The Land of Steady Habits
A Novel
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The Land of Steady Habits
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Narrated by:
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uncredited
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By:
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Ted Thompson
About this listen
Coming of age can happen at the strangest times. For Anders Hill, long ensconced in "the land of steady habits" - the affluent hamlets of Connecticut that dot the commuter rail line - it's finally time to reap the rewards of a sensible life. Into his 60s and newly retired, his grown sons' college tuitions paid in full, Anders finds the contentment he's been promised is still just out of reach. So he decides he's had enough of steady habits: he leaves his wife, buys a condo, and waits for freedom to transform him.
But as the cheery charade of Christmas approaches, Anders starts to wonder if maybe parachuting from his life was not the most prudent choice. Stripped of the comforts of his previous identity, he turns up at a holiday party full of his ex-wife's friends, and sets in motion a series of events by turns comic and catastrophic. Before the year has turned, he has to face the startling possibility that the very world he rejected may in fact be the only one he needs.
Charting the arc of a 40-year marriage, this finely observed novel about a man deep in conflict with his community and his past brings into sharp relief the powers of memory, miscommunication, routine, and disappointment, to shape and define a family's mythology. The Land of Steady Habits introduces Ted Thompson as an auspicious talent with striking compassion for his characters and new insight into the American tradition of the suburban narrative.
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Story4 out of 5 stars 210
Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of Northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at UC Berkeley, he realizes the extent - and the risks - of his singular gifts. California in the '70s is a seduction, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there - and the rival he meets alongside her - will haunt him for the rest of his life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The curse of genius?
- By Bonny on 03-03-16
By: Ethan Canin
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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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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
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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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Outside Looking In
- A Novel
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: Johnathan McClain
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 202
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Story4 out of 5 stars 183
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology PhD student, and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug’s possibilities such that their “research” becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a freewheeling exploration of mind expansion, group dynamics, and communal living.
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5 out of 5 stars
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STORYTELLING AS CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
- By Christopher Meeks on 05-25-19
By: T. C. Boyle
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The Ramblers
- A Novel
- By: Aidan Donnelley Rowley
- Narrated by: Erica Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4 out of 5 stars 87
Set in the most magical parts of Manhattan - the Upper West Side, Central Park, Greenwich Village - The Ramblers explores the lives of three lost souls bound together by friendship and family. During the course of one fateful Thanksgiving week, a time when emotions run high and being with family can be a mixed blessing, Rowley's sharply defined characters explore the moments when decisions are deliberately made, choices accepted, and pasts reconciled.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lovely Portrait of The City
- By Dingo27 on 02-19-16
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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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The Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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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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True Biz
- A Novel
- By: Sara Novic
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,165
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,027
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,024
True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges listeners into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A good story with added features both intriguing and informational
- By A Signing Mom on 05-15-22
By: Sara Novic
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 191
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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The Fragile World
- A Novel
- By: Paula Treick DeBoard
- Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Will Damron
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4 out of 5 stars 137
The Kaufmans have always considered themselves a normal, happy family. Curtis is a physics teacher at a local high school. His wife, Kathleen, restores furniture for upscale boutiques. Daniel is away at college on a prestigious music scholarship, and 12-year-old Olivia is a happy-go-lucky kid whose biggest concern is passing her next math test. And then comes the middle-of-the-night phone call that changes everything.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Inaccurate
- By CCB on 03-10-15
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Bright Lights, Big City
- By: Jay McInerney
- Narrated by: Daniel Passer
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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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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Domestic Violets
- A Novel
- By: Matthew Norman
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 222
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 193
Tom Violet always thought that by the time he turned 35, he’d have everything going for him. Fame. Fortune. A beautiful wife. A satisfying career as a successful novelist. A happy dog to greet him at the end of the day. The reality, though, is far different. He’s got a wife, but their problems are bigger than he can even imagine. And he’s written a novel, but the manuscript he’s slaved over for years is currently hidden in his desk drawer while his father, an actual famous writer, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His career, such that it is, involves mind-numbing corporate buzzwords....
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a rollicking ride!
- By Pamela Harvey on 08-13-11
By: Matthew Norman
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The Art of Crash Landing
- A Novel
- By: Melissa DeCarlo
- Narrated by: Johanna Parker
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 55
Mattie Wallace has really screwed up this time. Broke and knocked up, she's got all her worldly possessions crammed into six giant trash bags and nowhere to go. Try as she might, Mattie can no longer deny that she really is turning into her mother, a broken alcoholic who never met a bad choice she didn't make. When Mattie gets news of a possible inheritance left by a grandmother she's never met, she jumps at this one last chance to turn things around.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Unlikable character
- By RueRue on 09-18-15
By: Melissa DeCarlo
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The Daisy Children
- A Novel
- By: Sofia Grant
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4 out of 5 stars 84
When Katie Garrett gets the news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston and travels to rural Texas. There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly and flamboyant, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.
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3 out of 5 stars
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a little odd to me
- By G-Mom on 11-09-24
By: Sofia Grant
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All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 786
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 683
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Story4 out of 5 stars 680
A smart, comic pause-resister about a Silicon Valley family in free fall over the course of one eventful summer from the author of Watch Me Disappear and Pretty Things. When Paul Miller’s pharmaceutical company goes public, making his family IPO millionaires, his wife, Janice, is sure this is the windfall she’s been waiting years for - until she learns, via messengered letter, that her husband is divorcing her (for her tennis partner!) and cutting her out of the new fortune.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Perfect Life Ain't So Perfect
- By Theresa on 12-28-08
By: Janelle Brown
What listeners say about The Land of Steady Habits
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Ann
- 02-05-16
Great narrator, sad story.
I believe perhaps, this was written by Eeyore. I listened to it and was glad when it was over...
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- RueRue
- 01-08-15
Excellent....but who is the narrator ?
Well written and insightful examination of a mid-life crisis. Who is the narrator ? He did a great job ! ( especially for no credit )
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