Humboldt's Gift
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo first 3 months
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $22.85
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Christopher Hurt
-
By:
-
Saul Bellow
About this listen
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
- By Darwin8u on 05-09-12
By: Saul Bellow
-
Mr. Sammler's Planet
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York's Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela's sex life, and his daughter's lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon.
-
-
ASTONISHING
- By madeline grunbaum on 01-25-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Henderson the Rain King
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
-
-
Funny and Powerful
- By Michael on 03-17-21
By: Saul Bellow
-
Ravelstein
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.
-
-
If Voltaire did a bio of Plato
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-23
By: Saul Bellow
-
Dangling Man
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Expecting to be inducted into the army during World War II, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Written in diary format, Bellow’s first novel documents Joseph’s psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.
-
-
Sentimental
- By federico on 10-05-20
By: Saul Bellow
-
Collected Stories
- By: Saul Bellow, Janis Bellow - editor and preface, James Wood - introduction
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, Richard Poe, Kate Reading, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.
-
-
Didn't love this collection
- By Michael on 05-03-21
By: Saul Bellow, and others
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
- By Darwin8u on 05-09-12
By: Saul Bellow
-
Mr. Sammler's Planet
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York's Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela's sex life, and his daughter's lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon.
-
-
ASTONISHING
- By madeline grunbaum on 01-25-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Henderson the Rain King
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Saul Bellow evokes all the rich colors and exotic customs of a highly imaginary Africa in this acclaimed comic novel about a middle-aged American millionaire who, seeking a new, more rewarding life, descends upon an African tribe. Henderson's awesome feats of strength and his unbridled passion for life win him the admiration of the tribe - but it is his gift for making rain that turns him from mere hero into messiah. A hilarious, often ribald story, Henderson the Rain King is also a profound look at the forces that drive a man through life.
-
-
Funny and Powerful
- By Michael on 03-17-21
By: Saul Bellow
-
Ravelstein
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent Midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously - and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas that sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire.
-
-
If Voltaire did a bio of Plato
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-23
By: Saul Bellow
-
Dangling Man
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Expecting to be inducted into the army during World War II, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Written in diary format, Bellow’s first novel documents Joseph’s psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.
-
-
Sentimental
- By federico on 10-05-20
By: Saul Bellow
-
Collected Stories
- By: Saul Bellow, Janis Bellow - editor and preface, James Wood - introduction
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner, Richard Poe, Kate Reading, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.
-
-
Didn't love this collection
- By Michael on 05-03-21
By: Saul Bellow, and others
-
Seize the Day
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess.
-
-
Why?
- By Ashraf Abaza on 05-16-19
By: Saul Bellow
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
-
Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.
-
-
so large, so powerful, so conflicted
- By Darwin8u on 09-17-17
By: William Faulkner
-
The Hamlet
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Hamlet, the first novel of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy, is both an ironic take on classical tragedy and a mordant commentary on the grand pretensions of the antebellum South and the depths of its decay in the aftermath of war and Reconstruction. It tells of the advent and the rise of the Snopes family in Frenchman's Bend, a small town built on the ruins of a once-stately plantation.
-
-
The Long, Hot Summer
- By W Perry Hall on 07-30-17
By: William Faulkner
-
Speak Memory
- An Autobiography Revisited
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Speak, Memory, first published in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised in 1966, is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov’s life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works, including Lolita, Pnin, Despair, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and The Luhzin Defense.
-
-
Speak, Mnemosyne!
- By Darwin8u on 08-09-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Rabbit, Run
- By: John Updike
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
-
-
A Thinking Man's Novel
- By L. Berlyne on 01-12-09
By: John Updike
-
Sabbath’s Theater
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: John Turturro
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once an inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath, bereft and grieving and besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.
-
-
The worst audiobook I’ve ever listened to
- By Jerome D. Blake on 12-13-23
By: Philip Roth
-
Debt of Bones
- Sword of Truth Series
- By: Terry Goodkind
- Narrated by: Sam Tsoutsouvas
- Length: 3 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A milestone of storytelling set in the world of The Sword of Truth, Debt of Bones is the story of young Abby's struggle to win the aid of the wizard Zedd Zorander, the most important man alive. Abby is trapped, not only between both sides of the war, but in a mortal conflict between two powerful men. For Zedd, who commands power most men can only imagine, granting Abby's request would mean forsaking his sacred duty. With the storm of the final battle about to save the life of a child....
-
-
Bags! This is a good prequel.
- By Patrick Sanchez on 05-02-14
By: Terry Goodkind
-
The Counterlife
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman.
-
-
Eros, Thanatos, and the Male Yenta
- By G. Benett on 10-03-19
By: Philip Roth
-
A Wizard of Earthsea
- The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Rob Inglis
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Sparrowhawk casts a spell that saves his village from destruction at the hands of the invading Kargs, Ogion, the Mage of Re Albi, encourages the boy to apprentice himself in the art of wizardry. So, at the age of 13, the boy receives his true name - Ged - and gives himself over to the gentle tutelage of the Master Ogion. But impatient with the slowness of his studies and infatuated with glory, Ged embarks for the Island of Roke, where the highest arts of wizardry are taught.
-
-
A little gem, excellently narrated.
- By Marjorie on 05-14-12
-
For Whom the Bell Tolls
- By: Ernest Hemingway
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1937, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls.
-
-
Don't "Clean Up" Hemingway
- By John W. Aldis, MD on 08-13-09
By: Ernest Hemingway
Related to this topic
-
Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
-
-
Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Book of Air and Shadows
- A Novel
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer (or killers) unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for 400 years.
-
-
Not your average story.
- By Nicholas Winn on 06-02-07
By: Michael Gruber
-
The Immigrants
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.
-
-
Narration style kills the story.
- By Glynis on 11-27-14
By: Howard Fast
-
Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
-
-
Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
-
Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
-
-
Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
The Book of Air and Shadows
- A Novel
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer (or killers) unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for 400 years.
-
-
Not your average story.
- By Nicholas Winn on 06-02-07
By: Michael Gruber
-
The Immigrants
- By: Howard Fast
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.
-
-
Narration style kills the story.
- By Glynis on 11-27-14
By: Howard Fast
-
Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
-
-
Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
-
Appointment in Samarra
- Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
- By: John O'Hara, Charles McGrath - introduction
- Narrated by: Christian Camargo
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
-
-
Quite good, but not a classic
- By Michael on 04-25-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
-
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
-
-
Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
BUtterfield 8
- By: John O'Hara, Lorin Stein - introduction
- Narrated by: Gretchen Mol
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterpiece of American fiction and a best seller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy.
-
-
Wildly Uneven
- By David P on 08-27-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
-
Cannery Row
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Jerry Farden
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack and his boys, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and most poignant works.
-
-
Five stars with a Caveat
- By Bette on 04-23-12
By: John Steinbeck
-
The Razor's Edge
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Great War changed everything and everyone, and Larry Darrell is no exception. Though his physical wounds from the war heal, his spirit is changed almost beyond recognition. He leaves his betrothed, the beautiful and devoted Isabel; studies philosophy and religion in Paris; lives as a monk, and witnesses the exotic hardships of Spanish life. All of life that he can find - from an Indian Ashrama to labor in a coal mine - becomes Larry's spiritual experiment as he spurns the comfort and privilege of the Roaring 20s.
-
-
An Classic of Love and the Desire for Meaning
- By Eric on 01-06-17
-
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
- By: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: David Julian Hirsh
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Duddy - the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal - is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody", Duddy learns about living - and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.
-
-
OK but a bit disappointing; weak narration
- By Merlin on 05-12-17
By: Mordecai Richler
-
The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
-
-
Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
-
The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
-
-
Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
-
Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
-
-
Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
-
Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
-
Journey to the End of the Night
- By: Louis-Ferdinand Celine
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.
-
-
Miserable Ride with Cynic Supreme
- By W Perry Hall on 03-15-17
-
The Forgery of Venus
- By: Michael Gruber
- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chaz Wilmot makes his living cranking out old-master parodies for ads and magazine covers. When he's offered a job restoring a Venetian palace fresco, he is at first, skeptical - he immediately sees it is more a forgery than a restoration. But he is soon seduced by the challenge and throws himself into the work, doing the job brilliantly.
-
-
art sci fi psychological thriller
- By Susan on 11-06-11
By: Michael Gruber
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
-
-
Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall