Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant
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Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant
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Narrated by:
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Joel Golby
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By:
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Joel Golby
About this listen
National Best Seller
"This is a funny and beautiful book. What a little bastard." (Russell Brand)
"Every paragraph is like doing a shot with a friend. A double." (Caitlin Moran)
Joel Golby's writing for Vice and The Guardian, with its wry observation and naked self-reflection, has brought him a wide and devoted following. Now, in his first book, he presents a blistering collection of new and newly expanded essays - including the achingly funny viral hit "Things You Only Know When Both Your Parents Are Dead." In this audiobook, he travels to Saudi Arabia, where he acts as a perplexed bystander at a camel pageant; offers a survival guide for the modern dinner party (i.e. how to tactfully escape at the first sign of an adult board game); and gets pitted head-to-head, again and again, with an unpredictable, unpitying subspecies of Londoner: the landlord.
Through it all, he shows that no matter how cruel the misfortune, how absurd the circumstance, there's always the soft punch of a lesson tucked within. This is a book for anyone who overshares, overthinks, has ever felt lost or confused - and who wants to have a good laugh about it.
©2019 Joel Golby (P)2019 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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If I'm going to tell the story of a life, my life, then I need to tell it warts and all. If the tale is too saccharine sweet then what can the reader take away from it? What do they learn about you? I've written everything down. The shit, the death, fun, naughtiness, addiction, laughter, laughter, laughter, some tears and lots of love and happiness. That, to me, is a better reflection of a human's life.
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Wow! WoW! WOW!
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Critic reviews
A BBC Best Book of 2019 So Far
“Seeing the byline ‘Joel Golby’ means you’re about to ungraciously snort with laughter in a public place. Golby is sharper at dissecting the madness of 21st-century online existence than any other writer. Every paragraph is like doing a shot with a friend. A double.” (Caitlin Moran, New York Times best-selling author of How to Be a Woman and How to Be Famous)
“Using a blend of insightful self-deprecation and almost lovable braggadocio, Golby tackles subjects big and small with the same forensic thinking and enthusiasm.... [He] is great at switching between the poignant and the absurd, observing life both with the wonder of a toddler who has just discovered where you hid the crayons and the confidence of the friend who tells you ‘I got this’ before attempting to fix your vacuum cleaner.” (Adam Kay, The Guardian)
“A writer who can be funny and offhandedly profound at the same time...[Golby] sometimes feels like a kindred spirit to David Sedaris, but younger and more biting.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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Humor? Not Funny.
- By W Perry Hall on 04-10-16
By: Jonathan Lee
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The Death of Cool
- From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood
- By: Gavin McInnes
- Narrated by: Gavin McInnes
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,191
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,051
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,051
This is his story, or, rather, stories - lots of them, and all gut-punchingly hilarious, from that first far reach into a girl's tight jeans to turning forty with a cataclysmic party. In between you’ll hear about acid trips, threesomes, Nazi skinheads, his band Anal Chinook (Inuit for “warm wind”), Martians in northern Canada, throwing pedophiles in jail, dinner with the Clash, what happens when you crash Bill Maher's show wasted, and the true story of Vice magazine.
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5 out of 5 stars
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if you don't buy this book, the terrorists win
- By Kelsey Gholi on 04-03-17
By: Gavin McInnes
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Everything Is Awful
- And Other Observations
- By: Matt Bellassai
- Narrated by: Matt Bellassai
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,042
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 954
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Story4 out of 5 stars 950
From the break-out star of BuzzFeed and the People's Choice Award-winning comedian comes a collection of hilariously anguished essays chronicling awful moments from his life so far, the humiliations of being an adult, and other little indignities. Matt Bellassai has no idea what he's doing. Well, to be fair, he did become semi-Internet famous by getting drunk at work, making him a socially-acceptable - nay - professional alcoholic. He's got some things figured out. But the rest is all just a terrible, disgusting mess.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best Audio Book I’ve heard ever.
- By M on 11-23-17
By: Matt Bellassai
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 456
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 421
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 419
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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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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Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 609
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 554
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Story4 out of 5 stars 557
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
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Darling Days
- A Memoir
- By: iO Tillett Wright
- Narrated by: iO Tillett Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 409
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 377
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Story5 out of 5 stars 373
Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO's mother's. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO's fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can’t wait for more from this Author!
- By Team Hobson on 07-24-19
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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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How to Be Famous
- A Novel
- By: Caitlin Moran
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
A hilarious, heartfelt sequel to How to Build a Girl, the breakout novel from feminist sensation Caitlin Moran who the New York Times called, "rowdy and fearless... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways." You can’t have your best friend be famous if you’re not famous. It doesn’t work. You’re emotional pen-friends. You can send each other letters - but you’re not doing anything together. You live in different countries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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AMAZING , but not for the faint of heart
- By Knitme23 on 07-23-18
By: Caitlin Moran
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The Bone Clocks
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Jessica Ball, Leon Williams, Colin Mace, and others
- Length: 24 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,088
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,659
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3,667
Following a scalding row with her mother, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: A sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as "the radio people," Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not Short Listed, This Time
- By Mel on 09-23-14
By: David Mitchell
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Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
- By: Juliann Garey
- Narrated by: Dan Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 497
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 455
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Story4 out of 5 stars 454
In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Psychosis or Syphilis?
- By Vira on 04-02-13
By: Juliann Garey
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The Darkest Secret
- A Novel
- By: Alex Marwood
- Narrated by: Beverley A. Crick
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,302
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,171
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,174
Real estate mogul Sean Jackson is throwing himself a splashy 50th birthday party, but trouble starts almost immediately: His ex-wife has sent his teenage daughters to the party without telling him; his current wife has fired the nanny; and he's finding it difficult to sneak away to his mistress. Then something truly terrible happens: one of his three-year-old twins goes missing. No trace of her is ever found. The attendees of the party, nicknamed the Jackson Associates by the press, become infamous overnight.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wow
- By Christina on 09-14-16
By: Alex Marwood
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Lifted by the Great Nothing
- By: Karim Dimechkie
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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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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Make Something Up
- Stories You Can't Unread
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Scott Sowers, Rich Orlow, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 483
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 434
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 431
For years Chuck Palahniuk has reserved his best storytelling for his readings, often choosing to read a new short story instead of whatever novel he is supposed to be promoting. Make Something Up compiles these previously unpublished tales for the very first time, plus the Byliner social media insta-classic "Phoenix" and Palahniuk's most notable pieces from Playboy.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Plenty of shock, just not enough Palahniuk awe
- By Darwin8u on 06-10-15
By: Chuck Palahniuk
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I Am Not Myself These Days
- A Memoir
- By: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 144
I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly---a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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depressing
- By Barry Morrison on 08-02-16
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30 Before 30
- How I Made a Mess of 20s, and You Can Too
- By: Marina Shifrin
- Narrated by: Marina Shifrin
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Something was nagging Marina Shifrin. As a freshly minted adult with student loan payments and a “real” job she hated that paid her enough to get by if she also worked two other jobs, something needed to change. Marina and her friend each made lists of 30 things they’d do before the age of 30. The first thing on Marina’s list was, “Quit My Shitty Job”. So she did, and just like that the List powered her through her twenties. Told with humor and heart, 30 Before 30 will entertain, motivate, and challenge listeners to get out of their comfort zones and live their best lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inspiring read
- By Chris Gledhill on 12-18-18
By: Marina Shifrin
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The Opposite of Loneliness
- Essays and Stories
- By: Marina Keegan
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 709
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 618
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Story4 out of 5 stars 623
Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
What listeners say about Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Us.
- 08-03-19
Hilarious and unexpectedly deep. Loved it.
The only part I could say was less interesting was a chapter spent with camels, and even that was fantastic.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Manatee
- 03-20-19
Definitely a five (5) star audiobook experience
Whether or not you're a longtime Joel Golby instagram follower (not sure how I first came across him but I truly appreciate his brand of Love and Appreciation, and like to consider myself one of his lads despite being female and on a different continent), this is a great listen. Joel's writing and his narration is simultaneously hilarious and comforting. I'm sure reading this in book form is great too but you should seriously hear it read by the author himself for the full experience.
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1 person found this helpful