfiltered. Unapologetic. Older, but not wiser, Lancaster goes back to basics in this hilarious essay collection about everything from taking community policing classes to accidentally getting high with her waiter after a fancy dinner. These are the tales she'd tell if she met you in a bar... if she weren't too lazy to put on pants and go to a bar. Offering advice ranging from how to remain happily married to a man who refuses to blow his damn nose already to not creating An Incident at the cheese counter during an attempt at Whole30, she's you, only louder.
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2 out of 5 stars
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self absorbed
- By D D H on 06-15-19
By: Jen Lancaster
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Miss Fortune
- Fresh Perspectives on Having It All from Someone Who Is Not Okay
- By: Lauren Weedman
- Narrated by: Lauren Weedman
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Lauren Weedman is not okay. She's living what should be the good life in sunny Los Angeles. After a gig as a correspondent with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she scored parts in blockbuster movies, which led to memorable recurring roles on HBO's Hung and Looking. She had a loving husband and an adorable baby boy. In these comedic essays, she turns a piercingly observant, darkly funny lens on the ways her life is actually not okay.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good
- By Ajules29 on 04-02-16
By: Lauren Weedman