Sweetness #9
A Novel
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Sweetness #9
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Narrated by:
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James Langton
About this listen
It's 1973, and David Leveraux has landed his dream job as a Flavorist-in-Training, working in the secretive industry where chemists create the flavors for everything from the cherry in your can of soda to the butter on your popcorn.
While testing a new artificial sweetener - Sweetness #9 - he notices unusual side-effects in the laboratory rats and monkeys: anxiety, obesity, mutism, and a generalized dissatisfaction with life. David tries to blow the whistle, but he swallows it instead.
Years later, Sweetness #9 is America's most popular sweetener - and David's family is changing. His wife is gaining weight, his son has stopped using verbs, and his daughter suffers from a generalized dissatisfaction with life. Is Sweetness #9 to blame, along with David's failure to stop it? Or are these just symptoms of the American condition?
David's search for an answer unfolds in this expansive novel that is at once a comic satire, a family story, and a profound exploration of our deepest cultural anxieties. Wickedly funny and wildly imaginative, Sweetness #9 questions whether what we eat truly makes us who we are.
©2014 Stephan Eirik Clark (P)2014 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
May We Be Forgiven, a darkly comic novel of 21st-century domestic life, stars Harold Silver, a historian who's always been jealous of his successful brother, George. But when the hot-tempered George is institutionalized for committing a violent act, Harold finds himself comforting his brother's wife and children. What follows is a scathing examination of a family so fractured it may never be whole again.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Give this one a try!
- By JWB on 02-13-13
By: A. M. Homes
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Breaking Night
- A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
- By: Liz Murray
- Narrated by: Liz Murray
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 910
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 813
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 812
Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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5 out of 5 stars
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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Notes on a Banana
- A Memoir of Food, Love, and Manic Depression
- By: David Leite
- Narrated by: David Leite
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life, from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to "turn straight" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his 23-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers and listeners as "The One", which began with (what else?) food.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finished it in a day!
- By Kathryn on 08-23-17
By: David Leite
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4 out of 5 stars 78
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 175
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 176
An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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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 Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami, who arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was Jenry’s mother’s lover?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good.
- By Roland Harper on 05-22-22
By: Rachel Harper
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 341
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Story4 out of 5 stars 283
The tragicomedy of a young man in New York City, a writer, never named, who works as a fact-checker for a prestigious magazine. He struggles with the reality of his mother's death, alienation, and the seductive pull of drugs and a vibrant nightlife.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Curiously, mundanely real
- By Amber on 01-07-12
By: Jay McInerney
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,094
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,822
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,838
Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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City of Spies
- By: Sorayya Khan
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Eleven-year-old Aliya Shah lives a double life in Islamabad, Pakistan - at home with her Pakistani father and Dutch mother, and at the American School, where Aliya tries to downplay that she is a "half-and-half." But when a hit-and-run driver kills the son of the family's servant, Sadiq, who is also Aliya's dear friend, her world is turned upside down. After she discovers the truth behind the tragedy - a terrible secret that burdens her heart - her conflicted loyalties are tested as never before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautifully written and narrated
- By Wayne on 11-05-17
By: Sorayya Khan
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No Safe Secret
- By: Fern Michaels
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 337
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 291
From her silver Mercedes to her designer kitchen, Molly's life is gleaming and beautiful - at least on the surface. Married to Tanner, a top cosmetic dentist, she has a wonderful daughter finishing high school and twin stepsons from Tanner's first marriage. No one in her exclusive neighborhood in Goldenhills, Massachusetts, knows what living with the demanding Tanner is really like. They know even less about the life she left behind in Florida almost two decades ago.
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5 out of 5 stars
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All the stars I can give...
- By Courtney on 05-21-16
By: Fern Michaels
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The Walking People
- By: Mary Beth Keane
- Narrated by: Sile Bermingham
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Irish immigratn story
- By Chrissie on 09-10-13
By: Mary Beth Keane
What listeners say about Sweetness #9
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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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tboy20
- 01-19-15
Sweetest thing I've found in a very long time!
Sweetness #9 was one of the best books ever. The writing is elegant and concise, the story is compelling and beautifully told. Cleaver, witty, and thought provoking, the writer has woven a tale that spans decades yet feels perfect for the present day. Loved it!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Wendy
- 12-09-14
Disappointing....
The topic of chemical additives in our food would be such a fertile topic, but this book is filled with missed opportunities. A lack luster central character, tangential side stories that did nothing to enhance the plot, and a fast attempt to tie it all together at the end. This could have been a story about intrigue, corporate politics and public scrutiny. But it was none of these. I was glad when it was over.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Jonathan Sauder
- 02-11-15
This diet novel will leave you feeling empty
What did you like best about Sweetness #9? What did you like least?
*Spoiler* Nazis are responsible for our global obesity?! Really? I'm no nationalist, but Is there anything we can't pin on them? People are planting bombs in the cereal aisle of grocery stores just because they're mad about artificial ingredients?! This story was outrageously ridiculous at it's exciting parts and mind-numbingly dull everywhere else. Ultimately, this story is more about the interpersonal and family struggles of a milquetoast than it is a commentary on the flavor industry. I'm so utterly shocked this weak novel received so much critical attention.
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1 person found this helpful