God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $29.90
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Eric Michael Summerer
-
By:
-
Kurt Vonnegut
About this listen
Eliot Rosewater, a drunk volunteer fireman and president of the fabulously rich Rosewater Foundation, is about to attempt a noble experiment with human nature, with a little help from writer Kilgore Trout. The result is Kurt Vonnegut's funniest satire, an etched-in-acid portrayal of the greed, hypocrisy, and follies of the flesh we are all heir to.
As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Kurt Vonnegut's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Gay Talese about the life and work of Kurt Vonnegut – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.
This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.©1965 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (P)2008 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
-
-
“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
-
-
The survival of the human race is a total bore!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
-
-
KV at his best.
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
-
-
“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
-
-
The survival of the human race is a total bore!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
-
-
KV at his best.
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
-
-
Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
-
-
Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
-
-
Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
-
-
Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
-
-
Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
We Are What We Pretend to Be
- The First and Last Works
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Colin Hanks, Oliver Wyman, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called “our finest black-humorist” by The Atlantic Monthly, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.
-
-
Not a place to start.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
-
-
Vonnegut At His Best
- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Metamorphosis
- A New Translation by Susan Bernofsky
- By: Franz Kafka, Susan Bernofsky - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Victor Bevine, Christa Lewis
- Length: 2 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle millions of readers.
-
-
Mysterious and beautiful
- By Tad Davis on 05-02-15
By: Franz Kafka, and others
Critic reviews
Related to this topic
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
-
-
Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
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
-
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 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
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Humboldt's Gift
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 18 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, they were the best of friends: the grand, erratic Humboldt and the ambitious young Charlie. But now Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life: he has left Charlie something in his will.
-
-
Great Book, Great Reader
- By Scott on 05-10-08
By: Saul Bellow
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
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
-
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 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 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
-
A Fraction of the Whole
- By: Steve Toltz
- Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy, Craig Baldwin
- Length: 25 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stewing in an Australian prison, Jasper Dean reflects on his relationship with his dead father and recounts the many zany adventures they shared together.
-
-
A Funny and Thought-provoking Tale of Human Nature
- By Asha Ember on 01-27-10
By: Steve Toltz
-
The One-in-a-Million Boy
- By: Monica Wood
- Narrated by: Chris Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For years, guitarist Quinn Porter has been on the road, chasing gig after gig, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness records-obsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness for his paternal shortcomings by completing the requirements for one of his son's unfinished Boy Scout badges. For seven Saturdays Quinn does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the spry 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly.
-
-
Loved it
- By Justin on 10-20-16
By: Monica Wood
-
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
-
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
-
Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
-
-
Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
-
The Schooldays of Jesus
- By: J. M. Coetzee
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog, Bolivar, to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon, and he should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simon and Ines work, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky.
-
-
SEXUAL PERVERSION PRESENTED AS BRILLIANT
- By Amazon Customer on 09-29-18
By: J. M. Coetzee
-
Falconer
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A convict named Farragut struggles to remain a man while inside a nightmarish prison. Cheever crafted his most powerful work of fiction out of Farragut's suffering and astonishing salvation.
-
-
Unsettling and beautiful
- By Darwin8u on 01-21-13
By: John Cheever
-
Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
-
-
Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Please Don't Eat the Daisies
- By: Jean Kerr
- Narrated by: Marni Webb
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This collection of essays observes the perils of motherhood, wifehood, selfhood, and other assorted challenges. Since its publication in 1957, it has sold millions of copies and has been adapted into a Broadway play, a film, a TV series, and now an audiobook. Jean Kerr's parodies of the clichéd 1950s prescription for glamorous or maternal feminine behavior still resonate today as we enter the 21st century.
-
-
Poor narration of smart, dry, funny essays
- By Buyseverythingonline on 04-30-16
By: Jean Kerr
-
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
-
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
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
-
-
Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
-
-
The survival of the human race is a total bore!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
-
-
Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Bluebeard
- The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988)
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Rabo Karabekian, a moderately successful surrealist painter who we meet late in life and see struggling (like all of Vonnegut's key characters) with the dregs of unresolved pain and the consequences of brutality. Loosely based on the legend of Bluebeard (best realized in Bela Bartok's one-act opera), the novel follows Karabekian through the last events in his life that is heavy with women, painting, artistic ambition, artistic fraudulence, and as of yet unknown consequence.
-
-
Kurt Vonnegut explores the arts
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Jailbird
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Starbuck, a career humanist and eventual low-level aide in the Nixon White House, is implicated in Watergate and jailed, after which he (like Howard Campbell in Mother Night) works on his memoirs. Starbuck is innocent (his office was used as a base for the Watergate shenanigans of which he had no knowledge), and yet he is not innocent (he has collaborated with power unquestioningly and served societal order all his life). He represents another Vonnegut Everyman caught amongst forces he neither understands nor can defend.
-
-
a fool and his self respect are soon parted
- By Darwin8u on 11-18-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Hocus Pocus
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eugene Debs Hartke describes an odyssey from college professor to prison inmate to prison warden back again to prisoner in another of Vonnegut's bitter satirical explorations of how and where (and why) the American dream begins to die. Employing his characteristic narrative device - a retrospective diary in which the protagonist retraces his life at its end, a desperate and disconnected series of events here in Hocus Pocus show Vonnegut with his mask off and his rhetorical devices unshielded.
-
-
Vonnegut Imitating Vonnegut
- By Joe Kraus on 08-06-18
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Galapagos
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Galapagos takes the listener back one million years to AD 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galapagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave, new, totally different human race. Kurt Vonnegut, America's master satirist, looks at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry - and all that is worth saving.
-
-
The survival of the human race is a total bore!
- By Darwin8u on 12-13-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Deadeye Dick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors - a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb - Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.
-
-
If I aimed at nothing..nothing is what I would hit
- By Darwin8u on 11-28-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Slapstick
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perhaps the most autobiographical (and deliberately least disciplined) of Vonnegut's novels, Slapstick (1976) is in the form of a broken family odyssey and is surely a demonstration of its eponymous title. The story centers on brother and sister twins, children of Wilbur Swain, who are in sympathetic and (possibly) telepathic communication and who represent Vonnegut's relationship with his own sister who died young of cancer almost two decades before the book's publication.
-
-
Lonely No More!
- By Darwin8u on 11-16-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Palm Sunday
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut's singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth.
-
-
Incredible
- By Anonymous User on 11-17-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
-
-
A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Mother Night
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Kurt Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of grey with a verdict that will haunt us all. Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense.
-
-
“We are what we pretend to be”
- By Robert on 09-04-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
-
-
Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Timequake
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 4 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
According to Kurt Vonnegut's alter ego, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, a global timequake will occur on February 13, 2001, at 2:27 p.m. It will be the moment when the universe suffers a crisis of conscience: Should it go on expanding indefinitely or collapse and make another great big BANG? For its own cosmic reasons, it decides to back up a decade to 1991, giving the world a 10-year case of deja vu, making everybody and everything do exactly what they'd done during the past decade.
-
-
Arias only make hopeless situations worse
- By Darwin8u on 12-28-17
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Fates Worse Than Death
- An Autobiographical Collage
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Richard Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut presents in Fates Worse than Death a veritable cornucopia of his thoughts on what could perhaps best be summed up as "anti-theology", a manifesto for atheism that details Vonnegut's drift from conventional religion, even a tract evidencing belief in the divine held within each individual self--the deity within each individual person present in a universe that otherwise lacks any real order.
-
-
Vonnegut is profound
- By Sarah on 02-03-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With cutting wit, fierce conviction, and surprising empathy, Vonnegut explores a diverse range of topics including society, politics, sex, literature, and mortality. Fans who believe they've read all of Vonnegut's work will be delighted to find the author speaking frankly about timely and relevant new topics - with an amusing yet insightful style that's instantly recognizable.
-
-
Vonnegut At His Best
- By Peter W. Kalnin on 12-09-23
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
We Are What We Pretend to Be
- The First and Last Works
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Colin Hanks, Oliver Wyman, Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called “our finest black-humorist” by The Atlantic Monthly, Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Now his first and last works come together for the first time in print, in a collection aptly titled after his famous phrase, We Are What We Pretend To Be.
-
-
Not a place to start.
- By Robert on 11-02-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The Sirens of Titan
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The richest, most depraved man on Earth, Malachi Constant, is offered a chance to take a space journey to distant worlds with a beautiful woman at his side. Of course, there's a catch to the invitation....
-
-
Absolutely Outstanding
- By Robert on 01-07-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Cat's Cradle
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Tony Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a little person as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.
-
-
KV at his best.
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
-
-
Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
While Mortals Sleep
- Unpublished Short Fiction
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kurt Vonnegut made his mark as one of America’s most influential writers with novels such as Slaughterhouse Five, named one of the 100 best English-language novels by Time. Published posthumously, While Mortals Sleep is a collection of 16 short stories, written early in Vonnegut’s career, that further cements his status as an American literary icon.
-
-
old stories before he got to be the KV I've loved
- By Don Singletary on 10-29-11
By: Kurt Vonnegut
What listeners say about God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mari K.
- 02-02-15
Classic Vonnegut
Great narration! Quirky subject material. Great characters. Had never heard of this one until I saw it on audible's list.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jami
- 02-02-16
Not Sure Vonnegut Is For Me
Maybe I just don't get Vonnegut or know how to read him, but I am left puzzled by the great reviews. Maybe it was that I listened to it on audio rather than read a print version. Whatever it is....this didn't do much for me.
I found most of the tale to be dull and I wasn't invested in the characters. I understand that this is a satire, but I didn't get the amount of humor that many others seemed to have found. The story was disjointed and meandered, and I felt my mind similarly wandering. On the positive side, I found a few funny parts and I was impressed by the fact that although this was written in 1965, the commentary about the behavior of the rich and privileged still apply today. I didn't feel that the story was dated at all.
I did bump up my rating from a two star to a three star after thinking about the ending. I like how the ending showed that Elliott Rosewater was "crazy like a fox" as the cliché goes!
Still not sure if I will try another Vonnegut or not. Definitely not in the near future.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dubi
- 02-10-14
The One-Percent, Fifty Years Ago
I first read Rosewater in the mid-70s, when I was in high school and college and catching up on the eight books Kurt Vonnegut had written to that point. Rosewater was a disappointment. I wasn't sure why -- it's an early Vonnegut classic, he himself gave it an A. Re-reading it now (listening to it) as an audiobook, I have a newfound respect for the book.
In 1974, when I first read it ten years after it was written, Rosewater was outdated. The Great Society of the 1960s had dealt with many of the issues of income inequality that are at the center of the book. To me, as a 19-year-old hippified college student living in a world where the counterculture was in the process of being mainstreamed, these issues had all been settled -- still a work in progress, but we were all on the same page as to where we needed to take this.
Today, these issues are being re-litigated. What is amazing, in listening to Rosewater, is how close the terminology and the discussion is to the current debates. Short of calling them the 1%, it's virtually identical. Vonnegut shows all sides of it, although his heart is clearly with the philanthropic Eliot Rosewater, who is deemed crazy because he values general welfare more than personal aggrandizement.
Re-reading this book in 2014, it's amazing is how relevant it has once again become, after having been rendered irrelevant when I first read it 40 years ago. That's actually a sad commentary on our current state of affairs, where this and other supposedly long-settled issues (like women's health) have become controversial after decades of being decided. Hopefully we can relearn the lessons taught half a century ago by Kurt Vonnegut through the persona of Eliot Rosewater.
I have now re-read three of Vonnegut's first eight novels in audio. I consider those eight to be his core body of work, written before his widespread popularity and the subsequent diminution of his writing (in my personal opinion, which I recognize is a minority view). Interestingly, the one that I loved best in my youth, Cat's Cradle, came off as totally dated and even (because of that) trite, and the one that didn't grab me back then, Mr. Rosewater, now comes off as fresh and relevant. Contexts change.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Alexandria
- 07-21-14
Not Vonnegut's best, but not bad
The topic of this book serves as a satirical commentary on American capitalism and the place that money - and the people who have it - hold within society. It is a theme worthy of exploration, but this book lacks the typical spot-on punch of Vonnegut's best work. The message still gets through and in a fairly entertaining fashion, but it falls short of ensuring a lasting impression.
Summerer's narration irritated me at first, but I soon warmed to him. His voice contains a gleeful irony that is perfect for Eliot Rosewater's particular brand of "madness."
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- no te metas con el furioso
- 09-05-16
Great story, not the greatest performer.
This is one of the best Vonnegut books. The performer though, mispronounced Tralfamador. The performer is not terrible, just not as good as I would like it to be. Audible has really hit the air conditioning with the excrement on some of the performers. For instance, they removed a great Stanley Tucci reading of Breakfast of Champions, and replaced it with a John Malkovich version that sounds like yesterday's oatmeal feels.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- picketfence14
- 01-28-17
Has never been more relevant.
A much needed dash of insanity in an eerily sane world. Such an interesting book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- alex
- 12-16-21
Amazing book great reader
I absolutely loved this book and would recommend it to everyone. The narrator did a great job and the last chapter is interviews which were quite interesting. My only thing I would change is that I wish it said interviews instead of chapter 15.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Alexander Ivchenko
- 08-17-19
It was a great experience!
I liked the characters of this book, they are well made, moderately funny, I like how he introduced certain types of people, you can find such characters everywhere even today. I need to digest this book, cause there's a lot to think about, I definitely recommend this book, and the narration is quite good!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kira
- 12-22-14
Classic Vonnegut Fun
If you could sum up God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in three words, what would they be?
Witty, Kooky, Interesting
What did you like best about this story?
I had to start the book twice, and really listen to catch the initial premise of the book, but I was glad I did. The story is a great look at the role of money and charity in our society. I love that Vonnegut is unafraid to show the silly, ridiculous, and sometime vulgar side of humanity to illustrate an actually beautiful idea.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 03-27-14
How do you love 'useless' people?
This novel touches on something ineffable about the value of people, and raises the question of, well, just what are they for? I pair this work with Player Piano in Vonnegut's prescient inquiry about a future he didn't quite live to see.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!